Time is a Sword (1)
Included in Asrar-i Khudi, Iqbal’s first book of Persian verse, is a poem titled “Al-Waqt Sayf,” time is a sword. The title comes from a saying attributed to the famous scholar and jurist Imam Ahmad bin Idris Al-Shafi’i (767-820 CE). Iqbal’s poem has three parts. Here I will attempt a paraphrase of the first part of this poem and…