التجائے مسافر
English title: THE TRAVELER'S REQUEST
At the tomb of Hazrat Mehboob Elahi of Delhi What angels recite is your exalted name: Your threshold is exalted, your munificence is gernera.
The stars are stable by the attraction of your Love | Your system is like the system of the sun
The pilgrimage to your tomb is life for the heart | Your status is higher than those of Masih and Khidar
The Beloved’s Nature is veiled in your Love | High is your dignity, exalted is your veneration
If my heart has a stain the stain is of your love | But if cheerful I am, I am the rose of your spring
Leaving the garden I have come out like the rose of your fragrance | I am determined to go through the test of perseverance
I have started with zeal from the homeland’s tavern | The pleasure of the wine of knowledge is speeding me up
I am gazing at the mercy’s cloud, I am the wilderness tree | With the Mercy of God I am not in need of the gardener
May I be living elegantly in the world like the sun | May I be bestowed with that ladder by your blessings
May I be so far ahead of the fellow travelers | That I may be regarded as the destination by the caravan
May my pen not hurt anybody’s feelings | May I have complaint against none under the sun
Whose effect may penetrate the hearts like a comb | May I receive such a clamor from your threshold
The nest I had made by picking up bits and pieces | May I see the same nest in the garden again
May I come back to put my forehead at my parents’ feet | Whose efforts made me the confidante of love
That candle of the audience of the Holy Prophet’s descendants; whose threshold I will always consider like the Haram.
Whose breath opened the flower bud of my longing | By whose benevolence I became sagacious
Pray to the terrestrial and the celestial world’s Lord | That I may again become happy with paying homage to him
That second Yusuf to me, that candle of Love’s assembly | Whose brotherly love has given soul’s tranquillity to me
Who in his love, destroying the book of “you and I” | Has brought me up to my youth in the environment of happiness
May he remain happy in the world like rose | Whom I have always held dearer than my life
Blooming, my heart’s bud may become a flower! | May this traveler’s request be accepted!
Sources and translator credits
- Original text transcription: Bang-e-Dara — التجائے مسافر — Digital transcription file at commit 39d44fc0c2b8ca25769c4b36e6eac4d90cb42b35; the source dataset does not identify the underlying print edition.Verified against this pinned digital transcription file; not checked against a print edition.Source
- Iqbal Demystified source list: Bang-e-Dara — Pinned digital dataset commit 39d44fc0c2b8ca25769c4b36e6eac4d90cb42b35; the underlying print edition is not identified by the dataset.Community dataset list; not reconciled against a print edition.Source
- Pinned digital source list 001 (Bang-e-Dara section headings) — Pinned repository commit 39d44fc0c2b8ca25769c4b36e6eac4d90cb42b35; digital transcription, not a selected print edition.Verified against this pinned digital transcription file; not checked against a print edition.Source
- Bang-e-Dara English translation at allama-iqbal.com — The Traveler's Request — Public digital poem page, retrieved 2026-10-05; pinned to allama-iqbal.com commit 82547635bb6b758c45082084b2f152fc453a8056.Translation by Dr M.A.K. Khalil; English Translation by: Dr M.A.K. KhalilSource
- English translations in the Bang-e-Dara digital anthology excerpt — Recovered Urdu poetry anthology PDF excerpt; publication title and year are not established by the preserved source packet (bang-english.pdf, 105 PDF pages).Translation by M.A.K. Khalil; Passages are individually credited in the recovered PDF as “Translated by M.A.K. Khalil”; exact source and credit PDF page locators are stored with each imported passage.Source