The Government of Pakistan's initiative in the mid-seventies to establish new seats of learning to spur medical education and research in Pakistan led to the establishment of this institution on 2 May 1975 as Lahore Medical College, inaugurated by Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Muhammad Afzal Sheikh was the first Professor of Anatomy, while Mahmood Ali Malik and Abdul Ghaffar laid the framework of the physiology department.

Initially the college was housed temporarily in a borrowed, and wholly inadequate building with meagre audiovisual teaching aids and facilities at the Post-Graduate Medical Institute, Lahore.

[citation needed] Meanwhile, in 1980, the final plan for Allama Iqbal Medical College Complex was agreed upon and its foundation stone was laid in March 1980.

Allama Iqbal Medical College has only one campus which is spread over 100 acres situated on the Canal Road.

The campus consists of the basic science departments, administrative block, library, fountain pavilion, lecture theatre complex, and cafeteria.

It provides a residential facility for 1000 medical students, 200 internees, 500 nurses and a colony comprising 200 houses for the employees.

[2] For the purpose of extra- and co-curricular activities, a sports complex including separate gymnasiums for boys and girls, a swimming pool, tennis courts, hockey and cricket grounds, and an auditorium with a seating capacity of 1500 have also been built.

Most of the books and journals are related to medicine and allied fields and are written by authors of international repute.

A weekly clinicopathological conference, most of the scientific meetings, seminars & symposia and important lectures and addresses take place in this building.

The student hostels are named after the legendary Muslim scholars Ibn Nafees, Al Beruni and Bu Ali Sina.