Persian Psalms

Zabur-i Ajam includes the mathnavi Gulshan-i Raz-i Jadid and Bandagi Nama.

Iqbal forcefully expresses his inner convictions and urges the reader to advance himself to achieve progress and prosperity by discovering and strengthening the self.

The first of the two longer poems is the Gulshan-i Raz-i Jadid (گلشن راز جدید, "New Garden of Mysteries").

It alludes to the Gulshan-i Raz, the treatise on Sufism written in Persian verse by Sa'd ad-Din Mahmud Shabistari.

Here Iqbal poses and answers nine questions on philosophical problems such as the nature of discursive thought, of the self, and of the relation between the eternal and the temporal.