The Victory Minaret in Sanai's hometown Ghazni, built by Sultan Bahram Shah, to whom Sanai dedicated his famous work Hadeeqa See also Chapter 84, 'Sixty-One Poems' in The Republic of Rumi: a Novel of Reality

The sage Sanai Ghaznavi (died c.1131) is counted among the pioneers of Persian Sufi poetry. He influenced most directly Sheikh Friduddin Attar, Nizami Ganjavi and Jalalduddin Rumi (a famous line is usually attributed to Rumi, perhaps erroneously, but nevertheless used by Iqbal without quoting any author: “We are coming after Sanai and Attar.”).

The most famous poem of Sanai is Hadiqa (The Walled Garden), a long masnavi. “The pure man unites two in one,” says Sanai in that book. “The lover unites three in one.” Like much else in the poetry of Sanai, Nezami, Attar, Rumi and Saadi, this has been interpreted by the later commentators to be a reference to the love of a human being for the Divine: while the pious person worships God (hence uniting himself with God), a lover arrives at the love of God after passing through an intermediate stage of amorous love for some beloved (hence uniting himself, the beloved and God).

However, this can be reinterpreted in the light of Iqbal’s work. Once we accept the premise that the “beloved” in the Sufi poetry symbolizes the collective ego – partially or wholly – then it is possible to see the sage Sanai as the pioneer who explained the concept of the collective ego for further development by Nezami, Attar, Rumi, Saadi and others in the subsequent ages.

Iqbal visited the tomb of Sanai in Ghazna during his trip to Afghanistan in 1933 (see Chapter 95 in A Novel of Reality). The visit, described in the versified travelogue included in What Should Now Be Done…? (1937), was also celebrated by imitating the master in an Urdu poem included in Gabriel’s Wing (see Chapter 84 in A Novel of Reality).