Idries Shah

Idries Shah (16 June 1924–23 November 1996) (Persian: ادریس شاه), also known as Idris Shah, né Sayyid Idris al-Hashimi (Arabic: سيد إدريس الهاشمي), was an author and teacher in the Sufi tradition who wrote several dozen critically acclaimed books on topics ranging from psychology and spirituality to travelogs and culture studies. He founded a publishing company, Octagon Press, which has published classics from the Sufi tradition as well as many of his own works. He is perhaps best known for his collections of Mulla Nasrudin stories.

Life

Idries Shah was born in Simla, India, to an Afghan-Indian father and Scottish mother into a revered family of Saadat (= Arabic plural of Sayyid) who had their ancestral home near the Paghman Gardens^[1] of Kabul. His paternal grandfather, Sayyid Amjad Ali Shah, was Nawab of the Jagir of Sardhana, near Meerut, north of Delhi (Uttar Pradesh).^[2]^[3] Shah's early years were mainly spent in Afghanistan, India and England, and his upbringing bridged East and West. He was educated, as his father before him, by private tutors in Europe and the Middle East, and through wide-ranging travel—the series of journeys, in fact, that characterise Sufi education and development.

Shah married Cynthia (Kashfi) Kabraji in 1958, and fathered one son, Tahir Shah, and two daughters, Saira and Safia.^[4] One of the daughters, Saira Shah, reported on women's rights in Afghanistan in her documentary Beneath the Veil.^[5] Shah's brother, Omar Ali-Shah, was also a writer and teacher of Sufism.

Works

Idries Shah's writings greatly extended the western knowledge^[6] of Sufi teachings. He profoundly influenced several intellectuals, notably the novelist Doris Lessing^[7] and the Stanford University psychology professor Robert Ornstein.^[8]

Shah's definition of Sufism was liberal in that he was of the opinion that it predated Islam and didn't depend on the Qur'an, but was universal in source, scope and relevance (see Sufi studies).

Shah maintained that spiritual teachings should be presented in forms and terms familiar in the community where they are to take root. He believed that students should be given work based on their individual capacities, and rejected systems that apply the same exercises to all. In his own work he used teaching stories and humor^[9] to great effect.

Shah's earliest published works reflected his interest in magic, witchcraft and occultism: Oriental Magic^[10] (London 1956), and The Secret Lore of Magic: Book of the Sorcerers (London 1957). In 1960, Octagon Press published its first title Gerald Gardner: Witch^[11], the biography of a leading figure in the British witchcraft revival of the 1950s. Attributed to "Jack L. Bracelin", it is believed to have been ghost-written by Shah, who was Gardner's secretary at the time of writing (see F. Lamond, Fifty Years of Wicca, 2004).^[12] Shah developed Octagon Press as a means of publishing and distributing Sufi books that might otherwise have gone out of print. His desire was to have these always available to each generation. The books range from traditional Sufi manuals to contemporary works. Several books feature the Mulla Nasrudin character, sometimes with illustrations provided by Richard Williams. These humorous teaching stories are said to have the ability to act as a mirror to human foibles, aiding philosophical self-examination.

Shah started the "Society for Understanding the Foundations of Ideas" (or "SUFI") in London in the mid-1960s. This was renamed the "Institute for Cultural Research", alongside a more esoteric "Society for Sufi Studies", also founded by Shah. The ICR, now based in London, hosts lectures and seminars on topics related to aspects of human nature, while the SSS has ceased its activities.

Shah's books have sold over 15 million copies in 12 languages worldwide and have been reviewed in numerous international journals and newspapers.^[13] His best-selling novel Kara Kush was based on fact, incorporating Shah's first-hand knowledge of the courage of the Afghan people, and the atrocities inflicted upon them.

About a year after his last visit to Afghanistan in late spring of 1987, Shah suffered two successive and massive heart attacks. He died in London on November 23, 1996, at the age of 72. According to the obituary in The Daily Telegraph, Idries Shah was a collaborator with Mujahideen in the Afghan-Soviet war, a Director of Studies for the Institute for Cultural Research and a Governor of the Royal Humane Society and the Royal Hospital and Home for Incurables.

Idries Shah considered his books his legacy. In themselves, they would fulfil the function he had fulfilled when he could no longer be there.^[14]

Psychology

In reply to Elisabeth Hall who interviewed him for "Psychology Today", July 1975:– "For the sake of humanity, what would you like to see happen?" Idries Shah said: "What I would really want, in case anybody is listening, is for the products of the last 50 years of psychological research to be studied by the public, by everybody, so that the findings become part of their way of thinking (...) they have this great body of psychological information and refuse to use it."^[15]

Reception and controversies

Appraisal by book critics and academics

Idries Shah's books achieved considerable critical acclaim, several of his works being chosen as "Outstanding Book of the Year" by the BBC's "The Critics" program.^[16] But academics were often hostile. Most notable among his academic critics was L. P. Elwell-Sutton from Edinburgh University, who in a very caustic review described Shah's books as "trivial", replete with errors of fact, slovenly and inaccurate translations and even misspellings of Oriental names and words – "a muddle of platitudes, irrelevancies and plain mumbo-jumbo", adding for good measure that Shah had "a remarkable opinion of his own importance".^[17]

Shah published, through Octagon Press, works by Hafiz, Rumi, Ibn Arabi, Mahmud Shabistari, Attar, Jami, Khayyam, Al-Ghazali and others. He presented these works as tools for self-development that were of practical relevance to people of today, rather than as works fit merely for study by orientalists.^[18]^[19] This contributed to the fierce criticism from some academics,^[19] an issue addressed by Shah in "The Study of Sufism in the West".

Bennett controversy

At the start of this publishing work (1962), he received invaluable aid from John G. Bennett, who put some important real estate assets at his disposal.^[20] After Idries Shah sold the assets, destroying the Djamichunatra (a nine-sided study hall designed and built by J. G. Bennett and his pupils, including the architect Robert Whiffen, in 1956^[21]) at Coombe Springs in the process, this matter developed into something of a controversy.^[22]^[23] Apparently, though, it was not a problem to John Bennett, who dealt with the issue in some detail in his autobiography^[24]

Graves controversy

Idries Shah was also criticised over his dealing with the matter of the elusive Jan Fishan Khan manuscript of Khayyam, upon which the new translation of the Rubaiyat by Robert Graves and Omar Ali Shah was allegedly based. When the actual presentation of the manuscript was compromised by the death of Ikbal Ali Shah (the father of Idries and Omar Ali, who was supposed to have known the exact whereabouts of the manuscript) in a car accident in Tangier, Robert Graves asked Idries Shah, with whom he had developed a close friendship,^[25] for help. Much to Graves' surprise, Shah concluded his reply: "The manuscript, as you know, is not in my possession. If it were, I would have no hesitation at all in refusing to show it to anyone under any circumstances at any time whatever."^[26] This caused Robert Graves' biographer, Richard Perceval Graves, to muse, "In practice, the manuscript was never produced; and after all these years it is difficult to believe, in view of the Shahs' numerous obligations to Graves, that they would have continued to withhold it had it ever existed in the first place."^[27] Elwell-Sutton likewise expressed his conviction that the manuscript had never existed.^[17] But according to his widow Graves himself never doubted the authenticity of the manuscript.^[28]

As a response to the attacks on Shah, twenty-four scholars and writers, drawn from both East and West, compiled a Festschrift in honor of his services to sufi studies ("Sufi Studies, East and West", 1973).^[19] [3]

Contents

Life

Works

Psychology

Reception and controversies

Appraisal by book critics and academics

Bennett controversy

Graves controversy

Further reading

Sources

Notes

See also

Partial bibliography

External links