Everything about Idries Shah totally explained
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 travelogues 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 of
Kabul. His paternal grandfather, Sayyid Amjad Ali Shah, was
Nawab of the
Jagir of
Sardhana, near
Meerut, north of
Delhi (
Uttar Pradesh). 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. One of the daughters, Saira Shah, reported on women's rights in
Afghanistan in her documentary
Beneath the Veil. Shah's brother,
Omar Ali-Shah, was also a writer and teacher of Sufism.
Works
Idries Shah's writings greatly extended the western knowledge of Sufi teachings. He profoundly influenced several intellectuals, notably the novelist
Doris Lessing and the
Stanford University psychology professor
Robert Ornstein.
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 that are familiar in the community where they're 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 humour to great effect.
Shah's earliest published works reflected his interest in magic, witchcraft and occultism:
Oriental Magic (
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, the biography of a leading figure in the British
witchcraft revival of the
1950s. Attributed to "Jack L. Bracelin", it's 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). 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, currently 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. 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'd fulfil the function he'd fulfilled when he could no longer be there.
Psychology
In reply to Elisabeth Hall who interviewed him for "Psychology Today", Juli 1975:– "For the sake of humanity, what would you like to see happen?" Idries Shah said: "What I'd 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've this great body of psychological information and refuse to use it."
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" programme. Academics, however, 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".
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. This contributed to the fierce criticism from some academics, 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) at Coombe Springs in the process, this matter developed into something of a controversy. Apparently, though, it wasn't a problem to John Bennett, who dealt with the issue in some detail in his autobiography
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'd developed a close friendship, for help. Much to Graves' surprise, Shah concluded his reply: "
The manuscript, as you know, isn't in my possession. If it were, I'd have no hesitation at all in refusing to show it to anyone under any circumstances at any time whatever." This caused Robert Graves' biographer, Richard Perceval Graves, to muse, "In practice, the manuscript was never produced; and after all these years it's difficult to believe, in view of the Shahs' numerous obligations to Graves, that they'd have continued to withhold it
had it ever existed in the first place." Elwell-Sutton likewise expressed his conviction that the manuscript had never existed.
As a response to the attacks on Shah, twenty-four scholars and writers, drawn from both East and West, compiled a Festschrift in honour of his services to sufi studies ("Sufi Studies, East and West", 1973).
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