Idries Shah (; , ; 16 June 1924 – 23 November 1996), also known as Idris Shah, Indries Shah, né Sayed Idries el-Hashimi (Arabic: ) and by the pen name Arkon Daraul, was an Afghan author, thinker and teacher in the Sufi tradition. Shah wrote over three dozen books on topics ranging from psychology and spirituality to travelogues and culture studies.

Born in British India, the descendant of a family of Afghan nobles on his father's side and a Scottish mother, Shah grew up mainly in England. His early writings centred on magic and witchcraft. In 1960 he established a publishing house, Octagon Press, producing translations of Sufi classics as well as titles of his own. His seminal work was The Sufis, which appeared in 1964 and was well received internationally. In 1965, Shah founded the Institute for Cultural Research, a London-based educational charity devoted to the study of human behaviour and culture. A similar organisation, the Institute for the Study of Human Knowledge (ISHK), was established in the United States under the directorship of Stanford University psychology professor Robert Ornstein, whom Shah appointed as his deputy in the U.S.

In his writings, Shah presented Sufism as a universal form of wisdom that predated Islam. Emphasizing that Sufism was not static but always adapted itself to the current time, place and people, he framed his teaching in Western psychological terms. Shah made extensive use of traditional teaching stories and parables, texts that contained multiple layers of meaning designed to trigger insight and self-reflection in the reader. He is perhaps best known for his collections of humorous Mulla Nasrudin stories.

Shah was at times criticized by orientalists who questioned his credentials and background. His role in the controversy surrounding a new translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, published by his friend Robert Graves and his older brother Omar Ali-Shah, came in for particular scrutiny. However, he also had many notable defenders, chief among them the novelist Doris Lessing. Shah came to be recognized as a spokesman for Sufism in the West and lectured as a visiting professor at a number of Western universities. His works have played a significant part in presenting Sufism as a form of spiritual wisdom approachable by individuals and not necessarily attached to any specific religion.

Life

Family and early life

thumb|Idries Shah telling a story to his children

Idries Shah was born in Simla, Punjab Province, British India, to an Afghan-Indian father; Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah, a writer and diplomat, and a Scottish mother; Saira Elizabeth Luiza Shah. His family on the paternal side were Musavi Sayyids. Their ancestral home was near the Paghman Gardens of Kabul, Afghanistan. His paternal grandfather, Sayed Amjad Ali Shah, was the nawab of Sardhana in the North-Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, a hereditary title the family had gained thanks to the services an earlier ancestor, Jan-Fishan Khan, had rendered to the British.</blockquote>

Shah described his own unconventional upbringing in a 1971 BBC interview with Pat Williams. He described how his father and his extended family and friends always tried to expose the children to a "multiplicity of impacts" and a wide range of contacts and experiences with the intention of producing a well-rounded person. Shah described this as "the Sufi approach" to education.

After his family moved from London to Oxford in 1940 to escape The Blitz (German bombing), he spent two or three years at the City of Oxford High School for Boys.<!-- archive URL contains the full text that is otherwise behind a paywall.-->

Friendship with Gerald Gardner and Robert Graves, and publication of The Sufis

Towards the end of the 1950s, Shah established contact with Wiccan circles in London and then acted as a secretary and companion to Gerald Gardner, the founder of modern Wicca, for some time.

In 1960, Shah founded his publishing house, Octagon Press; one of its first titles was Gardner's biography – Gerald Gardner, Witch. The book was attributed to one of Gardner's followers, Jack L. Bracelin, but had in fact been written by Shah.

According to Wiccan Frederic Lamond, Bracelin's name was used because Shah "did not want to confuse his Sufi students by being seen to take an interest in another esoteric tradition." Shah wrote to Graves from his pension in Palma, requesting an opportunity of "saluting you one day before very long".

Shah also told Graves that he was "intensely preoccupied at the moment with the carrying forward of ecstatic and intuitive knowledge." Like Shah's other books on the topic, The Sufis was conspicuous for avoiding terminology that might have identified his interpretation of Sufism with traditional Islam.

The book also employed a deliberately "scattered" style; Shah wrote to Graves that its aim was to "de-condition people, and prevent their reconditioning"; had it been otherwise, he might have used a more conventional form of exposition. The book sold poorly at first, and Shah invested a considerable amount of his own money in advertising it. Graves told him not to worry; even though he had some misgivings about the writing, and was hurt that Shah had not allowed him to proofread it before publication, he said he was "so proud in having assisted in its publication", and assured Shah that it was "a marvellous book, and will be recognised as such before long. Leave it to find its own readers who will hear your voice spreading, not those envisaged by Doubleday."

John G. Bennett and the Gurdjieff connection

In June 1962, a couple of years prior to the publication of The Sufis, Shah had also established contact with members of the movement that had formed around the mystical teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. describing the author's visit to a secret monastery in Central Asia, where methods strikingly similar to Gurdjieff's methods were apparently being taught.

At that time, Bennett had already investigated the Sufi origins of many of Gurdjieff's teachings, based on both Gurdjieff's own numerous statements, and on travels Bennett himself made in the East where he met various Sufi Sheikhs. He was convinced that Gurdjieff had adopted many of the ideas and techniques of the Sufis and that, for those who heard Gurdjieff's lectures in the early 1920s, "the Sufi origin of his teaching was unmistakable to anyone who had studied both."

Bennett wrote about his first meeting with Shah in his autobiography Witness (1974):<blockquote>At first, I was wary. I had just decided to go forward on my own and now another 'teacher' had appeared. One or two conversations with Reggie convinced me that I ought at least to see for myself. Elizabeth and I went to dinner with the Hoares to meet Shah, who turned out to be a young man in his early 40s. He spoke impeccable English and but for his beard and some of his gestures might well have been taken for an English public school type. Our first impressions were unfavourable. He was restless, smoked incessantly and seemed too intent on making a good impression. Halfway through the evening, our attitude completely changed. We recognized that he was not only an unusually gifted man, but that he had the indefinable something that marks the man who has worked seriously upon himself... Knowing Reggie to be a very cautious man, trained moreover in assessing information by many years in the Intelligence Service, I accepted his assurances and also his belief that Shah had a very important mission in the West that we ought to help him to accomplish. and authorised him to share this with other Gurdjieffians.

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For the next few years, Bennett and Shah had weekly private talks that lasted for hours. Later, Shah also gave talks to the students at Coombe Springs. Bennett says that Shah's plans included "reaching people who occupied positions of authority and power who were already half-consciously aware that the problems of mankind could no longer be solved by economic, political or social action. Such people were touched, he said, by the new forces moving in the world to help mankind to survive the coming crisis." Bennett decided in 1965, after agonising for a long time and discussing the matter with the council and members of his Institute, to give the Coombe Springs property to Shah, who had insisted that any such gift must be made with no strings attached.

After a few months, Shah sold the plot – worth more than £100,000 – to a developer and used the proceeds to establish himself and his work activities at Langton House in Langton Green, near Tunbridge Wells, a estate that once belonged to the family of Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts.

Along with the Coombe Springs property, Bennett also handed the care of his body of pupils to Shah, comprising some 300 people.

According to Bennett, Shah later also engaged in discussions with the heads of the Gurdjieff groups in New York. In a letter to Paul Anderson from 5 March 1968, Bennett wrote, "Madame de Salzmann and all the others... are aware of their own limitations and do no more than they are able to do. While I was in New York, Elizabeth and I visited the Foundation, and we saw most of the leading people in the New York group as well as Jeanne de Salzmann herself. Something is preparing, but whether it will come to fruition I cannot tell. I refer to their connection with Idries Shah and his capacity for turning everything upside down. It is useless with such people to be passive, and it is useless to avoid the issue. For the time being, we can only hope that some good will come, and meanwhile continue our own work..."

The author and clinical psychologist Kathleen Speeth later wrote,

<blockquote>Witnessing the growing conservatism within the [Gurdjieff] Foundation, John Bennett hoped new blood and leadership would come from elsewhere... Although there may have been flirtation with Shah, nothing came of it. The prevailing sense [among the leaders of the Gurdjieff work] that nothing must change, that a treasure in their safekeeping must at all costs be preserved in its original form, was stronger than any wish for a new wave of inspiration." The ICR held meetings and gave lectures there, awarding fellowships to international scholars including Sir John Glubb, Aquila Berlas Kiani, Richard Gregory and Robert Cecil, the head of European studies at the University of Reading who became chairman of the institute in the early 1970s.

Shah was an early member and supporter of the Club of Rome. Fellow Club of Rome members, such as scientist Alexander King made presentations at the Institute.

Other visitors, pupils, and would-be pupils included the poet Ted Hughes, novelists J. D. Salinger, Alan Sillitoe and Doris Lessing, zoologist Desmond Morris, and psychologist Robert Ornstein. The interior of the house was decorated in a Middle-Eastern fashion, and buffet lunches were held every Sunday for guests in a large dining room that was once the estate stable, nicknamed "The Elephant" (a reference to the Eastern tale of the "Elephant in the Dark").

Shah also organised Sufi study groups in the United States. Claudio Naranjo, a Chilean psychiatrist who was teaching in California in the late 1960s, says that, after being "disappointed in the extent to which Gurdjieff's school entailed a living lineage", he had turned towards Sufism and had "become part of a group under the guidance of Idries Shah." Naranjo co-wrote a book with Robert Ornstein, entitled On The Psychology of Meditation (1971). Both of them were associated with the University of California, where Ornstein was a research psychologist at the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute.

Ornstein was also president and founder of the Institute for the Study of Human Knowledge, established in 1969; seeing a need in the U.S. for books and collections on ancient and new ways of thinking, he formed the ISHK Book Service in 1972 as a central source for important contemporary and traditional literature, becoming the sole U.S. distributor of the works of Idries Shah published by Octagon Press.

Another Shah associate, the scientist and professor Leonard Lewin, who was teaching telecommunications at the University of Colorado at the time, set up Sufi study groups and other enterprises for the promotion of Sufi ideas like the Institute for Research on the Dissemination of Human Knowledge (IRDHK), and also edited an anthology of writings by and about Shah entitled The Diffusion of Sufi Ideas in the West (1972).

The planned animated feature film by Williams, provisionally titled The Amazing Nasruddin, never materialised, as the relationship between Williams and the Shah family soured in 1972 amid disputes about copyrights and funds; however, Williams later used some of the ideas for his film The Thief and the Cobbler.

Later years

Shah wrote around two dozen more books over the following decades, many of them drawing on classical Sufi sources. his writings appealed primarily to an intellectually oriented Western audience. His folktales, illustrating Sufi wisdom through anecdote and example, proved particularly popular. Besides his literary and educational work, he found time to design an air ioniser (forming a company together with Coppy Laws) and run a number of textile, ceramics and electronics companies. He was told that he had only eight per cent of his heart function left, and could not expect to survive. He was also a member of the Athenaeum Club.

Teachings

Books on magic and the occult

Shah's early books were studies of what he called "minority beliefs". His first book Oriental Magic, published in 1956, was originally intended to be titled Considerations in Eastern and African Minority Beliefs. He followed this in 1957 with The Secret Lore of Magic: Book of the Sorcerers, originally entitled Some Materials on European Minority-Belief Literature. The names of these books were, according to a contributor to a 1973 festschrift for Shah, changed before publication due to the "exigencies of commercial publishing practices."

Before his death in 1969, Shah's father asserted that the reason why he and his son had published books on the subject of magic and the occult was "to forestall a probable popular revival or belief among a significant number of people in this nonsense. My son... eventually completed this task, when he researched for several years and published two important books on the subject."

In an interview in Psychology Today from 1975, Shah elaborated:<blockquote>The main purpose of my books on magic was to make this material available to the general reader. For too long people believed that there were secret books, hidden places, and amazing things. They held onto this information as something to frighten themselves with. So the first purpose was information. This is the magic of East and West. That's all. There is no more. The second purpose of those books was to show that there do seem to be forces, some of which are either rationalized by this magic or may be developed from it, which do not come within customary physics or within the experience of ordinary people. I think this should be studied, that we should gather the data and analyze the phenomena. We need to separate the chemistry of magic from the alchemy, as it were.</blockquote>

Shah went on to say that his books on the subject were not written for the current devotees of magic and witchcraft, and that in fact he subsequently had to avoid them, as they would only be disappointed in what he had to say. Both Destination Mecca and Oriental Magic contain sections on the subject of Sufism.

Sufism as a form of timeless wisdom

Shah presented Sufism as a form of timeless wisdom that predated Islam. He emphasised that the nature of Sufism was alive, not static, and that it always adapted its visible manifestations to new times, places and people: "Sufi schools are like waves which break upon rocks: [they are] from the same sea, in different forms, for the same purpose," he wrote, quoting Ahmad al-Badawi.

Shah, like Inayat Khan, presented Sufism as a path that transcended individual religions, and adapted it to a Western audience. Unlike Khan, however, he deemphasised religious or spiritual trappings and portrayed Sufism as a psychological technology, a method or science that could be used to achieve self-realisation.

Shah dismissed other Eastern and Western projections of Sufism as "watered down, generalised or partial"; he included in this not only Khan's version, but also the overtly Muslim forms of Sufism found in most Islamic countries. On the other hand, the writings of Shah's associates implied that he was the "Grand Sheikh of the Sufis" – a position of authority undercut by the failure of any other Sufis to acknowledge its existence. He also lectured on the study of Sufism in the West at the University of Sussex in 1966. This was later published as a monograph entitled Special Problems in the Study of Sufi Ideas.

Shah later explained that Sufi activities were divided into different components or departments: "studies in Sufism", "studies of Sufism", and "studies for Sufism".

Studies for Sufism helped lead people towards Sufism and included the promotion of knowledge which might be lacking in the culture and needed to be restored and spread, such as an understanding of social conditioning and brainwashing, the difference between the rational and intuitive modes of thought, and other activities so that people's minds could become more free and wide-ranging. Studies of Sufism included institutions and activities, such as lectures and seminars, which provided information about Sufism and acted as a cultural liaison between the Sufis and the public. Finally, Studies in Sufism referred to being in a Sufi school, carrying out those activities prescribed by the teacher as part of a training, and this could take many forms which did not necessarily fit into the preconceived notion of a "mystical school".

Shah frequently characterised some of his work as really only preliminary to actual Sufi study, in the same way that learning to read and write might be seen as preliminary to a study of literature: "Unless the psychology is correctly oriented, there is no spirituality, though there can be obsession and emotionality, often mistaken for it." "Anyone trying to graft spiritual practices upon an unregenerate personality ... will end up with an aberration", he argued.

Teaching stories

Shah used teaching stories and humour to great effect in his work. Shah emphasised the therapeutic function of surprising anecdotes, and the fresh perspectives these tales revealed. The reading and discussion of such tales in a group setting became a significant part of the activities in which the members of Shah's study circles engaged. and eminent writers such as Poet Laureate Ted Hughes and Nobel-Prize-winning novelist Doris Lessing was one of several notable thinkers profoundly influenced by Shah.

Shah and Ornstein met in the 1960s.

In their original historical and cultural setting, Sufi teaching stories of the kind popularised by Shah – first told orally, and later written down for the purpose of transmitting Sufi faith and practice to successive generations – were considered suitable for people of all ages, including children, as they contained multiple layers of meaning. He then explains how his father used these stories to impart wisdom: "My father always had a tale at hand to divert our attention, or to use as a way of transmitting an idea or a thought. He used to say that the great collections of stories from the East were like encyclopedias, storehouses of wisdom and knowledge ready to be studied, to be appreciated and cherished. To him, stories represented much more than mere entertainment. He saw them as complex psychological documents, forming a body of knowledge that had been collected and refined since the dawn of humanity and, more often than not, passed down by word of mouth." Versions of this story have been known for many years in the West (see Streetlight effect). This is an example of the long-noted phenomenon of similar tales existing in many different cultures, which was a central idea in Shah's folktale collection World Tales.

Peter Wilson, writing in New Trends and Developments in the World of Islam (1998), quotes another such story, featuring a dervish who is asked to describe the qualities of his teacher, Alim. The dervish explains that Alim wrote beautiful poetry, and inspired him with his self-sacrifice and his service to his fellow man. Then he proceeds to list the qualities which actually enabled Alim to be an effective teacher: "Hazrat Alim Azimi made me irritated, which caused me to examine my irritation, to trace its source. Alim Azimi made me angry, so that I could feel and transform my anger." Promoting and distributing their teacher's publications has been an important activity or "work" for Shah's students, both for fund-raising purposes and for transforming public awareness. The ICR suspended its activities in 2013 following the formation of a new charity, The Idries Shah Foundation, while the SSS had ceased its activities earlier. The ISHK (Institute for the Study of Human Knowledge), headed by Ornstein, is active in the United States; after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, for example, it sent out a brochure advertising Afghanistan-related books authored by Shah and his circle to members of the Middle East Studies Association, thus linking these publications to the need for improved cross-cultural understanding. Following Idries Shah's death in&nbsp;1996, a fair number of his students became affiliated with Omar Ali-Shah's movement.

One of Shah's daughters, Saira Shah, became notable in&nbsp;2001 for reporting on women's rights in Afghanistan in her documentary Beneath the Veil. and The Magic Monastery in her translation followed in 2002 and 2003, respectively.

Reception

Shah's books on Sufism achieved considerable critical acclaim. He was the subject of a BBC documentary ("One Pair of Eyes") in&nbsp;1969, Among other honours, Shah won six first prizes at the UNESCO World&nbsp;Book Year in&nbsp;1973, and the Islamic scholar James Kritzeck, commenting on Shah's Tales of the Dervishes, said that it was "beautifully translated".

Colin Wilson stated that "partly through Idries Shah, I have begun to see some rather new and interesting implications [about the subject of mysticism]" and in his review of The Magic Monastery (1972) noted that Shah "is not primarily concerned with propagating some secret doctrine. He is concerned with the method by which mystical knowledge is transmitted... [The Sufis] transmit knowledge through direct intuition rather in the manner of the Zen masters, and one of the chief means of doing this is by means of brief stories and parables which work their way into the subconscious and activate its hidden forces."

In Afghanistan, the Kabul Times said that Caravan of Dreams (1968) was "highly recommended" and "of especial interest to Afghans" because it is "basically an anthology of short stories, tales and proverbs, jokes and extracts, from the written and oral literature which forms a part of many an evening's talk and interchange – even in these modern times – in Afghanistan." The Afghanistan News reported that The Sufis "covers important Afghan contributions to world philosophy and science" and was "the first authoritative book on Sufism and the human development system of the dervishes." As far as doubts about Shah's background and credentials are concerned, the Sardar Haji Faiz Muhammad Khan Zikeria, an Afghan scholar who had served as Afghan Minister of Education and later Ambassador and Foreign Minister of Afghanistan, issued a notarized Declaration for the scholars of the world about the Shah family in 1970: "The Musavi Saiyids of Afghanistan and Khans of Paghman are recognized as the descendants of the Prophet – may peace be upon him. They are recognized to be of the most noble descent of Islam and are respected as Sufi teachers and erudite scholars. Saiyid Idries Shah, son of the late Saiyid Ikbal Ali Shah, is personally known to me as an honourable man whose rank, titles and descent are attested and known by repute."

In 1980, Professor Khalilullah Khalili, former Poet Laureate of Afghanistan, praised the work of his "compatriot and friend the Arif (Sufi Illuminate) The Sayed Idries Shah", saying "Especially to be appreciated are his brilliant and important services in revealing the celestial inspirations and inner thoughts of the great teachers of Islam and Sufis."

The Hindustan Standard of India found that Caravan of Dreams, was a "fine anthology, dippable-into at any time for entertainment, refreshment, consolation, and inspiration... witty, engrossing, utterly and appealingly human."

The Institute for Cross-cultural Exchange (ICE), a Canadian charity founded in 2004, decided to use Idries Shah's children's books to distribute to thousands of needy children in Canada, Mexico and Afghanistan, as part of their children's literacy programme and promotion of cross-cultural understanding. This series of books is published by Hoopoe Books, a non-profit initiative by the American psychologist Robert Ornstein's Institute for the Study of Human Knowledge (ISHK). ISHK provides these books to needy children through their own Share Literacy initiative.

"Shah-school" writings

A hostile critic was James Moore, a Gurdjieffian who disagreed with Shah's assertion that Gurdjieff's teaching was essentially Sufic in nature and took exception to the publication of a chronologically impossible, pseudonymous book on the matter (The Teachers of Gurdjieff by Rafael Lefort) that was linked to Shah. He described Shah as supported by a "coterie of serviceable journalists, editors, critics, animators, broadcasters, and travel writers, which gamely choruses Shah's praise". Both Moore and Wilson, however, also noted similarities in style, and considered the possibility that much of this pseudonymous work, frequently published by Octagon Press, Shah's own publishing house, might have been written by Shah himself. Rawlinson concluded that Shah "cannot be taken at face value. His own axioms preclude the very possibility." Describing Shah's œuvre as a "phenomenon like nothing else in our time", she characterised him as a many-sided man, the wittiest person she ever expected to meet, kind, generous, modest ("Don't look so much at my face, but take what is in my hand", she quotes him as saying), and her good friend and teacher for 30-odd years. Given that Shah's writings and translations of Sufi teaching stories were designed with that purpose in mind, he recommended them to those interested in assessing the matter for themselves, and noted that many authorities had accepted Shah's position as a spokesman for contemporary Sufism.

Asked to give an assessment of Shah in 1973, J.G. Bennett said that Shah was doing important work on a large scale, "stirring people up very effectively all over the place, making them think, showing them that modes of thought that appear to be free are really largely conditioned." He referred to Shah as the Krishnamurti of Sufism, breaking down people's fixed ideas in many directions as part of an awakening process that is "a very necessary preparation for the new world."

The Indian philosopher and mystic Rajneesh, later known as Osho, commenting on Shah's work, described The Sufis as "just a diamond. The value of what he has done in The Sufis is immeasurable". He added that Shah was "the man who introduced Mulla Nasrudin to the West, and he has done an incredible service. He cannot be repaid. [...] Idries Shah has made just the small anecdotes of Nasrudin even more beautiful ... [he] not only has the capacity to exactly translate the parables, but even to beautify them, to make them more poignant, sharper."

Richard Smoley and Jay Kinney, writing in Hidden Wisdom: A Guide to the Western Inner Traditions (2006), pronounced Shah's The Sufis an "extremely readable and wide-ranging introduction to Sufism", adding that "Shah's own slant is evident throughout, and some historical assertions are debatable (none are footnoted), but no other book is as successful as this one in provoking interest in Sufism for the general reader." They described Learning How to Learn, a collection of interviews, talks and short writings, as one of Shah's best works, providing a solid orientation to his "psychological" approach to Sufi work, noting that at his best, "Shah provides insights that inoculate students against much of the nonsense in the spiritual marketplace." In another book, Godhead: The Brain's Big Bang – The explosive origin of creativity, mysticism and mental illness, they said that Shah's stories, "when told to young and old alike [...] lay down blueprints in the mind, not only for living and overcoming everyday difficulties but also for travelling the spiritual path. Their impact may not be recognized or felt for months or years after first hearing or reading them, but eventually the structural content they contain will exploit the pattern-matching nature of the brain and make it possible for students to observe the functioning of their own emotionally conditioned responses to changing life circumstances. It then makes it easier for them to take any action required by reality, and for their minds to connect to higher realms. Teaching stories should be read, told and reflected on, but not intellectually analysed, because that destroys the beneficial impact that they would otherwise have had on your mind." Shah, they added, was "a great collector and publisher of tales and writings that contain this 'long-term impact' quality. He understood the vital importance for humanity of the 'mental blueprint' aspect of them and his books are full of nourishing examples."

Olav Hammer notes that during Shah's last years, when the generosity of admirers had made him truly wealthy, and he had become a respected figure among the higher echelons of British society, controversies arose due to discrepancies between autobiographical data – mentioning kinship with the prophet Muhammad, affiliations with a secret Sufi order in Central Asia, or the tradition in which Gurdjieff was taught – and recoverable historical facts.

The Sufis reception

The reception of Shah's body of work was also marked by controversy. The internationally renowned German orientalist Annemarie Schimmel commented that The Sufis, along with Shah's other books, "should be avoided by serious students".

Graves' introduction to The Sufis, written with Shah's help, described Shah as being "in the senior male line of descent from the prophet Mohammed" and as having inherited "secret mysteries from the Caliphs, his ancestors. He is, in fact, a Grand Sheikh of the Sufi Tariqa... " Privately, however, writing to a friend, Graves confessed that this was "misleading: he is one of us, not a Moslem personage."

Shah's fiercest critic, University of Edinburgh scholar L.P. Elwell-Sutton, published in 1975 an article critical of what he called "pseudo-Sufis" like Gurdjieff and Shah. He opined that Graves had been trying to "upgrade" Shah's "rather undistinguished lineage", and that the reference to Mohammed's senior male line of descent was a "rather unfortunate gaffe", as Mohammed's sons had all died in infancy. Elwell-Sutton accepted that the family were Sayyids descended from the seventh Imam Musa al-Kazim, the great-great-grandson of Husayn ibn Ali, who was the younger son of the marriage of Fatima (the daughter of the Prophet) and Ali. However, he considered this an "undistinguished lineage" with no special sanctity because "Sayyids proliferate throughout the Islamic world, in all walks of society and on both sides of every religious and political fence." He 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". He took a dim view of Rushbrook Williams' festschrift (collection written in honour) of Shah, saying he considered many of the claims made in the book on behalf of Shah and his father, concerning their representing the Sufi tradition, to be self-serving publicity marked by a "disarming disregard for facts". Expressing amusement and amazement at the "sycophantic manner" of Shah's interlocutors in a BBC radio interview, Elwell-Sutton concluded that some Western intellectuals were "so desperate to find answers to the questions that baffle them, that, confronted with wisdom from 'the mysterious East,' they abandon their critical faculties and submit to brainwashing of the crudest kind".

Omar Khayyam affair

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Shah came under attack over a controversy surrounding the 1967 publication of a new translation of Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat, by Robert Graves and Shah's older brother, Omar Ali-Shah. L. P. Elwell-Sutton, an orientalist at Edinburgh University, and others who reviewed the book expressed their conviction that the story of the ancient manuscript was false. According to his widow writing many years later, Graves had "complete faith" in the authenticity of the manuscript because of his friendship with Shah, even though he never had a chance to view the text in person. The scholarly consensus today is that the "Jan-Fishan Khan" manuscript was a hoax, and that the Graves/Ali-Shah translation was in fact based on a Victorian amateur scholar's analysis of the sources used by previous Rubaiyat translator Edward FitzGerald.

Works

Studies in minority beliefs

  • Oriental Magic (1956)
  • The Secret Lore of Magic (1957)

Sufism

  • The Sufis (1964)
  • Tales of the Dervishes (1967)
  • Caravan of Dreams (1968)
  • Reflections (1968)
  • The Way of the Sufi (1968)
  • The Book of the Book (1969)
  • Wisdom of the Idiots (1969)
  • The Dermis Probe (1970)
  • Thinkers of the East: Studies in Experientialism (1971)
  • The Magic Monastery (1972)
  • The Elephant in the Dark – Christianity, Islam and the Sufis (1974)
  • A Veiled Gazelle – Seeing How to See (1977)
  • Neglected Aspects of Sufi Study (1977)
  • Special Illumination: The Sufi Use of Humour (1977)
  • A Perfumed Scorpion (1978)
  • Learning How to Learn (1978)
  • The Hundred Tales of Wisdom (1978)
  • Evenings with Idries Shah (1981)
  • Letters and Lectures of Idries Shah (1981)
  • Observations (1982)
  • Seeker After Truth (1982)
  • Sufi Thought and Action (1990)
  • The Commanding Self (1994)
  • Knowing How to Know (1998)

Collections of Mulla Nasrudin stories

  • The Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin (1966)
  • The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mulla Nasrudin (1968)
  • The Subtleties of the Inimitable Mulla Nasrudin (1973)
  • The World of Nasrudin (2003)

Studies of the English

  • Darkest England (1987)
  • The Natives are Restless (1988)
  • The Englishman's Handbook (2000)

Travel

  • Destination Mecca (1957)

Fiction

  • Kara Kush, London: William Collins Sons and Co., Ltd. (1986)

Folklore

  • World Tales (1979)

For children

  • Neem the Half-Boy (1998)
  • The Farmer's Wife (1998)
  • The Lion Who Saw Himself in the Water (1998)
  • The Boy Without A Name (2000)
  • The Clever Boy and the Terrible Dangerous Animal (2000)
  • The Magic Horse (2001)
  • The Man with Bad Manners (2003)
  • The Old Woman and The Eagle (2005)
  • The Silly Chicken (2005)
  • Fatima the Spinner and the Tent (2006)
  • The Man and the Fox (2006)
  • The Onion (2018)
  • Speak First and Lose (2018)
  • The Ants and the Pen (2018)
  • The Horrible Dib Dib (2019)
  • After a Swim (2019)
  • The Tale of the Sands (2019)

As Arkon Daraul

  • A History of Secret Societies (1961)