Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah (, ; 1894 in Sardhana, India – 4 November 1969 in Tangier, Morocco) was an Indian-Afghan author and diplomat descended from the Sadaat of Paghman. Born and educated in India, he came to Britain as a young man to continue his education in Edinburgh, where he married a young Scotswoman.
Travelling widely, Ikbal Ali Shah undertook assignments for the British Foreign Office and became a publicist for a number of Eastern statesmen, penning biographies of Kemal Atatürk, the Aga Khan and others. His other writing includes lighter works such as travel narratives and tales of adventure, as well as more serious works on Sufism, Islam and Asian politics. He hoped that Sufism might "form a bridge between the Western and the Eastern ways of thinking"; familiar with both cultures, much of his life and writing was devoted to furthering greater cross-cultural understanding.
Ikbal Ali Shah had three children, all of whom became notable writers themselves; his son Idries Shah became particularly well known and acclaimed as a writer and teacher of Sufism in the West. When Ikbal Ali Shah's wife died in 1960, he moved from Britain to Morocco, spending the last decade of his life in Tangier. He died in a road accident in Morocco, aged 75.
Life
Family origins Ikbal Ali Shah was born into a family of Musavi Saiyeds (descendants of the Islamic prophet Muhammad through his daughter Fatimah and also through Musa al-Kadhim, the great-great-grandson of Husayn ibn Ali and seventh Imam of the Twelver Shi'a sect of Islam). The family originated from Paghman near Kabul, Afghanistan. In 1840, Ali Shah's great-grandfather was awarded the title Jan-Fishan Khan for his support of Shah Shuja, a puppet ruler installed by the British. In 1841, following the defeat of the British, Jan-Fishan Khan was forced to leave Afghanistan. The British-Indian government rewarded his loyalty with an estate in Sardhana, Uttar Pradesh, which thereafter became the family seat.
Ali Shah's granddaughter Saira Shah relates that her grandfather "maintained that ancestry was something to try to live up to, not to boast about" and told her that "it is less important who your forebears were than what you yourself become."Shah, Saira (2003). The Storyteller's Daughter. Alfred A Knopf, New York. pp. 9-10.
Education and marriage Ali Shah was educated in Britain before the World War I."Shah in his Eastern Context" in Sufi Studies: East and West, edited by Professor L.F. Rushbrook Williams, E.P.Dutton & Co., 1974, p. 16. He met his future wife Saira Elizabeth Luiza Shah (pseudonym: Morag Murray Abdullah, b. 1900)Saira Elizabeth Luiza Shah died on 15 Aug 1960, according to her tombstone in the Muslim section of the cemetery at Brookwood, Woking, Surrey, England where she, Ali-Shah and other members of the Shah family are buried. during the war, while engaged in an unsuccessful attempt to study medicine at Edinburgh Medical School.Octagon Press Authors - Morag Murray Abdullah They eloped while she was only sixteen; her family did not approve of the match, and her father never spoke to her again.Shah, Saira (2003). The Storyteller's Daughter. Alfred A Knopf, New York. p. 34. Ali Shah's own father, asked to give his consent to the marriage, enquired by telegram "whether she was prepared to become a Muslim and whether she would be able to defend a fortress, if required." She answered yes on both counts; satisfied, he gave his blessing. The young couple subsequently had three children, the Sufi writers and translators Amina Shah (b. 1918), Omar Ali-Shah (b. 1922) and Idries Shah (b. 1924).
Traveller, writer, diplomat and publicist In 1918, Ali Shah became only the second Asian to join the Royal Society for Asian Affairs, contributing articles on Islam to the Society's journal. He travelled widely and became a publicist for a variety of Eastern statesmen such as President Kemal Atatürk of Turkey, King Abdullah of Jordan, King Fuad I of Egypt, the Emir Abdul Illah of Iraq and members of the royal family of Afghanistan. He was on friendly terms with both orthodox leaders (like the Rector of Azhar University in Cairo) and reformers (like Kemal Atatürk)."Shah in his Eastern Context" in Sufi Studies: East and West, edited by Professor L.F. Rushbrook Williams, E.P.Dutton & Co., 1974, p. 20.
Ali Shah was also a friend of Inayat Khan and involved in an unsuccessful attempt to set up an Islamic branch of the latter's Sufi Movement in London in 1918; For further details see Zia Inayat Khan (2006), "A Hybrid Sufi Order at the Crossroads of Modernity: the Sufi Order and Sufi Movement of Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan", pp. 105–107. after Khan's death, he criticised the Sufi Movement's universalist attitude, writing in Islamic Sufism (1933), "A Sufi must of necessity be a moslem" and adding that Sufism should not be confused with "such non-Islamic movements which due to utter ignorance are styled Sufism".
Ikbal Ali Shah believed that Bolshevism's encroachment on the countries of Central Asia would almost inevitably lead to catastrophic results, and by 1921 was reporting in the Edinburgh Review on the methods of propaganda and political influence used by the Bolshevists in Central Asia and Afghanistan, with its consequences for British rule in India.Bolshevism in Central Asia
He was also associated with the British Foreign Office for several decades. James Moore states that his work for the Foreign Office occasionally raised controversy: in 1929, after Ali Shah "tried to compromise" the British Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, Foreign Office investigations concluded that there "was hardly a word of truth in his writings".
Ali Shah was a passionate advocate of the modernisation of Islam. He viewed this as nothing more and nothing less than a return to genuine Islam, an Islam without a priest class, writing in 1929:
"In the New Dark Age of my faith, from which we have just emerged into the sunny vistas of real religion, a curious politico-religious system had grown; and it is indeed by reason of our forebears having been seen so long under that influence that the average European wonders whether we have not definitely divorced Islam by our modernization. The truth is that the organization of the Doctors of Moslem Law, backed by autocratic Eastern monarchs was the very antithesis of the words of the Koran. In Turkey, for instance, no man was permitted to consult the Holy Book of Islam and seek interpretation for himself; despite the fact that the only reason for which the faithful places his book above every other Revealed Law is that any man can have his cue directly from it. The Prophet himself emphasized this fact repeatedly and thereby meant to destroy the human tendency of priestcraft. This particular teaching was so deep that it was not until many political cross-currents amongst the Moslem States had much weakened the spiritual essence that the clergy at last won the battle which they had fought for at least a thousand years.""The modernisation of Islam", Contemporary Review, Vol. 135, pp. 263-264; quoted in
Justifying Turkey's modernisation efforts under Kemal Atatürk, Ali Shah condemned what Islam had become in Turkey:
"Even the slightest divergence from the established church was considered the highest crime; and the faithful wandered in and out of the four water-tight compartments of schools of theology completely dazed by the priest-made dogma that neither would reconcile with the early teachings of Islam nor ring true to the advancing humanity of the present age. The clergy made every effort to circumscribe the view of every Moslim and placed the right of interpretation beyond the reach of even the intelligent seeker after truth."Sirdar lkbal Ali Shah, "The Religious Revolt of Turkey," Review of Religions, XXVII, No. 7 (July, 1928), 23-26; quoted in:
He noted with approval that –
"When ecclesiastics frowned upon women parading the streets in Stamboul, the young men were able to silence the objections by quoting the Koran to prove that the Koran enjoined only modesty and not the cruel practice of closing women in the houses."
In the 1930s he was in Geneva, working in collaboration with the League of Nations supporting disarmament,"Sufism in the Art of Idries Shah" in Sufi Studies: East and West, edited by Professor L.F. Rushbrook Williams, E.P.Dutton & Co., 1974, p. 180. and attending the European Muslim Congress of 1935, promoting Islamic unity. According to Augy Hayter (a student of Ikbal's son Omar Ali-Shah) the Sirdar's connection with the League of Nations began in its early days when he was working with professor Gilbert Murray and the Agha Khan, and records of his contributions and position as a "respected intellectual" of the time can be found in the Unesco archives in Paris.Hayter, Augy. (2002) Fictions and Factions. Tractus Books, p. 234. .
Ikbal Ali Shah was also a member of the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Asiatic Society. By contributing to the work of such organisations, he aimed to bridge the gap between east and west. In 1937, he wrote:
"... since my early days I have striven to interpret the East to the West, and Europe to Asia. Through this, I believe, lies the way of mutual sympathy between the nations; and such can only be accomplished by means of reading the effusions of one another's Great Minds; because if we but endeavour to understand about our fellow men, good will can come as the gentle dawn of peace."Shah, Sirdar Ikbal Ali (1975). The Book of Oriental Literature. Octagon Press Ltd. p. vii. . Originally published 1937.
In 1940, the family moved from London to Oxford to escape German bombing. In 1945, Ali Shah and his son Idries travelled to Uruguay as expert advisors on halalled meat questions for the India Office; a scandal resulted, leading the British ambassador to describe him as a "swindler".
Latter years Ikbal Ali Shah later taught Sufi "classes" in England, which were the precursors to the Sufi school established by his son, Idries Shah. He was also appointed by Dr. Zakir Husain as India's cultural representative in all of West Asia.
According to his grandson Tahir, Ali Shah was heartbroken when his wife died in 1960, aged 59; feeling unable to continue living in the places in which they had shared their lives, he moved to Tangier in Morocco, a place they had never visited together, and lived there in a small villa close to the seafront. L. F. Rushbrook Williams, a British scholar bound to Ali Shah through a friendship spanning more than half a century, attributes Ali Shah's move to Morocco to a tightening of British residence regulations and says that Ali Shah, never having acquired British domicile, was obliged to leave behind the study centre for Sufism that he had set up in England."Shah in his Eastern Context" in Sufi Studies: East and West, edited by Professor L.F. Rushbrook Williams, E.P.Dutton & Co., 1974, pp. 16, 22.
Near the end of his life, Ali Shah was caught up in the controversy surrounding the 1967 publication of a new translation of Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat by his son Omar Ali-Shah and the English poet Robert Graves. The translation was based on an annotated "crib" made by Omar Ali-Shah, who asserted that it derived from an old manuscript said to have been in the Shah family's possession for 800 years.Stuffed Eagle, Time magazine, 31 May 1968 L. P. Elwell-Sutton, an orientalist at Edinburgh University, expressed his conviction that the story of the ancient family manuscript was false. Graves believed that the disputed manuscript was in the possession of Ikbal Ali Shah, and that he was about to produce it at the time of his death from a road accident, to allay the growing controversy surrounding the translation. However, the manuscript never was produced.