Idris Shah
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Idris or Idries Shah né Sayyid Idris al-Hashimi
From the start, the young Shah was at home in both East and West: educated, as his father before him, by private tutors in Europe and the Middle East, and through wide-ranging travel and personal encounters -- the series of journeys, in fact, that characterise Sufi education and development. In keeping with Sufi tradition, his life was essentially one of service. His friends and associates included soldiers, scientists, artists, writers, thinkers, businessmen; the high-achieving, the famous, the royal. Shah's knowledge and activities took place in so many different areas of specialisation and in so many countries, that friends and sometimes even family were aware of what he was doing purely on a 'need to know' basis. Shah himself, and those round him, were masters of disinformation. For example, when in 1967 Robert Graves, a long-time friend, published his new translation of the Rubayyat of Omar Khayyam and declared Khayyam a Sufi, a group of academic Orientalists who felt their territory undermined by the fresh air Shah was bringing to the subject, attacked him by association, and even travelled to Afghanistan to collect ammunition against him and his family. Unaware of the tradition there of protecting the Hashemite family from idle curiosity. Through Octagon Press, the publishing company he founded to keep these books in print after mainstream publishers might drop them from their lists, he also established a broad historical and cultural context for Sufi thought and action. In the event, his best-selling novel, Kara Kush (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/ix=books&rank=%2Btitlerank&fqp=author%01Shah%2C%20Idries&nsp=score%01proj-unit-sales%02bin-fields%01none%02fpn%011&sz=10&pg=4/ref=s_b_np/002-7256967-2623240), was based on fact, incorporating his first-hand knowledge of the stupendous courage of the Afghan people, and the appalling atrocities inflicted upon them. About a year after his last visit to Afghanistan, in the late spring of 1987, Shah suffered two successive and massive heart attacks. Idries Shah was indeed a sensible man. Idries Shah, writer and savant, born Simla, India, June 16, 1924; married Cynthia (Kashfi) Kabraji, 1958; one son, two daughters; died London, November 23, 1996.
His Work
Idris Shah has been described as "the most significant worker adapting classical spiritual thought to the modern world." Shah's lively, contemporary books have sold over 15 million copies in 12 languages worldwide(His books) (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=books&field-author=Shah%2C%252520Idries/002-7256967-2623240). They have been reviewed by The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Times (London, see for example, Doris Lessing's review), The Tribune, The Telegraph, and numerous other international journals and newspapers.