Ikbal Ali Shah

Indian Afghan author and diplomat

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.

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).

Ikbal Ali Shah's writings and work received mixed reviews and responses. Westward to Mecca (1928) was described by noted Orientalist H. A. R. Gibb in the Journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs as a "well spiced Eastern review, featuring Afghan raiders, alchemists, enchanted walls, watery blue eyed Bolshevists, singing dervishes and mysterious caves, relieved by more common place political and literary interludes. Is it all true? How like the materially minded West to ask such questions!" In 1930, the Aga Khan III penned a foreword to Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah's book Eastward To Persia, stating that he thought "Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah's books—and especially this latest book on Persia—should be read by those in the West who want to see the East through Oriental eyes." In a review in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, The Golden East (1931) was criticised for its imperfect command of English, its "tedium heightened by the Sirdar's efforts at wit, by his imaginary yet dull stories of adventure", and for the many incorrect renderings of Persian words. In his introduction to the 1939 edition of Ikbal Ali Shah's book, Alone In Arabian Nights, Sir Edward Denison Ross stated that while the Sirdar, well known to him for many years, was "tremendously modest about his achievements", he considered him "the greatest contemporary writer and traveller of the East". He referred to the book as "fascinating" and "extraordinary", commenting on its "erudition, scope and range" and declaring that the Sirdar wrote "the most excellently idiomatic English". Viet Nam (Octagon Press, 1960) fared worse; a reviewer in the Journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs accused the book of "numerous elementary errors" and questioned whether Ali Shah had ever visited the country he was describing, or had mostly just drawn on official anti Communist government propaganda. Summing up, the reviewer concluded: "This book is heavily biased, meretricious, frequently inaccurate, and badly written. It cannot be recommended." The popularity of Idries Shah's work generated renewed interest in his father. Asked about his recently deceased father in a 1970 BBC interview, Idries Shah agreed that Ikbal Ali Shah was "very unusual". Although he did make some enemies, Shah found it remarkable how few they were, given how uncategorizable and unusual he was. People often remarked to Shah that "the trouble is we never quite knew which side your father was on", to which Shah responded, "I'm sure it never occurred to him that he had to be on any side." Shah described him as "rather a mild sort of person in manner and appearance" but capable of behaving like an "unpredictable Oriental" who often did "unexpected" and "surprising" things when it was required by circumstances. He had a wide range of information and activity but much of it was compartmentalized so that few people knew everything, and no biography had ever been written. Aref Tamer, an Ismaili Syrian author and scholar of Islamic culture, pointed out in 1973 that "Very little has been written about Saiyid Ikbal Ali Shah not all [historians] have been able to descry the underlying unity, the service of the community, and the view of the ultimate good that was found in him," because outside observers did not have the perspective to see the pattern. According to Professor L. F. Rushbrook Williams, the editor of a work published in honor of the services to Sufi studies of Ikbal Ali Shah's son Idries, "Sirdar Ikbal and his son [Idries Shah], both in writing and in other ways, were ultimately to show how Sufi thought and action, educational and adaptive as they are, could be of service to contemporary thinking" and he concluded in 1973 that " whereas Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah, who pioneered the effective study of Sufi philosophy in the West, found that the time was not quite ripe for his message to be appreciated at its true value, Idries Shah has discovered that in this age of spiritual uncertainty and a dawning reaction against the prevalent materialism, the outlook and practices of Sufism are meeting exactly the needs that so many people are now experiencing." Edinburgh orientalist L. P. Elwell Sutton considered many of the claims made in Rushbrook Williams' book on behalf of Ikbal Ali Shah and his son Idries, concerning their representing the Sufi tradition, to be self serving publicity, filled with "sycophantic phraseology, fawning adulation, and disarming disregard for facts." Beginning in the 1970s, the Octagon Press, as part of its aim to establish "the historical and cultural context" for Idries Shah's Sufi work, began re issuing several of Ikbal Ali Shah's books, among them The Book of Oriental Literature in 1976, a 400 page anthology containing extracts from important mystical and secular literature from all over the East, including excerpts from several classical Sufi authors. A review of the reprint in the University of Oklahoma Books Abroad journal wondered why the book had been reprinted, since it no longer appeared to meet contemporary standards; the amount of space given to various national literatures appeared very uneven, the section on Arabia lacked many essential authors, and the section on Japan, consisting of just two pages, failed to give the names of the writers whose poems were featured. As an anthology, it was considered woefully inadequate. More recently, Afghanistan of the Afghans (1927) was included in The Kite Runner Companion Curriculum, published by Amnesty International USA, as part of a list of books recommended for further reading by the Afghanistan Relief Organization. And M. H. Sidky, of Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, in Asian Folklore Studies points to Afghanistan of the Afghans as one of the few useful resources on the "Shamanic configuration" in Afghanistan.