According to a recent and uninspiring review in the New York Times by Robyn Creswell, “Ikbal and Idries are tricky subjects for biography. They kept no diaries and left only scattered correspondence”. And yet Tahir Shah managed to collect and publish an 8-volume set of information to coincide with the centenary of his father, Idries Shah's birth, on 16 June 2024. So a great deal of interesting and useful material has been left out of this work.
The evidence appears very damning. However, with the sparse use of citations, it's difficult to tell where Nile Green's imaginative re-enactment and speculation delivered as statements of fact leave off and where hard evidence begins. This gives the illusion of intimate acquaintance.
Green writes: “In telling their story, I tried to treat them with the balance of empathy and factual accuracy due to any biographical subjects.” (p308).
And yet we have this kind of material, which shows callous utter disrespect:
“Early in 1964, just before The Sufis was published, Gerald Gardner was sailing home, after wintering in Lebanon, aboard the cruise liner Scottish Prince. He died en route and was buried in Tunis in the Christian Cimetière du Belvédère. It was an ironic end for an English witch, but for Idries, the closure was timed perfectly: interred with his former mentor were the British occult roots of the Sufi master from Afghanistan.” (p224)
And:
“At seventy-five, Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah, aka Sheikh Ahmad Abdullah, aka John Grant, aka the Brigand King Habibullah Kalakani, was dead.” (p250).
I will not repeat the words with which I annotated these offending passages, but as you may well imagine, they were not polite.
Disappointment
Some have expressed disappointment in the book and wonder what the reason was behind writing it. I'd take Nile Green at his and his publisher's word: “rollicking stories” (echoing Peter Washington's Madame Blavatsky's Baboon) and “investigative exposé” that a few years ago, when interest in Sufism, Shah and the exotic East was at its peak, might have been worthy of follow-up articles in the News of the World (which thrived on scandal and sensation).
My disappointment would be that it's so much “about the Sufi Way”, and not so much of that, rather than “in the Sufi Way”, but I wasn't really expecting much of the latter.
Scaffolding
Perhaps not to be overlooked is a buried sense of grief at the loss of cherished beliefs. Such scaffolding plays a supporting role, and to dismantle or demolish people's scaffolding is not wise, unless the structure has first undergone sufficient renovation, or some better structure has been offered to the inhabitants, and Nile Green does not offer his readers much in that way; except perhaps, moving on, an escape into Islamic Sufism, which for many followers of Shah is definitely “not their cup of tea”.
Nevertheless, the work, which is not without its charms, should perhaps be required reading: by curious readers, students new and old, and not least by the trustees and Shah family themselves.
