Ikbal Ali Shah

Who was Ikbal Ali Shah?

Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah was an Indian-Afghan author and diplomat descended from the Sadaat of Paghman. 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 Ataturk, 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 fathered 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.