Talk:Idries Shah/Archive 3

Text of reverted edit
I've never reverted a page before, and I don't know much about Idries Shah. What I saw, though, was so clearly not neutral that I went ahead and reverted it. Here is the text I reverted in case anyone can rewrite it to be more neutral and put it in an appropriate place.

"He seemed to have been reconciliatory to the Christian school of thought while repudiating their ethos, at the same time. Additionally, he never seemed to have recovered from his bias against the Indians, their culture and ancient wisdom. He fails to recognize all the predecessor streams of wisdom, as in Greeks, Chinese and Indians. In his widely acclaimed book, The Sufis, he would want the reader to believe that Islam, out of which Sufi-sm was born was the beginning and end all while totally ignoring the reference and exploration of wisdom that pre-existed in the context of Hindus, Buddhists, Greeks and the Chinese." Jackal59 (talk) 04:11, 15 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the revert; you did well, because the commentary is entirely unsourced. If anyone has written something along those lines about Shah, then we could look at including it, but first we need to have a published source making that argument. -- JN 466  15:51, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Why is Idries Shah's name written in Gujarati in the introduction to the article given that his father was an Indian from UP state and his mother tongue was Urdu not Persian and certainly not Gujarati? Idries Shah claimed to be of Afghan descent but was not Afghan nor was he a Farsi speaker - though he may have learned this due to it being a language of literature in the same way that British have studied French or Latin. He also claimed to be a Hashemi Sayyid and I don't see his name being written in Arabic style. It may be because Idries's mother was an Indian Parsi who predominently speak Gujarati, and cite it as their mother-tongue adopted over two millenia since their flight from Persia. In that case then the name should also be written in Pahlavi script of Zend Avesta. Idries was a very disengenous when it came to lofty claims and these must be seen in context of colonial times - and even now - when some Muslims have claims about their ancestory that are Afghan Pashtun, Tartari/Taimuri/Turkic/Chughtai, Mughal Barlas, Georgian (Gujjars), Abbasids in addition to Sayyids (Prophets family through his daughter Fatima) to name but a few. The further east you go from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (NWFP) the loftier the claims. Moarrikh (talk) 14:20, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Senior line of descent
This was recently posted at the usenet newsgroup alt.sufi:

" (start quote) This below from the wikipedia article is quite misleading, and is in fact, incorrect information coming from Sutton, who appears to be sadly misinformed about the lines of descent from Mohammed. The wikipedia entry reads, in part,

"Sutton, in a 1975 article on Shah, opined that Graves had been trying to "upgrade" Shah's "rather undistinguished lineage", and that the reference to Mohammed's senior line of descent was a "rather unfortunate gaffe", since Mohammed's sons all died in infancy.[11][20]"

A Sayyid/Sayid/Sayed/Said does not trace his line of descent from any of Mohammed's sons, but from Mohammed's grandsons via his daughter, Fatima, which is how Idries Shah would have traced his lineage. Sutton is embarrassingly wrong about "Mohammed's senior line of descent". Being a descendant of Mohammed is really only a big thing in the West, although there is supposedly an obligation from Mohammed upon all his descendants concerning spiritual things and I don't remember the details or where I read that right off-hand. That obligation is of more concern within sufism, from what I understand, but again, I don't know the details, not being subject to that obligation as far as I know.

More on the subject here -- Sayyid

More on the various titles according to which grandson they descend from -- Sharif (end quote) "

What do you think?  Esowteric + Talk  12:47, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the note. The mistake was mine. I forgot to include the word "male" in that sentence. -- JN 466  13:34, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I believe it is not unreasonable to call it a gaffe. There are no other references anywhere else to a male line of descent from Mohammed, even though there are plenty of references to male lines of descent from other people. -- JN 466  13:41, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I've always thought that the descendants of the Prophet Mohammed all descend from his daughter Fatima, so I understood "senior male line of descent" to refer to the line of her eldest son, or the eldest grandson of Mohammed. Looking this up, it seems that Fatima had only two sons, Hasan (Hassan) born in AH 3 and Hussein (the martyr revered by the Shias) born in AH 4. So senior male line could refer to descent from Hasan ibn Ali. These two brothers were counted among "the People of the House" and knew the Prophet personally. I think the implication intended is that of a direct line of teaching from the Prophet, and perhaps also a reference to being Sunni rather than Shia. Descendants of either Hasan or Hussein are called Sayyids. After all, of course, if there were no male line of descent, there would be no descendants at all! :-) So one wonders a little why so much has been made of this. JPLeonard (talk) 01:22, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The Musavi Sayyids are descended from Hussein. -- JN 466  13:00, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

While the "senior male" reference may be a gaffe, Sutton's idea that it was an attempt to upgrade Shah's "undistinguished lineage" seems kind of silly considering that-- according to my understanding-- the descendants of the Prophet through the line of the younger brother Hussein are the more "prestigious" in the lines of descent. They include the major Imams which, as al-Hujwiri and other classical Sufi authors point out, are considered important in the silsilas of the Sufis. In the article, Sutton also claims that the Sufi tradition does not rely on heredity and so it doesn't matter what Shah's genealogy is. While this is partially true, Sufi groups do place emphasis on the silsilas or "chains of transmission", so it's not beside the point that the Paghman Sayyids were descended from the earliest links in the Sufi chain of transmission, assuming of course that the wisdom tradition was preserved in the family from generation to generation. This latter assertion seems to be the claim from Shah's family and is of course open to dispute-- although I know of no way such a thing could be proved or disproved, except through spiritual powers. In any case, other Sufis and statesmen from Afghanistan have confirmed that the Paghman Sayyids were known as Sufis and were descended from the Prophet, and that the Musavi line is considered a distinguished one, which is all that needs to be known in this case to balance Sutton's (and later Moore's) accusation of a need to upgrade Shah's supposed "undistinguished lineage" and "pseudo-Sufi" background. --Jlburton (talk) 18:54, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
 * The Hashemites – who include the royal families of Jordan, Syria and Iraq, and ruled Mecca for over seven hundred years – are descended from Hasan, not Hussein. Looking at the Islamic world overall, the Paghman Sayyids are not particularly prominent at all. In a Google search for Paghman Sayyids, this present page containing your post above comes up as the only hit in the entire Internet; in Google Books, the only hit is a book published by Shah.  J N  466  17:26, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Well first of all, the term Hashemite can apply to either the descendants of Hussein or the descendants of Hasan-- "Hashemite" is a reference to the great-grandfather of Muhammed. And while those Hashemites decended from Hasan may have been prominent in political affairs, the lineage from Hussein includes some important spiritual forefathers of the Sufis-- like Jafar Al Sadiq and other Imams-- who are not included in the line of the family of Hasan, which is the subject in question. So the lineage of Hussein is not "undistinguished" in the Sufi sense, at least not in any way that "pretending" to be descendents of Hasan would be an upgrade to their spiritual pedigree.Jlburton (talk) 07:31, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

If you go back a few years to the time of Jan-Fishan Khan, we read in Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 22, p. 105, "It [the Sardhana estate] belongs to a family of Muswi Saiyids, who claim descent from Ali Musa' Raza, the eighth Imam." I linked the article to Ali ar-Ridha. Regards, Eric:  Esowteric + Talk  12:04, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Actually, thinking more about this, the fact that the Shah family are descendants of Muhammed through the line of Hussein and not Hasan explains a lot about some of the more esoteric aspects of their approach and ideas which may seem odd in comparison to what is normally thought of as Sufism. If i'm not mistaken, most of the early Imams, the Shia sects, the Ismailis, the Assassins, the Fatimites, Geber the Alchemist, and possibly also the Brethren of Purity would have all been offshoots from this line. Also, the Naqshbandis claim to have inherited the baraka of some of these Imams like Jafar al-Sadiq and Imam Ali Reza. Almost all of these people and groups (but not the Naqshbandi) were considered threats and/or heretics and were persecuted and assassinated by the "establishment", and so often had to operate in secrecy. And these were the groups that most influenced Western occultism. Ikbal Ali Shah also seemed to have a close relationship with the Aga Khan. However, the Shah family were Sunni. Jlburton (talk) 08:20, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

World Tales book is not just for children
World Tales is an anthology of folktales, demonstrating how so many interesting motifs recur around the world and in manuscripts down through the centuries.

The introduction to each tale details some of the various sources for similar tales, though without providing Aarne-Thompson classification numbers or other precise references as might be found in a scholarly work on folklore. So it is a popular publication in the field of folklore.

This does not make it a children's book. Many adults are also interested in folktales, and particularly in identifying motifs, understanding symbolism, learning about origins of tales, and so on, while most children are primarily interested in enjoying stories for their entertainment value.

Nowhere on the cover of the book or in the publication details does it say "Children".

I think it ought to be re-classified to indicate that it may be of interest to adults. A suitable header might be "Folklore" or "Inter-Cultural Studies".

213.94.192.200 (talk) 11:42, 8 September 2009 (UTC)Coilín, 8 September 2009


 * Good point. I see it has since been moved to "Folklore". regards,  Esowteric + Talk  16:19, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 2 one external links on Idries Shah. Please take a moment to review my edit. You may add after the link to keep me from modifying it, if I keep adding bad data, but formatting bugs should be reported instead. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether, but should be used as a last resort. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20120215175421/http://www.ishkbooks.com/ishk_history.html to http://ishkbooks.com/ishk_history.html


 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20150602033731/http://www.octagonpress.com/titles/LI/qukhpage02.htm to http://www.octagonpress.com/titles/LI/qukhpage02.htm

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Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 19:29, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Caveat Lector!
"The scholarly consensus today is that the person allegedly called Idries Shah was a hoax..." This little ludibrium, which one hopes Shah would have enjoyed, represents a light-hearted attempt to point up the deplorable standards of scholarship, axe-grinding partisanship and self-appointed custodianship that bring discredit to this and other 'Shah family' entries. Must everything the man did be "alleged" or "supposed"? Can't the writer get off his arse and do some primary research of his own, finding out whether it actually was or wasn't? Innuendo, based solely on what google turns up, has turned what should have been a serious, balanced account of a considerable life into a caricature of P.C. Plod's testimony in the Magistrate's Court: "The suspect peregrinated down Brighton Road and into the Middle East, where the crime of hoodwinking readers and passing off forged manuscripts took place..." Even in the Magistrate's Court, though, the defendant is deemed innocent until proven guilty - and those who make accusations are cross-examined in the witness box. Lamentably, the same standards don't seem to apply to Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.7.96.251 (talk • contribs) 13:17, 17 August 2010‎
 * G'day. Here's some info to get you started: Wikipedia: Five pillars. Regards,  Esowteric + Talk  10:24, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

laughable article
This article shows Shah as other than a writer of fiction. As such it is laughable. And a dscredit to WP. 124.148.164.7 (talk) 01:28, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Then fix it if it's quality offends you so much. IrishStephen (talk) 00:35, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
 * G'day. Here's some info to get you started: Wikipedia: Five pillars. Regards,  Esowteric + Talk  10:26, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

The fact that he wrote about witchcraft shows his limited understanding on Islam since witchcraft is a forbidden knowledge in Islam. We need to redo this artice, anybody have any good sources for criticism of this man. I mainlygotmy information from Reliance of the Traveler translated by Sheikh Keller — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.228.97.190 (talk) 01:02, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Conflict of Interest / Autobiography / NPOV, 27 March 2016
Hi, I notice that Rms125a@hotmail.com has just added a COI tag to Idries Shah (now changed to "This article is an autobiography or has been extensively edited by the subject or by someone connected to the subject."). It would be helpful if the editor would name the suspect editor, and give their reasoning, rather than the current, unexplained "hit and run". Regards,  Esowteric + Talk  15:28, 27 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I got your message. I have decided that is a better tag and have retagged accordingly.  Quis separabit?  15:30, 27 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Shah died in 1996, so it would be difficult for him to write an autobiography. From what I know, the editor who has done most of the work on this article is Jayen466 who, I understand, spent many years studying Shah's works. He has included a good balance of material on Shah, including controversy / criticism. More recent edits have been made by Jlburton who has also, I understand, spent many years studying the works of Shah and other Sufis. His contributions have also been useful and scholarly. Neither of these editors, nor do I, have a connection to Idries Shah, to the Shah family or to The Idries Shah Foundation. As for my own edits: these have been few and far between, and generally technical rather than content. Hope this helps. Regards,  Esowteric + Talk  15:37, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Jayen466 was the one chiefly responsible for taking the article to Good Article status.  Esowteric + Talk  15:41, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
 * If the editor/s are guilty of anything, it would be that "This article ... has been principally edited by people with extensive knowledge of the subject." :)  Esowteric + Talk  15:59, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Responding to ping: I don't understand this either. --Andreas JN 466 21:27, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
 * It could be that the editor's actions were influenced by Shah's anonymous IP detractors using this talk page as a soap box?  Esowteric + Talk  10:05, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

See : "This message should only be used when autobiographical content has been confirmed" ... "This template will add pages to the monthly subcategory of Category:Autobiographical articles." Regards,  Esowteric + Talk  18:54, 30 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Now that it's been 48 hours without any response from Rms and without any substance to back up the impossible label of "autobiography" or even to give an example of "extensive editing" by someone "connected" with the subject, is it possible now to remove the misleading banner and label from the top of this article?Jlburton (talk) 20:01, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm in two minds, because Rms125 has still not specified who the offending editor/s are (I mean their wiki handles, not their real world identities), and he could mistakenly mean me, which would make me an involved party. I think I'll be bold and remove the tag, on the grounds that the accusation is unfounded and not (as yet) backed by any evidence. Then Rms125 will be free to revert me or take the matter further and, since I may be an involved party, I won't engage in en edit war with him. I'm not sure what happens then: perhaps open up a request for comment, obtain the help of uninvolved editors or, as a final option, seek arbitration. Regards,  Esowteric + Talk  20:20, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I had left a message on Rms125's user talk page, but that went unanswered and the editor has since removed it.  Esowteric + Talk  20:24, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Well it seems to me that, considering the amount of work, documentation, citations and references by multiple contributors over the years to produce the article, combined with the fact that the subject of the article has been dead for almost 20 years, labeling it an autobiography is certainly inaccurate, and the question of a "connected" party should at least require some evidence to back it up before being so prominently displayed at the top of the page.Jlburton (talk) 20:35, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Streetlight Effect
I'm new at editing and have been translating Idries Shah article from English to Hebrew. I am puzzled by the recent edit by Dridgray. The Streetlight Effect link is relevant, but what can he mean by saying that the story was present in the West before Shah's birth? After all, the great majority of the Sufi teaching stories collected by Shah (including the one in question) are from oral literature of unknown age but certainly before Shah's birth. Suggest adding the link in another way. (talk) 09:32, 3 February 2017 (UTC) JohnBuuseue (talk) 11:32, 26 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Dridgray has not responded and he has no user page, so I suggest the following text in place of "Although Shah claimed this story as a Sufi teaching story, in fact its presence in the West predates his birth (see Streetlight Effect)":
 * Versions of this story have been known for many years in the West (see Streetlight Effect). This is an example of the long-noted phenomenon of similar tales existing in many different cultures, which was a central idea in Shah's folktale collection World Tales.
 * I wait for responses from Dridgray or others before doing the edit.JohnBuuseue (talk) 22:11, 3 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Seems fine by me, John. Why not go ahead, as edits can always be undone.  Esowteric + Talk  14:38, 11 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Done. JohnBuuseue (talk) 08:07, 12 March 2017 (UTC)