Omar Ali-Shah

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Omar Ali-Shah
ओमर अली शाह
عمر علی شاہ
Born1922
Died7 September 2005(2005-09-07) (aged 82–83)
Jerez, Spain
OccupationSufi teacher, writer
SubjectSufism
Notable worksThe Course of the Seeker
Sufism for Today
The Rules or Secrets of the Naqshbandi Order
SpouseAnna Maria Ali-Shah
ChildrenArif Ali-Shah & Amina Ali-Shah
RelativesShah family

Omar Ali-Shah (

romanized: nq; 1922 – 7 September 2005) was a prominent exponent of modern Naqshbandi Sufism. He wrote a number of books on the subject, and was head of a large number of Sufi groups, particularly in Latin America, Europe and Canada
.

Early life

Omar Ali-Shah was born in 1922 into a family that traces itself back to the Prophet

Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah of Sardhana, Uttar Pradesh, India and the older brother of Idries Shah
, another writer and teacher of Sufism.

Career

Omar Ali-Shah gained notoriety in 1967, when he published, together with Robert Graves, a new translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.[2][3][4]

This translation quickly became controversial; Graves was attacked for trying to break the spell of famed passages in

L. P. Elwell-Sutton, an Orientalist at the University of Edinburgh, maintained that the manuscript used by Ali-Shah and Graves – which Ali-Shah claimed had been in his family for 800 years – was a "clumsy forgery".[4] The manuscript was never produced for examination by critics; the scholarly consensus today is that the "Jan-Fishan Khan manuscript" was a hoax, and that the actual source of Omar Ali-Shah's version was a study by Edward Heron-Allen, a Victorian amateur scholar.[5][6][7]

Schism

Omar Ali-Shah's grave in Brookwood Cemetery

The two brothers, Idries Shah and Omar Ali-Shah, worked and taught together for some time in the 1960s, but later agreed to go their separate ways.[8] Their respective movements – Idries Shah's "Society for Sufi Studies" and Omar Ali-Shah's "Tradition" – were similar, giving some prominence to psychology in their teachings.[9][10] Omar Ali-Shah's teachings had some distinctive features, however.[9] He had many more followers in South America, and his movement attracted a younger following than his brother's.[9] There were also more references to Islam in his teachings, and unlike his brother, Omar Ali-Shah's movement embraced some Islamicate practices.[9]

Omar Ali-Shah's followers sometimes undertook organised trips to exotic locations, which he described as having a developmental, or cleansing, purpose: "One of the functions performed in the Tradition is making, keeping and deepening contacts with people, places and things, such as making trips similar to the ones we have made to Turkey and elsewhere."[11] Sufi travel was seen as a pilgrimage to sites that could both energise and purify the visitor.[11]

Following Idries Shah's death in 1996, a fair number of his students became affiliated with Omar Ali-Shah.[9]

Omar Ali-Shah – called "Agha" by his students – gave lectures which have been recorded for distribution in printed format.

Jerez, Spain and is buried in Brookwood Cemetery near Woking
.

The Sufi student and deputy, Professor

University of Colorado), led study groups under the guidance of Idries Shah, Omar Ali Shah and his son, Arif Ali-Shah.[13]

Bibliography

See also

References

  1. Pakistan Herald Publications. Archived from the original
    on 8 December 2015. Retrieved 2015-12-08.
  2. ISBN 0-912358-38-6
  3. ^ Letter by Doris Lessing to the editors of The New York Review of Books, dated 22 October 1970, with a response by L. P. Elwell-Sutton
  4. ^
    Time magazine
    , 31 May 1968
  5. ISBN 1-85168-355-0
    , p. 155
  6. Irwin, Robert. "Omar Khayyam's Bible for drunkards". The Times Literary Supplement. Archived from the original
    on 2007-03-18. Retrieved 2008-10-05.
  7. doi:10.1080/13537908608580605.; the author's website features a link, Pseudo-Sufism: the case of Idries Shah, to an online copy
    of the paper
  8. ISBN 2-909347-14-1
    .
  9. ^
    ISBN 0-415-27407-9
    .
  10. ISBN 0-415-32591-9
    .
  11. ^
    ISBN 0-415-27407-9
    .
  12. ISBN 0-415-27407-9
    .
  13. University of Colorado. Archived from the original
    on 2010-06-04. Retrieved 2010-02-09. See entry for Leonard Lewin. Professor Emeritus Leonard Lewin 'established and, for many years, led study groups under the guidance of Idries Shah, Omar Ali-Shah and Arif Ali-Shah', according to his University of Colorado obituary.

External links
Part of a series on Islam
Sufism
Tomb of Abdul Qadir Gilani, Baghdad, Iraq
Ideas
Practices
Sufi orders
Sunni

Shi'a

Non-denominational

List of sufis
Topics in Sufism
 Islam portal


Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Omar_Ali-Shah&oldid=1181492781"