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Omar Ali-Shah (1922–2005) was a prominent exponent of modern Naqshbandi
Naqshbandi

Naqshbandi is one of the major tasawwuf orders of Islam. The order is considered by some to be a "sober" order known for its silent dhikr rather than the vocalized forms of dhikr common in other orders....
 Sufism
Sufism

Sufi is generally understood to be the inner, mystical dimension of Islam. A practitioner of this tradition is generally known as a ufi , though some adherents of the tradition reserve this term only for those practitioners who have attained the goals of the Sufi tradition....
. He wrote a number of books on the subject, and was head of a large number of sufi groups, particularly in Latin America
Latin America

Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages ? particularly Spanish language and Portuguese language, and variably French language ? are primarily spoken....
, Europe
Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
 and Canada
Canada

Canada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean....
.

Life and work
Omar Ali-Shah was born in 1922 into a family that traces itself back to the year 122 BC through the Prophet Mohammed and to the Sassanian Emperors of Persia. He was the son of Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah
Sirdar ikbal ali shah

Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah was an Afghanistan author, poet, diplomat, scholar, and savant, descended from the Sayyid of Paghman....
 of Sardhana
Sardhana

Sardhana is a city and a municipal board in Meerut district in the Indian States and territories of India of Uttar Pradesh. Sardhana is a town near Meerut and is located 85 km northeast of New Delhi....
 and the older brother of Idries Shah
Idries Shah

Idries Abutahir Shah , also known as Idris Shah, n? Sayyid Idris Hashemite , was an author and teacher in the Sufism tradition who wrote over three dozen critically acclaimed books on topics ranging from psychology and spirituality to travelogues and culture studies....
, another writer and teacher of Sufism.

Omar Ali-Shah gained notoriety in 1967, when he published, together with Robert Graves
Robert Graves

Robert Ranke Graves was an England poet, translator and novelist. During his long life, he produced more than 140 works. He was the son of the Anglo-Irish writer Alfred Perceval Graves and Amalie von Ranke, a niece of the famous German historian Leopold von Ranke....
, a new translation
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his translation of a selection of poems, originally written in the Persian language and of which there are about a thousand, attributed to Omar Khayy?m , a Persian literature, Mathematics in medieval Islam and Astronomy in medieval Islam....
 of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his translation of a selection of poems, originally written in the Persian language and of which there are about a thousand, attributed to Omar Khayy?m , a Persian literature, Mathematics in medieval Islam and Astronomy in medieval Islam....
.






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Omar Ali-Shah (1922–2005) was a prominent exponent of modern Naqshbandi
Naqshbandi

Naqshbandi is one of the major tasawwuf orders of Islam. The order is considered by some to be a "sober" order known for its silent dhikr rather than the vocalized forms of dhikr common in other orders....
 Sufism
Sufism

Sufi is generally understood to be the inner, mystical dimension of Islam. A practitioner of this tradition is generally known as a ufi , though some adherents of the tradition reserve this term only for those practitioners who have attained the goals of the Sufi tradition....
. He wrote a number of books on the subject, and was head of a large number of sufi groups, particularly in Latin America
Latin America

Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages ? particularly Spanish language and Portuguese language, and variably French language ? are primarily spoken....
, Europe
Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
 and Canada
Canada

Canada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean....
.

Life and work


Omar Ali-Shah was born in 1922 into a family that traces itself back to the year 122 BC through the Prophet Mohammed and to the Sassanian Emperors of Persia. He was the son of Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah
Sirdar ikbal ali shah

Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah was an Afghanistan author, poet, diplomat, scholar, and savant, descended from the Sayyid of Paghman....
 of Sardhana
Sardhana

Sardhana is a city and a municipal board in Meerut district in the Indian States and territories of India of Uttar Pradesh. Sardhana is a town near Meerut and is located 85 km northeast of New Delhi....
 and the older brother of Idries Shah
Idries Shah

Idries Abutahir Shah , also known as Idris Shah, n? Sayyid Idris Hashemite , was an author and teacher in the Sufism tradition who wrote over three dozen critically acclaimed books on topics ranging from psychology and spirituality to travelogues and culture studies....
, another writer and teacher of Sufism.

Omar Ali-Shah gained notoriety in 1967, when he published, together with Robert Graves
Robert Graves

Robert Ranke Graves was an England poet, translator and novelist. During his long life, he produced more than 140 works. He was the son of the Anglo-Irish writer Alfred Perceval Graves and Amalie von Ranke, a niece of the famous German historian Leopold von Ranke....
, a new translation
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his translation of a selection of poems, originally written in the Persian language and of which there are about a thousand, attributed to Omar Khayy?m , a Persian literature, Mathematics in medieval Islam and Astronomy in medieval Islam....
 of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his translation of a selection of poems, originally written in the Persian language and of which there are about a thousand, attributed to Omar Khayy?m , a Persian literature, Mathematics in medieval Islam and Astronomy in medieval Islam....
. This translation quickly became controversial; Graves was attacked for trying to break the spell of famed passages in Edward FitzGerald
Edward FitzGerald (poet)

Edward Marlborough FitzGerald was an England writer, best known as the poet of the first and most famous English translation of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam....
's Victorian translation, and L. P. Elwell-Sutton, an Orientalist at Edinburgh University, 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". The manuscript was never produced for examination by critics; the scholarly consensus today is that the "Jan Fishan Khan
Jan Fishan Khan

Jan Fishan Khan, born Sayyid Muhammed Shah, was a 19th century Afghanistan warlord who significantly assisted the British in the First Anglo-Afghan War and the subsequent Indian Rebellion of 1857....
 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.

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. Their respective movements – Idries Shah's "Society for Sufi Studies" and Omar Ali-Shah's "Tradition" – were similar, giving some prominence to psychology
Psychology

Psychology is an academic and applied science discipline involving the science study of human mental functions and behavior. Occasionally it also relies on symbolic hermeneutics and critical theory, although these traditions are less pronounced than in other social sciences such as sociology....
 in their teachings. Omar Ali-Shah's teachings had some distinctive features, however. He had many more followers in South America
South America

South America is the southern continent of the Americas, situated entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere....
, and his movement attracted a younger following than his brother's. There were also more references to Islam
Islam

Islam is a Monotheism, Abrahamic religion originating with the teachings of the Prophets of Islam Muhammad, a 7th century Arab religious and political figure....
 in his teachings, and unlike his brother, Omar Ali-Shah's movement embraced some Islamicate practices.

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
Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in southwest Asia and Thrace in the Balkans region of Southern Europe....
 and elsewhere." Sufi travel was seen as a pilgrimage to sites that could both energise and purify the visitor.

Following the death of Idries Shah in 1996, a fair number of his students became affiliated with Omar Ali-Shah.

Omar Ali-Shah – called "Agha" by his students – gave lectures which have been recorded for distribution in printed format. He died on September 7, 2005 in a hospital in Jerez, Spain
Spain

Spain or the Kingdom of Spain , is a country located in Southern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula.The Spanish constitution does not establish any official denomination of the country, even though Espa?a , Estado espa?ol and Naci?n espa?ola are used interchangeably....
.

The Sufi student and deputy, Professor Leonard Lewin (University of Colorado
University of Colorado System

The University of Colorado System is a system of public universities in Colorado consisting of three campuses: University of Colorado at Boulder, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, and University of Colorado Denver.It is governed by an elected, nine-member Regents of the University of Colorado....
) led study groups under the guidance of Idries Shah
Idries Shah

Idries Abutahir Shah , also known as Idris Shah, n? Sayyid Idris Hashemite , was an author and teacher in the Sufism tradition who wrote over three dozen critically acclaimed books on topics ranging from psychology and spirituality to travelogues and culture studies....
, Omar Ali Shah and his son, Arif Ali-Shah
Arif Ali-Shah

Arif Ali-Shah is an award-winning British film writer and screenplay writer. Following in his distinguished family's footsteps, he is also a teacher in the Naqshbandi Sufism mystical tradition....
.

Bibliography


See also

  • Naqshbandi
    Naqshbandi

    Naqshbandi is one of the major tasawwuf orders of Islam. The order is considered by some to be a "sober" order known for its silent dhikr rather than the vocalized forms of dhikr common in other orders....


External links

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