The Commanding Self

THE COMMANDING SELF is based on tales, lectures, question- and-answer sessions, letters and interviews. Uniquely, it forms both an introduction to Sufi thought and clarifies many of the now-superseded ancient classics.

Idries Shah, the best known and most influential Afghan writer and thinker of modern times, author of more than 35 books, including 20 bestselling titles on Sufism (which have so far sold 15 million copies in 12 languages), Grand Sheikh of the Sufis, advisor to a number of monarchs and Heads of State, educator, scholar, world traveler and humanitarian, was born in Simla, India, on June 16, 1924, the eldest son of the writer and savant Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah, the Nawab (the Mohammedan equivalent of Maharajah) of Sardana, near Delhi in India.
Shah's distinguished family has lived and reigned in Paghman in the Afghan highlands since 1221, has titles and prestige in India and Pakistan, and can trace its ancestry, through some of the most celebrated Sufi teachers in history, back to the Prophet Mohammed and the Sassanian Emperors of Persia, and. beyond that, to the year 122 B.C.--perhaps the oldest recorded lineage on earth.
Shah was educated in both the East and West, by private tutors and through wide-ranging travel and personal encounters--the series of journeys which in fact characterize Sufi education and development. He lived in London, in a large Regency house near Tunbridge Wells, was a member of the Atheneum and Garrick Clubs, and in speech and bearing seemed the epitome of an English gentleman. In keeping with Sufi tradition, his life was essentially one of service. His knowledge and interests appeared limitless, and his activities and accomplishments took place in many different countries and in numerous fields of endeavor.
Shah was Director of Studies of the Institute for Cultural Research, an educational organization established in 1965 to sponsor interdisciplinary and crosscultural studies of human thought. He was also the founder of Octagon Press, a publishing house; a founding member of the Club of Rome; and a Governor of the Royal Humane Society and the Royal Hospital and Home for Incurables.
Shah's landmark book, The Sufis, published in 1964, sightly ahead of the surge of interest in metaphysical ideas, pronounced that tradition alive and well, and more or less invited readers to approach its ideas and test them out. The evident sense, and common sense, most readers found made it clear that here was a sane, authoritative voice in the wilderness of the gobbledegookish mysticism of the sixties. The books that followed established a broad historical and cultural context for Sufi thought and action.
By 1974, university and college courses throughout the world were employing Shah's books, or works based on them, in a wide variety of disciplines including sociology, psychology and literature. In 1969, he was awarded the Dictionary of International Biography's Certificate of Merit for Distinguished Service to Human Thought. Other honors included a Two Thousand Men of Achievement award(1971), Six First Prizes awarded by the UNESCO International Book Year(1972), and the International Who's Who in Poetry's Gold Medal for Poetry (1975).
Idries Shah married the former Cynthia (Kashfi) Kabraji in 1958, and was the father of a son and two daughters. He died in London on November 23, 1996.
He was, it is said, the Sufi Teacher of the Age.