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Tahir Shah
Tahir Shah (Persian: طاهر شاه, Gujarati: તાહિર શાહ; né Sayyid Tahir al-Hashimi (Arabic: سيد طاهر الهاشمي); born 16 November 1966) is a British author, journalist and documentary maker of Afghan-Indian descent.
Tahir Shah was born into the saadat of Paghman, an ancient and respected family hailing from Afghanistan. Bestowed with further lands and ancestral titles by the British Raj during the Great Game, a number of Shah's more recent ancestors were born in the principality of Sardhana, in northern India – which they ruled as Nawabs.
His mother, Cynthia Kabraji, was of Zoroastrian Parsi descent and his father was the Indian Sufi teacher and writer Idries Shah. Both his grandfathers were respected literary figures in their own right: Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah on his father's side, and the Indian poet Fredoon Kabraji, on his mother's side. His elder sister is the documentary filmmaker Saira Shah, and his twin sister is the author Safia Nafisa Shah. Numerous other members of Shah's family have been successful authors, including his aunt Amina Shah, and his Scottish grandmother Elizabeth Louise MacKenzie.
Shah is descended from the Afghan warlord and statesman Jan Fishan Khan. In 1995 Shah married the India-born graphic designer, Rachana Shah[citation needed] (née Devidayal), with whom he has two children – Ariane Shah and Timur Shah. The marriage ended in 2017, although the two remain close friends.
Shah was born in London and brought up largely in the county of Kent, where his family lived at Langton House, a Georgian mansion in the village of Langton Green near Royal Tunbridge Wells. The property had been owned previously by the family of Robert, Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scout Movement. Shah has described how, as a child, he played in the woods which are said to have first interested Baden-Powell in the outdoors.
Shah's father, the writer and thinker Idries Shah, surrounded himself with a diverse coterie of people, most of whom were interested in his published work. They included Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing, poet Robert Graves, American novelists J. D. Salinger and Lisa Alther, psychologist Robert E. Ornstein, as well as the pioneer of radar "Coppy" Laws, the garden designer Russell Page, and the actor Walter Gotell. Shah maintains that much of his education derived from spending time with such a varied group of people.
His first appearance on television was in the 1972 BBC documentary about his father, Dream Walkers: One Pair of Eyes, in which Shah, his sisters, and their friends, are seen listening to Idries Shah tell the tale of The Lion Who Saw Himself in the Water.
Shah has described how his Latin tutor appeared at the front door "white as a sheet", at having spotted the renowned classicist Robert Graves digging a ditch at the front of Langton House; and how Doris Lessing encouraged him to read folktales and, later, encouraged his enthusiasm for travel.
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Tahir Shah
Tahir Shah (Persian: طاهر شاه, Gujarati: તાહિર શાહ; né Sayyid Tahir al-Hashimi (Arabic: سيد طاهر الهاشمي); born 16 November 1966) is a British author, journalist and documentary maker of Afghan-Indian descent.
Tahir Shah was born into the saadat of Paghman, an ancient and respected family hailing from Afghanistan. Bestowed with further lands and ancestral titles by the British Raj during the Great Game, a number of Shah's more recent ancestors were born in the principality of Sardhana, in northern India – which they ruled as Nawabs.
His mother, Cynthia Kabraji, was of Zoroastrian Parsi descent and his father was the Indian Sufi teacher and writer Idries Shah. Both his grandfathers were respected literary figures in their own right: Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah on his father's side, and the Indian poet Fredoon Kabraji, on his mother's side. His elder sister is the documentary filmmaker Saira Shah, and his twin sister is the author Safia Nafisa Shah. Numerous other members of Shah's family have been successful authors, including his aunt Amina Shah, and his Scottish grandmother Elizabeth Louise MacKenzie.
Shah is descended from the Afghan warlord and statesman Jan Fishan Khan. In 1995 Shah married the India-born graphic designer, Rachana Shah[citation needed] (née Devidayal), with whom he has two children – Ariane Shah and Timur Shah. The marriage ended in 2017, although the two remain close friends.
Shah was born in London and brought up largely in the county of Kent, where his family lived at Langton House, a Georgian mansion in the village of Langton Green near Royal Tunbridge Wells. The property had been owned previously by the family of Robert, Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scout Movement. Shah has described how, as a child, he played in the woods which are said to have first interested Baden-Powell in the outdoors.
Shah's father, the writer and thinker Idries Shah, surrounded himself with a diverse coterie of people, most of whom were interested in his published work. They included Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing, poet Robert Graves, American novelists J. D. Salinger and Lisa Alther, psychologist Robert E. Ornstein, as well as the pioneer of radar "Coppy" Laws, the garden designer Russell Page, and the actor Walter Gotell. Shah maintains that much of his education derived from spending time with such a varied group of people.
His first appearance on television was in the 1972 BBC documentary about his father, Dream Walkers: One Pair of Eyes, in which Shah, his sisters, and their friends, are seen listening to Idries Shah tell the tale of The Lion Who Saw Himself in the Water.
Shah has described how his Latin tutor appeared at the front door "white as a sheet", at having spotted the renowned classicist Robert Graves digging a ditch at the front of Langton House; and how Doris Lessing encouraged him to read folktales and, later, encouraged his enthusiasm for travel.