Most readers of this will know the rough outline of how Robert Graves was persuaded to do a ‘definitive’ translation of The Rubaiyat from Omar Ali Shah’s transcription of an allegedly 12th century MS owned by the Shah family in Afghanistan, but which turned out not to exist, the whole thing being a hoax / fraud perpetrated by Omar Ali Shah, possibly with the help of his brother Idries, with Graves the innocent victim of it.
That was about as much as I knew when I started this essay, and it was only after reading Nile Green’s excellent 2024 book Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan, subtitled “the Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah” that I realised that the story was much more complicated and interesting than I had hitherto supposed. Green’s book, in fact, has been my key source in what follows, supplemented with more detail in places, where relevant to the story of the Graves Rubaiyat.
The story begins in Graves’ schooldays, and in the life of the father of the Shah brothers, then moves on, via Graves’ famous study of The White Goddess, to the influence of Idries Shah on Graves, and Shah’s own influential book, The Sufis. All of that paved the way to the Graves Rubaiyat in 1967.
Graves attended Charterhouse school, where his time was mainly unhappy, not only on account of friction with other boys and some of the staff, but also on account of the dull subject matter of the traditional school curriculum and the poor teaching. At the age of only 15 (i.e.in 1910) he knew that he wanted to become a poet (1a, p.12), and Charterhouse wasn’t the way thither. In 1913, as was expected of him by school and family, he dutifully sat the Oxford Scholarship exams. His first selection of colleges rejected him, and in his second choices he was offered only “a second–level award” (an exhibition) in Classics at St John’s College, much to the disappointment of his parents (1b, p.33). Then the Great War broke out, and instead of going to Oxford (an idea he wasn’t thrilled with anyway, as it seemed like a dull extension of Charterhouse), he enlisted in the army. Not only was this a way to avoid Oxford, but it also offered him an escape from his overbearing family. When he dutifully returned to Oxford in 1919 to pursue his BA, changing from Classics to English Literature, he found it predictably boring, and declined to sit his final exams. His terrible experiences during the war probably account to some extent for his attitude, though I would guess that disinterest was also a key factor since his war poetry had already set him on the path to being a poet. More than that, he came to believe that he had been spared death in the war for a purpose – to become a poet (1b, p.104.) In addition, thanks to the neurologist and psychiatrist William Rivers, who treated shell–shock victims of the Great War (though not Graves himself), he came to believe that shell–shock had actually given him special powers to draw on as a poet (1b, p.106); that somehow his poems were released from his subconscious, which was presumably why, at first, they were difficult for even their author to understand (1b, p.104.) This has a bearing on Graves’s views on the true poet, as expressed in The White Goddess, of which more later. Furthermore, Rivers was an anthropologist with an interest in the matrilineal societies of the South Seas and Melanesia, and wrote the article on “Mother–Right” in the monumental Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (1915 – vol.8, p.851–9), for example. This too fed into the central theme of The White Goddess.
As regards Oxford, the university subsequently allowed him, by special provision, to do a B.Litt. (Bachelor of Letters) by dissertation, this taking the form of his already published book, Poetic Unreason (1925) (1a, p.104.) Despite this, Graves retained hostile views on the worth of academia, regarding poetic inspiration above all, as we shall see. It is thus ironic that he was appointed the Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1961 to 1965 and was made an honorary Fellow of St John’s College in 1971.
Idries and Omar Ali Shah were the sons of an Afghan–Indian father Ikbal Ali Shah and a Scottish mother, Saira Elizabeth Luiza Shah (née Bessie Louise MacKenzie.) In 1913 Ikbal was sent to Edinburgh by his father to study medicine at the University. It was here that he met his future wife, but their marriage in 1916, at which she became a Moslem by a profession of faith (hence her name change) met with the disapproval of both their families. Ikbal’s marriage to a non–Moslem plus his disinclination to become a doctor – he preferred instead to pursue the careers of writer and diplomat – meant that for many years he was virtually disowned by his father (her father never spoke to her again.) Though Ikbal was born in India, into a family of Musavi Saiyeds (direct descendants of the Prophet Mohammed), on which Idries was later to capitalise (2a, p.181), his ancestral home was Paghman, near Kabul, in Afghanistan (2a, p.3). These facts will become salient later.
Idries was born in Simla, Punjab Province, India in 1924, when his family were there on a visit. He grew up mainly in and around London, though in 1940 he and his family moved to Oxford to escape the Blitz. Here he attended the City of Oxford High School for Boys; his older brother Omar was born in London (2a, p.60) in 1922. Omar, it transpires, was named by his parents after Omar Khayyam, the immortal translation of whose verses “marked the point where their two worlds met in harmony.” (2a p.60)
I do not intend to pursue the life and career of Ikbal in any detail here (Nile Green’s book (2a) is excellent for that) but as background to what follows, Ikbal wrote articles about Afghanistan despite never having been there at that time (2a, p.38) and gave paid lectures on the country until being caught out by a member of the audience at one of them (2a, p.48). He thereafter moved to Bristol, where he reinvented himself as an Afghan and a former “Lecturer and Examiner in Oriental Culture” at Edinburgh University. (2a, p.50) By 1920, writing in The Occult Review, he represented himself as an expert on Afghan Sufis, though he had never actually met any (2a, p.52.) Shortly after this he actually did go to Afghanistan, but the shenanigans continued: in 1921 he reported seeing the Bolsheviks constructing roads and perhaps a railway in the mountains of the Hindu Kush, presumably prior to incursions into British India. He even took photos to prove it and wrote letters to various officials suggesting that he be given an official post in Kabul so that he could report back on the Bolshevik menace. He was rumbled again – there were no Bolshevik roads and railways in the mountains of Afghanistan at all, and his photos were actually of roads and railways in India bought from a photographic studio (2a, p.54–8)! Amazingly, he did manage to land some diplomatic / correspondent work, though not without being kept under scrutiny (one confidentially filed note in 1922 declared him to be “a fraud of the Rougemont type” (2a, p.61); another in 1931 dubbed him “a bit of a liar” (2a, p.100).) Meanwhile, cashing–in on the current popularity of travelogues he had written and published his Westward to Mecca (London, 1928), dramatically subtitled “A Journey of Adventure through Afghanistan, Bolshevik Asia, Persia, Iraq & Hijaz, to the Cradle of Islam.” How much of this curiously zig–zag journey he had actually done is unclear, but in the course of it he claimed, “my wanderings directed me to the Shrines of Omar, the tent–maker at Naishapur” (p.174). He refers to Omar as “the mystic poet” and “the fount of Oriental Occultism” (p.175), and at the tomb witnessed a group of whirling dervishes reciting Omar’s verses (p.177–8) – curiously they recited FitzGerald’s version which, earlier, Ikbal had dubbed “poles apart” from the Persian original (p.174.) Even more curious, Ikbal follows this with a chapter titled “Omar and Shakespeare,” drawing parallels between the texts of the two – again curiously using FitzGerald’s version to compare Omar with Shakespeare – but more of Shakespeare later. Meanwhile too, Ikbal posed as an Afghan alchemist who was developing his skills using an old manuscript given to him by a dying uncle (2a, p.100–1); he was billed as “the Renowned Oriental Scholar and Mystic” when he lectured to London’s Coué Institute on curing “domestic discord, unhappiness, depressed spirits and general ill–health” (2a, p.101); he wrote articles on Afghan beauty secrets (2a, p,101), and published a book on Islamic Sufism (Rider & Co., 1933.) (2a, p.111) He also persuaded his wife to don a pen name (Morag Murray Abdullah) and publish her ‘account’ of life in the martial society of Afghanistan. It was titled My Khyber Marriage: Experiences of a Scotswoman as the Wife of a Pathan Chieftain’s Son (George G. Harrap & Son, London 1934.) (2a, p.122.) There was a sequel, Valley of the Giant Buddhas, but that seems to have been published only posthumously in 1993 by Octagon Press, the publishing house set up by Idries Shah in 1960.
The White Goddess (3) is an extraordinary book by any standards, though not an easy read. T.S. Eliot found it “baffling but impressive” (1b, p.312.) Graves himself referred to it as “a crazy book” (1a, p.405) and “a very capacious and fantastical mare’s nest for poets” (1b, p.328.) It is clear that Graves did a huge amount of research for it and delved into its subject matter in massive detail. Though some of his findings hold a nugget of truth, others are highly speculative, not to say dubious.
Graves believes that in the days before mankind connected childbirth with sexual intercourse, the Mother Goddess was supreme, but that when man’s role in childbirth had been realised, that, plus the physical superiority of the male, led to the switch to the supremacy of the male God (p.380, 400). Though this sounds plausible, and was widely accepted in the 19th and early 20th centuries (Graves probably took his lead from Jane Harrison’s influential book Prolegomena: A Study of Greek Religion, first published in 1903 (1b, p.307)), it is now generally discounted as something of a modern myth, though I gather there is a feminist revival of it today.
On another front, it is certainly true that rock carvings around the world show some startling and puzzling similarities – the spiral, the maze and the swastika, most notably. It is also true that certain mythological themes are to be found repeated among widely separated cultures (the Great Flood is a notable example) and that the gods and goddesses of different cultures can be related (the Greek Aphrodite and the Roman Venus is one obvious example.) Again, it is true that seemingly very different languages share related words (the Indo–European family most notably) and words can be borrowed from one language by another (eg karma.) These things are all explicable via cultural migrations, territorial conquests, travellers’ tales and even missionary influence. But one has to be careful that one doesn’t start to see connections where none really exist, and where the resemblance is purely accidental and imaginary.
For example, when Graves takes what is generally regarded as a seemingly nonsensical riddle poem from the Welsh The Song of Taliesin – the Cad Goddeu (The Battle of the Trees) – and ‘decodes its secret’ by chopping bits out and rearranging them, one cannot help but think this is perhaps Graves’ imagination at work rather than a genuine decoding (p.23ff). His solution is neatly explained in his own summary:
To cut a long story short, my answer to the riddle, namely the letter–names of an ancient Druidic alphabet, fitted the not–so–nonsensical Song of Taliesin with almost frightening exactitude; and The Battle of the Tees proved to be a not–so–nonsensical way of describing a struggle between two rival priesthoods in Celtic Britain for control of the national learning. You see, I had found out that the word ‘trees’ means ‘learning’ in all Celtic languages, and since the alphabet is the basis of all learning, and since (as I remembered from Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars) the Druidic alphabet was a jealously guarded secret in Gaul and Britain – indeed, its eighteen letter–names were not divulged for nearly a thousand years – well, the possession of this secret must have been something worth struggling about. (Appendix B, p.490–1)
At a common sense level, when I read the poem (p.26–31) without any help from Graves, I get no impression at all that it has something to do with alphabets. Indeed, it is so obscure that I find it difficult to see its more orthodox interpretation as a mythical battle in which trees are animated to become warriors! When Graves then proceeds over many pages to link the Druidic alphabets (trees = letters) with the calendar (ch.14), the seven days of the week & the seven planets (ch.15), the signs of the zodiac & the seasons (p.370–3) – the natural cycles of death and rebirth – well, it all seems rather to get out of hand, not to say bewildering, especially when he admits that his racing “broomstick mind” (p.335) is guided not by “scholarly equipment” but by “poetic intuition” (p.333) ! Poets are Independent Thinkers, he assures us (p.218), an epithet which perhaps he should have avoided, as it has been applied to the modern adherents of the Flat Earth & those who seek to derive the date of the Second Coming from the dimensions of the Great Pyramid. Nor does it help any when he goes off at a tangent to ‘solve’ the mystery of 666, the Number of The Beast in Revelation 13.18 (p.336.) For him the Beast is Domitian – others have deduced 666 to indicate Nero (probably the favourite), Martin Luther, several Popes and the Papacy generally, Mohammed, Napoleon, and Hitler – it is a crackpot’s paradise.
Here are a few more examples of Graves’ ‘deductions’: he connects the Druidic cutting of mistletoe with the emasculation of Uranus by Cronos in Greek mythology (p.60) and he connects the so–called horns of Moses (actually misinterpreted radiance) and the ram’s horns of Alexander the Great as depicted on his coins (actually the horns of Ammon, symbolising the divine legitimacy of his conquest of Egypt) with the antler–headdress of the Sacred King (p.99). Alexander, by the way, was a reincarnation of Moses (p.80.) Again, Graves connects St Patrick’s banishment of snakes from Ireland with Apollo slaying the Python at Delphi (p.99.) Apollo is Hercules as a god, by the way (p.129) and Hercules, in his turn, is linked to John the Baptist (p.130), King Arthur (p.136) and even Jesus (p.151). Again, Graves believes that the Biblical Song of Songs is a Hellenistically influenced celebration of the annual sacred marriage between Salmaah, the King of the Year, and the Flower Queen (p.253) (4) and that Robin Hood (= Rof Breoht Woden = Bright Strength of Woden = Robin Goodfellow) is the May Bride’s lover, Maid Marian being his bride (the Lady of Misrule) in the orgies of May Day. His merry men, incidentally, are “a coven of thirteen,” this stemming from the witchcraft associations of Robin Goodfellow (p.387ff). As a final example, Graves claims that Christianity has gone wrong because it has allowed the Father God to displace the rightfully supreme Mother Goddess (p.467), which almost sounds like a defence of Mariolatry! Overall I get the distinct impression that Graves is doing a sort of literary Rorschach exercise, with world myths and legends as his giant ink–blot, and, with his hectic flitting from topic to topic, a suggestion of almost stream–of–consciousness associations, though admittedly a very clever one.
Not all is as odd as the foregoing, though. It is certainly true that prehistoric mazes / labyrinths are to be found carved into rocks across Europe and on some Cretan coins (p.107) – Crete being the land of the Minotaur & its labyrinth, of course. It is also true that the turf–mazes of more modern times were used in folk dances or processions associated with May Day celebrations (p.321.) But mazes/labyrinths take a number of different forms and span such a wide geographical and temporal range that they may well have come to represent many different things for many different people. They have come to be used as a mandala, an aid to meditation, for example; they have been used in medieval cathedrals (notably Chartres) as a processional path, a symbolic pilgrimage celebrating the death (entry into the maze) and resurrection (exit from the maze) of Christ; and they have been used as a trap for evil spirits, who are lured into the labyrinth and ‘neutralized’ when they cannot get out again. So, Graves’ claim that the inward path of ancient mazes represents the route of the sacred Sun King after Death from which, if he is lucky, he can find the outward path and return (p.320), is plausible, in view of the Chartres example above (whose origins are known), though by no means certain, as no–one really knows for sure. But much more dubious, if not downright peculiar, is his claim that the Minotaur was originally a decoy partridge, “the centre of a ritual performance, originally honouring the Moon–goddess, the lascivious hen–partridge”, the hen–partridge becoming Pasiphae, of course (p.319–320.)
Again, closer to orthodoxy, in that it at least links up with the notions of Stonehenge as an early solar observatory, is Graves’ claim that Stonehenge was the Temple of Apollo the Hyperborean (p.280), the Sun–god of which was the Lord of Days (p.283), but rather less plausible is his claim that the architect of Stonehenge had studied in Egypt and Syria (p.285.) Nor am I convinced that the original Hyperboreans were Libyans (p.136, 429.) Likewise his claims that “the plan of the five dolmens corresponds exactly with the disc alphabet” and that “the altar stone and uprights” were transported all the way from South Wales “to break the religious power of the Pembrokeshire Death–goddess” (p.283), are alike highly speculative, to say the least.
One of Graves’ basic theses, which he begins to set out in his opening chapter, is that the true poet – as opposed to the mere rhymester or versifying story teller – is truly inspired by a Muse, a form of the ancient White Goddess, who can take many forms (The White Lady, The Moon Goddess; the Threefold Goddess – the Maiden/Bride, the Mother & the Crone) and is occasionally incarnated in the poet’s earthly mistress (Graves’ Laura Riding) or the thwarted object of his poetic adoration (Keats’ Fanny Brawne) or simply his Dream Woman (the singing Abyssinian maid in Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan”.) The poets named here, of course, are all men: are all ‘true’ poets men, then ? No, Graves tells us – citing Sappho as an example (p.438) – women can be true poets, but only if they write as women rather than honorary men – make of that what you will. Note that though White, the Goddess can have her darker aspects, for white can denote both purity and the pallor of death: Keats’ “La Belle Dame Sans Merci.” True poetry, for Graves, is inextricably linked to myth. “I agree with the Welsh Minstrels that a poet’s first enrichment is a knowledge and understanding of myths,” he wrote (p.26.) Hence his ramblings through world mythology in search of the Goddess – from Wales (Cerridwen – “the White Goddess of Life in Death and Death in Life” (p.94)) to Egypt (Isis) & Babylonia (Ishtar), via Greece (Aphrodite). Plus, of course, there is the Virgin Mary and the phenomenon of Mariolatry – she is Brigit, the medieval Goddess of Poetry in Ireland, according to Graves (p.385.) But beware:
Poetry began in the matriarchal age, and derives its magic from the moon, not from the sun. No poet can hope to understand the nature of poetry unless he has had a vision of the Naked King crucified to the lopped oak, and watched the dancers, red–eyed from the acrid smoke of the sacrificial fires, stamping out the measure of the dance, their bodies bent uncouthly forward, with a monstrous chant of: ‘Kill! Kill! Kill!’ and ‘Blood! Blood! Blood!’ (p.439)
This paragraph has become one of the best known in The White Goddess for its bizarre vehemence, and it certainly makes me wonder if Graves didn’t allow himself to get poetically carried away at times.
Graves believed that much so–called poetry was – and is – akin to prose, and the Modern World’s reverence for prose as a vehicle of practical communication has stultified any regard for true poetry, which, with its multi–layered imagery, proves too difficult for the prosaic multitude (p.217.) Sometimes, indeed, it proves too difficult for poets. T. S. Eliot once picked out a verse from The White Goddess and exclaimed to Graves that it was real poetry, but what did it mean ? Graves admitted that he didn’t know! (1a, p.432; for the poem see also 3, p.340)
Graves referred to non–Muse–inspired poetry as Apollonian poetry – “intellectual verse decorated by the artificial flowers of fancy.” The origin of this epithet is described thus:
The most important single fact in the early history of Western religion and sociology was undoubtedly the gradual suppression of the Lunar Mother–goddess’s inspiratory cult, and its supersession not by the perfunctory cult of a Sky–god, the god of illiterate cattle–raising Aryan immigrants, but by the busy, rational cult of the Solar God Apollo, who rejected the Orphic tree–alphabet in favour of the commercial Phoenician alphabet – the familiar ABC – and initiated European literature and science. It is no secret that, towards the end of the second millennium BC, Apollo’s people captured the Moon–goddess’s most revered shrines and oracles, including Tempe, Delphi and Delos; and so limited her worship that the great raging Ninefold Mountain–mother of Parnassus was at last converted into a choir, or ballet, or troupe, of nine tame little Nymphs, ‘the Muses’, with Apollo as their art–director and manager. (Appendix B, p.492.)
Again this has the hall–marks of Graves getting poetically carried away.
One effect of the atrophy generated by the prevalence of prose over poetry has been the production of the “zombiesque” (p.217) scholars in universities who fail to understand the true meanings of ancient poetic texts (and thus – like archaeologist Glynn Daniel – dismiss Graves’ theorisings as “fantasies” (Intro. xvi)). Graves was no fan of university academia (p.235), though not all academics were opposed. John Heath–Stubbs, for example, perhaps because he himself was a poet, whilst sceptical of some of Graves’ theorisings (about the origins of the alphabet, for example), welcomed his return to mythopoeic or poetic modes of thinking (Intro p.xvi).
The White Goddess was first published in 1948, and became popular enough to merit a second edition in 1952. By the late 1950s the book seems to have made Graves a popular idol among the young ‘smart set,’ though one wonders how many of them had actually read it! (1b, p.373.) When the third edition came out in 1961, it was in good time to enter the mid–sixties world of hippedom and psychedelia, with its taste for all things magical and mystical (especially if from the East!), admittedly very often at a superficial level against a backdrop of the likes of Kaftans and Afghan Coats in Carnaby Street & Portobello Road. (In fact, in the later 1960s the Shah brothers actually opened a pair of ‘hip’ fashion shops in Portobello Road (2a, p.244).) It entered the age of Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception (1954); Alan Watts, The Way of Zen (1957), Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, The Morning of the Magicians (1960); Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner & Richard Alpert (who subsequently became the spiritual teacher and guru of modern yoga, Ram Das), The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead (1964), Carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (1968), John M. Allegro, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (1970); John Lilly, The Center of the Cyclone; An Autobiography of Inner Space (1972), and – yes, Idries Shah, The Sufis (1964), with its introduction by Robert Graves. In the background of all these, there was also an increased interest in the works of Aleister Crowley, Paul Brunton, George Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky, as well as in Alice in Wonderland, its hookah smoking caterpillar atop a giant (magic) mushroom naturally inviting a comparison with drug–induced experiences, which found expression in Jefferson Airplane’s haunting song “White Rabbit” of 1967. At this point, worthy of mention as indicative of the times, is Hakim Yama Khayyam’s book Omar Khayyam Revisited (Lyle Stuart Inc., Secaucus, New Jersey, 1974) with its ‘hip’ illustrations by David Stone Martin – basically The Rubaiyat geared to pot smoking rather than wine drinking (5). But returning to gurus, there was also, let us not forget, Lobsang Rampa whose best–selling book The Third Eye first published in 1956, recounted the author’s life in a Tibetan monastery where he had his third (clairvoyant) eye opened by having a hole drilled into his forehead. Unfortunately he turned out to be one Cyril Henry Hoskin, the son of a Devon plumber, who had never been anywhere near Tibet, and had just made the whole thing up. However, despite his early exposure, he went on to write numerous other very popular occult books, the most bizarre of which was Living with the Lama, first published in 1964, which was allegedly telepathically dictated to him by one of his pet cats, a Siamese named Mrs Fifi Greywhiskers! All he did was to translate it from Siamese cat language...
Thus, in those heady days of the 1960s, The White Goddess, and Graves with it, came into vogue, and it wasn’t just Graves who influenced the fashion, but the fashion also influenced him, notably in his experimentation with hallucinogenic drugs (magic mushrooms are mentioned in the 1961 edition of The White Goddess – p.40) and his increasing interest in mysticism, magic and the occult – notably, Sufism (which had not been mentioned in The White Goddess beyond a passing mention of “Mohammedan mystics” (p.474)), and which he came to via Idries Shah, whose book The Sufis (6) is a key part of our story, to whom we now turn.
By 1960 Idries Shah had published three books of interest here: Oriental Magic (Rider & Co.,1956), an examination of the similarities of supernatural beliefs among diverse cultures, its companion volume, The Secret Lore of Magic (Frederick Muller Ltd.,1957) and Destination Mecca (Rider & Co., 1957), basically a travel book, but with a chapter, “Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, on Sufism. Here he states that “Sufism is Islamic, and for that reason it is held to be impossible for a non-Moslem to become a Sufi” (p.170), adding, “A staggering number of miracles are attributed to Sufis, including foreknowledge, levitation, power over trees, plants and other natural things, curing of disease, flying from one place to another – and supernatural power in most of its aspects.” He gives an account of his visit to a Sufi monastery at Yeniburj in Syria (whose location remains curiously elusive!), where he witnessed Dervishes swaying themselves into a trance. Incidentally, earlier in the book it is revealed that Idries is “of the Prophet’s clan” (p.32-3) – that is, a direct descendant of Mohammed, as noted above.
Idries was the first of the Shah brothers to make contact with Graves. In January 1961 he was on an extended Mediterranean holiday with Gerald Gardner, the eccentric Director of the Museum of Magic and Witchcraft on the Isle of Man, former associate of Aleister Crowley, and self–proclaimed inventor of the Wicca Religion, dubbed by many a “synthetic” religion, but popular despite that. When the two got to Mallorca, Idries wrote to Graves ‘out of the blue’ to say that he was engaged in research on the diffusion of magical practices and ecstatic religions, the latter involving experimentation with mushroom eating (1c, p.214; 2a, p.202–3.) No doubt Idries was aware of Graves’ book, Food for Centaurs, published in 1960, whose chapter “Centaurs’ Food” dealt with magic mushrooms and mushroom lore. Plus he must surely have known of The White Goddess, though its addition on magic mushrooms wouldn’t appear until its third edition was published in March 1961. At any rate, Shah told Graves that he was an admirer of his work, and would very much value the opportunity of “saluting” him in the near future, if possible. He further buttered Graves up by saying that both he and ‘Dr’ Gardner (the Doctorate was self–awarded!) would be “honoured” to meet him, if he was willing. The bait was dangled, and Graves bit.
In fact, the two seem to have stuck up a close friendship very quickly, though he was only 37 at the time and Graves was 65 (Gardner in contrast was side–lined.) In addition to their shared interests in different religions and their ecstatic practices, drug induced or otherwise, they shared the view that they were “kinsmen of a mystical hierarchy that would soon usher in a new world” (2a, p.206) – or at least overturn the present prosaic, materialistic one. Sometime later, when Idries was back in London, he wrote to Graves about intending a comparative study of mystical experiences induced by magic mushrooms and those induced by the traditional methods of the Sufis (2a, p.207) – the trances induced by the Dervish Dance, for example – or those induced by the soma / ambrosia of Hindu Brahmins (2a, p.207.) On a more basic level, they shared an interest in languages – Graves was particularly interested in learning something about Eastern languages from Idries – the Islamic concept of “Baraka” (2a, p.209). as the divine gift of spiritual blessings, interested him particularly, for its similarity to the blessing of poetic inspiration bestowed by the Muse or White Goddess. (Graves subsequently delivered a lecture on “The Word Baraka” (1d, p.513–8).) Again, Idries made it known to Graves that he too had abandoned his studies at Oxford in disdain (2a, p.206), though he failed to mention that in his case his disdain for Oxford was not for the University, which he never attended, but for Oxford High School, at which he was rarely far from the bottom of the class, from which he was frequently absent, and at which he effected an irritating superior attitude (2a, p.140–1.)
In the course of protracted correspondence it seems clear that Shah manipulated Graves pretty much by telling him what he wanted to hear, or at least, what he knew would catch his attention, though devotees of Graves doubt the extent of this, as do the devotees of Idries. In particular, Shah fed Graves a version of Sufism which chimed with his interest in ancient goddess cults and the origins & evolution of myths and legends generally (remember that Graves nowhere mentions the Sufis in The White Goddess beyond the passing mention of Mohammedan mystics noted above). Thus he confirmed Graves’ views on the possible Eastern origins of the songs of the troubadours (Graves uses the word trovères), be it via contacts between the Knights Templar and the Saracens in the East, or from Spain during the Arab Conquest (3, p.16 & 55). But he adds to the mix by finding specifically Sufi origins for them, surprisingly noting that St Francis of Assisi had been a troubadour, possibly one who was familiar with the Whirling Dervishes, and one cognisant of the Saracen origins of the troubadours’ songs, his own “Canticle of The Sun” echoing the Sufi Rumi’s various songs dedicated to the Sun (6, p.228ff.) Idries returns to the Sufi origins of the troubadours later in his book (6, p.317ff), noting Graves’ initial spadework in The White Goddess, written “at a time when he had not investigated Sufism to any extent” (6, p.320). Again, some of Ibn el–Arabi’s Sufic poetry, written in Saracen Spain, promotes Sufism via love poetry (6, p.137 – hence the courtly love poetry of the troubadours ?) and some is “addressed to those who have a grasp of ancient mythology” (6, p.139) – recall Graves’ theories of true poetry involving the love of a Muse and links to ancient myths and legends. Again, Idries opened Graves’ eyes to the possibilities that the legend of William Tell had Sufi origins (6, p.50); that Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is a Sufic allegory (6, p.116); that Dante had Sufi affiliations (6, p.203) and that even Robinson Crusoe derives from a Sufi original (6, p.237.) And Shakespeare ? We have already seen Idries’ father on that subject, to which Idries himself adds simply that Shakespeare = Sheikh Peer = Ancient Sage, though unfortunately with no clarification of its significance (6, p.220). There was also, apparently, “secret knowledge” to be gleaned (somewhat deviously using numerology) from The Thousand and One Nights (6, p.175), plus the so–called Black Madonnas or Black Virgins – images of the Virgin Mary with black skin, found across Europe and over to the Middle East – perhaps indicated descent from an earlier Black Goddess cult in opposition to Graves’ White Goddess; a more destructive Muse (2a, p.210; 6, p.187). (Graves subsequently delivered a lecture on “Intimations of the Black Goddess” (1d, p.384–399).) Then again there are the links between the ritual dance of witches and the dance of the whirling dervishes, and the use of hallucinogenic ointments by witches (6, p.209–211.)
As a result of such revelations, and others, Graves became almost a disciple of Idries, and a very influential one in view of his fame (2a, p.206) – which was probably what Idries intended. As we have seen, Graves was very happy to endorse The Sufis by writing its Introduction, and the book sold extremely well. It has been said that Idries ditched Gerald Gardner and Witchcraft when he realised that Graves and Sufism were a better bet for achieving fame and fortune. (2b, p.195) To be fair, Idries can hardly have written The Sufis solely for the purpose of enlisting Graves’ support, and he must have had some genuine interest in Sufism to compile such a book. Equally, though, he did seek fame and fortune, as he certainly had a taste for luxury living, as for example, his 1963 holiday on the Princes’ Islands, “the favoured resort of Turkey’s secular elite” (2a, p.214), which sits ill with the traditional disregard for earthly comforts associated with the true Sufi. Plus, it is very suspicious that Idries wrote various articles and even books under pen–names for the purpose of supporting and promoting his own theories, to which we now turn.
Graves didn’t have to just take Idries’ word for all of the above, for there was back–up to be had from ‘independent’ sources – that word is in inverted commas for a good reason!
Enter William Foster who, in The Contemporary Review (May 1960, p.269–271), published an article on “The Family of Hashim.” This tells us that the Sayeds of Paghman, to which Idries and his ancestor, Jan Fishan Khan, belonged, are special among the general run of Sayeds (those directly descended from the Prophet.) It would appear that they have maintained more purity of adherence to the “precepts and practices which have been handed down from the Prophet: the pattern of the ‘Perfect Man’.” The young Sayed, through contemplation and religious exercises, must consider that he is not of this world (though he may stand out in it) but he should have an occupation in this world. He should also be prepared to be a leader, even one of high destiny. Foster wrote, “I remember the old Nawab (Prince) Sayed Amjad Ali–Shah as a model of the best type of Sayed. He was the grandson of an Afghan warlord Sayed Jan Fishan Khan, and still possessed vast lands in his ancestral homeland.” No direct mention of Idries, of course, though he is there by implication, for he was the great–great–grandson of Jan Fishan Khan.
Idries sent a copy of this article to Graves, having not only told Graves about his descent from Mohammed, but having further made the bizarre claim that Graves too was descended from the Prophet (2a, p.205)! At what stage he had told Graves this is not clear, but in Idries’ cover note with the article (undated, but January 1961) he wrote, “As a fellow–member of the Family of Hashim, you may be amused by the enclosed reprint from the May CONTEMPORARY, which deals with our branch, of Paghman and Sardanah.” (1e, GB 473 RG/J/ShahI/3.) Graves certainly liked to imagine a Welsh bardic ancestry for himself (in fact he had German ancestry on his mother’s side, and Irish ancestry on his father’s), but a descent from the Prophet ? Did he ever really believe that ? Apparently so, for in a 1965 BBC interview with Malcolm Muggeridge, when asked about his ancestry, Graves replied, “I can trace my descent, as the Queen does, from the Prophet Mohammed,” a piece of information which took the interviewer somewhat by surprise. (7) It has been said that when Queen Elizabeth II presented Graves with the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in December 1968, he told her about their shared descent from the Prophet (2b, p.198). Unfortunately, if true, the Queen’s reaction has gone unrecorded and no newspaper report on the presentation mentions it.
Oh yes, according to Nile Green, William Foster was “likely Idries in bland disguise” (2a, p.205), though if so, it seems that he forgot to tell Graves that. It wasn’t his only pen–name either – as the unlikely sounding Arkon Daraul, he published A History of Secret Societies in 1961 (2a, p.210–1), actually citing it as a source in The Sufis (6, p.245)! That pen–name seems to hint at an anagram, and indeed Laura Konrad has been suggested, but if that isn’t just an accident, who she was remains unknown! But Arkon Daraul was certainly Idries ‘in disguise’.
Next enter Omar Michael Burke. Idries had written to Graves about him in a letter dated 1 January 1961 (sic – it should clearly be 1962):
Omar Burke, who slipped into Mecca and has lived with Sufis and is a first–class man in many ways and dead honest, wants to write something about the Sufis today, and their ideas, for an American magazine Can you suggest one that might like that sort of thing ? He writes very well, and he is a Sufi too, and I would like to help him. He would submit the MS to us before sending it out. He is an admirer of yours, and was bubbling over with delight when I said that you thought there was a rapport with the Sufi method in your thinking. I told him that you knew more about it than he would expect, because real feeling is what counts. He has been wandering in Tunisia and Persia recently.
He thinks if he wrote something it might awaken some basic interest which could help the book. (1e, GB 473 RG/J/ShahI/26)
Note again the buttering up of Graves and the stress on “real feeling”. Also Burke’s aim to “help the book”, which was, of course, The Sufis, then in preparation. Graves suggested that Burke might try The Atlantic but nothing came of it (2a, p.212), and, to cut a long story short, in the end it got published in two parts in Blackwood’s Magazine, “Solo to Mecca” in the issue of December 1961 (p.481–495) and “Tunisian Caravan” in the issue of February 1962 (p.123–135.)
In the first article Burke revealed himself to be half–Scottish, half–Irish by birth, and named after Omar Khayyam by his mother, who was a fan. (Recall how Omar Ali Shah was named by his parents, one Afghan, one Scottish, noted earlier.) He had developed the ambition to enter Mecca, as Richard Burton had done, and en route to achieving this goal, he had met a Sufi by the name of Akhund Mirza. Sufism being another of Burke’s interest, he accepted Mirza’s invitation to visit a Sufi monastery in Baluchistan, where he spent a month. Of particular interest here is the following:
On this earth the ‘High Mantle’ of Sufi supremacy devolved upon a member of the existing body of the descendants of Mohammed, for he it was who passed on the secret teachings of Sufism to a chosen circle. Sufism was the inner discipline of all religion, brought by all the prophets, including I was told, Jesus.
Who was the present–day Grand Sheikh of the Sufi Way: the member of the prophetic family recognised as the leader of the Sufis ? He goes by the name and title of Idries Shah, the Studious King, literally; and he is also known as The Bridge: the bridge between the old dispensation of Sufism and the new, for the projection of the teachings is always changing. This mysterious figure travels throughout the world, sometimes teaching, sometimes seeking. He is the greatest baraka; he is a prince as well as a Sufi. He is linked to Arabia, Afghanistan, and to India, in which country he is said to come from a princely family. (p.486–7)
Graves was no doubt impressed by Idries’ credentials (the Grand Sheikh of the Sufi Way, the greatest Baraka, or source of inspiration) and intrigued to hear again the notion that Sufism was a key to all religions which added new dimensions to his study of the White Goddess. What Idries doesn’t seem to have done is to tell Graves that he was actually Omar M. Burke (as well as Arkon Daraul and, perhaps, William Foster!) On the contrary, in a letter dated 8 February 1962 (1e, GB 473 RG/J/ShahI/34), he tells Graves that he has had a phone call from Burke, who is now heading off to India again, and that he “hopes that he can meet you this summer”! (Lest readers find such effrontery difficult to believe, there is no doubt that Burke was Idries, as we shall see presently.)
Graves seems to have swallowed ‘Burke’s’ hype about Idries, for he repeats it in his Introduction to the first edition of Shah’s book The Sufis (p.xx), in which Introduction, of course, he revels in the light which he had found Sufism threw on his own theories. Furthermore, ’Burke’s’ notion of a bridge to a new Sufism paved the way for repelling the coming criticism of Idries’ book The Sufis, that this wasn’t proper Sufism, but neo–Sufism at best, and a pseudo–Sufism pandering to hippiedom at worst. Certainly he had changed tack from the days of Destination Mecca when only the true Moslem could be a Sufi, for The Sufis paid scant attention to Islam, proposing that Sufism had existed in pre–Islamic times and had merely been adopted by Islam, as indeed it was by (Zen) Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity (6, pp.24, 48, 54, 263, 356. 362 ) – Jesus was effectively a Sufi teacher, for example (O.M. Burke above & 6, p.169.) Sufism was now effectively open to all. Plus the way was open for Idries to become a guru on a par with Madame Blavatsky, Gurdjieff (of whom more presently) and Rajneesh, though it would perhaps be unfair to compare him with decidedly more unsavoury gurus like Aleister Crowley or Otoman Hanish (8).
It has been said many times that The Sufis dramatically polarised the reading public. Thus L. P. Elwell–Sutton, in his article “Sufism & Pseudo–Sufism”, published in Encounter in May 1975 (p.9–17), began his article with an account of Sufism proper, but noted that in later times it sometimes slid into decadent forms in which religious ecstasy became an end in itself, rather than a means of communion with God, and reverence for a guru (“the cult of personality”) threatened to push God away from the centre. He writes:
It is unfortunate that it is precisely these decadent and negative aspects of Sufism that have gained most currency in the West, since pseudo–Sufis have scrambled on to the band–waggon of “Oriental” mysticism set rolling by the Zen Buddhists in the 1950s. Most of these movements, whether they claim the Far East, India, the Middle East or Central Asia as their source, have certain things in common. They appeal to the psychological weaknesses of bewildered individuals in a puzzling world. They exploit the popular view of the East as mysterious and perhaps therefore wiser than ourselves. (p.12)
A little later he writes specifically of Idries Shah’s brand of pseudo–Sufism that, when reading his books:
The uneasy feeling that something vital is missing crystallises suddenly into the realisation that this is Sufism (if it deserves that name) without Islam, “Sufism” without religion, “Sufism” centred not on God but on man. Page after page of his writings do not even mention the name of God, the word “love”, the concept of unity with God through love. He is far more concerned with prescriptions for self–improvement, directions for the achievement of personal happiness, guide–lines for a worldly élite. (p.16)
Though Idries Shah denied being a guru, Elwell–Sutton noted that there was much evidence of a well–planned campaign by his adherents to elevate him to that status (p.12). What he wasn’t aware of at the time was that much of the published promotional material was actually written by Idries Shah himself under a variety of pen–names (Omar M. Burke et al), of which even more later.
At the opposite end of the spectrum of reactions to The Sufis we have Ivan Tyrrell. Reflecting on the inscription on Idries Shah’s gravestone (he died in 1996), which reads, “Do not look at my outward shape but take what is in my hand", he writes:
What Shah gave for us to ‘take'’ was not a personality to worship, not a cult to adhere to, nor emotional excitement that stops us thinking, but a huge collection of material that we could absorb if we were willing to make the effort to do so. This material has transformative power. In a mind relatively uncluttered it can take root and help clear out the superstitions, destructive habits, traumas and irrelevant expectations that imprison our essence and prevent our hearts from mirroring Reality. Only by being voided like this, and in the process of losing one imaginary self – reflected in the Sufi phrase “To die before we die” – can we gain real self–knowledge. Then the opportunity of recognising that we are connected to universal consciousness arises. (2c,. p.255)
It is perhaps worth noting that Elwell–Sutton was a Professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Edinburgh, and Tyrrell a psychotherapist and founder of The Human Givens College, which offers training courses in mental health, psychotherapy and counselling. Generally speaking it was the ‘Orientalist’ academics that dismissed The Sufis as misguided hokum and the more poetically / mystically inclined who hailed it as a classic of spirituality. Thus, by way of another example, Harvard Professor of Indo–Muslim Studies, Annemarie Schimmel advised that The Sufis should be avoided by all serious students of Sufism, whereas novelist Doris Lessing described The Sufis as enchanting and life–changing for her.
Was Idries a prince, as claimed by Burke ? The truth is rather less glamorous. He was descended from an opportunist Afghan warrior named Jan Fishan Khan who supported the British in their hold on his country. When the British withdrew from Afghanistan in 1842, he went with them to India, and supported the British there. For his help in quelling the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the British rewarded him with a modest palace and an honorific title of “Nawwab of Sardhana.” (2a, p.2–4) That title, though, was abolished when India gained its independence, so Idries couldn’t use it. The best he could claim (2a, p.181) was the associated epithet “sayyid” or sayed, meaning descent from the Clan of the Prophet, mentioned above, which, since it was shared by millions of others by the mid twentieth century (including Queen Elizabeth II, it seems!), meant little, though it sounded good to western ears. Incidentally, Idries contrived to represent his warrior ancestor, Jan Fishan Khan, as a Sufi Master, of which more presently (2a, p.244–5; 6, p.168.)
Backtracking slightly, Burke’s second article “Tunisian Caravan”, mentioned above, dealt with his visit to Nefta, where Sheikh Arif repeated the belief that Sufism was the source of religion, and that all religious teachers had been Sufis (p.131). Here Burke was able to investigate the ritual ecstasy of the Dance of the Dervishes, which he likened to the effects of mescaline and magic mushrooms, though he claimed that the Dervish trance was actually of a type unknown to us in the West, insofar as “the dervishes were creating new man” (p.135.) Again, of course, this was calculated to grab Graves’ attention.
Even by 1962 Idries’ influence on Graves was such that some of his older friends were warning him to be careful (2a, p.210). Indeed, one of his closest friends, the poet James Reeves, told him that he thought Idries’ “oriental philosophy” was “barmy.” (1c, p.215) But Graves was too hooked on secret societies, arcane knowledge, Eastern monasteries, and old fables and their equivalent Sufi parables. Miranda Seymour tells us:
Did Graves know what he was doing ? Not entirely. The 1960s mark the beginning of his slow and sad decline into senility. Mental deterioration at this early stage took the form of personality change, as he became increasingly convinced that he was chosen to act, with the help of muses, as the Goddess’s human spokesman. By 1965 he was behaving in a way which would have seemed incredible, from the point of view of his dismayed family, at the beginning of the decade. (1b, p.388)
Seymour’s account of Graves’ mental decline from 1972 onwards (1b, p.455ff) makes it clear that he had Alzheimer’s disease, this resulting in a total loss of recognition by 1980 (1f, p.96–7 & p.134–5.)
But it would appear also that the increasing freedom of thought in the youth of the swinging sixties, so different to his own upbringing, encouraged him in the Sufi ‘revolution’ and the experimentation with drugs. “The academic establishment winced,” Seymour goes on,“ but the student audiences revelled in Graves’s genial iconoclasm...He was a legend, but a very approachable one.” (1b, p.390) By now Graves was “reading into Sufism what he wanted to find” (1b, p.400.) As for Idries, Graves’ friends found themselves being urged by him to accept Idries almost as their guru, but many remained unconvinced that he was “the great healer and mystic described to them’ by Graves (1b, p.400.) They were right.
This is a bit of a digression, but a rather interesting and informative one.
Gurdjieff had become a cult figure and guru to many, though to many others he was a poser and a fraud. After his death in 1949 his followers struggled to find a worthy new leader, and the mantle fell on J. G. Bennett, who had founded his own Gurdjieffian Institute for the Comparative Study of History, Philosophy and the Sciences at a mansion called Coombe Springs at Kingston–upon–Thames, Surrey, in 1946. Bennett appears to have been a genuine seeker after spiritual truths, but not a great spiritual leader for the Gurdjieffians, who, by 1962 were looking for a new leader, preferably one who came from the East as Gurdjieff had (or claimed to have done.) On the basis of his articles under the name of Burke, and despite his awkward confession to a colleague of Bennett’s that he was actually Burke (2a, p.215), Idries was considered as a candidate, though not without the reservations of some. His Afghan heritage was a plus, as was his apparent knowledge of the so–called Sarmoung Brotherhood, a Sufi Mystery School said to be the source of Gurdjieff’s teachings (but probably invented by him!) On the minus side was his claim that his impeccable English had been developed by sitting in a cave reading Shakespeare (2a, p.216). To cut a lengthy story short (2a, p.214 ff), Idries did his homework on Gurdjieff and his teachings, wove them into his own brand of Sufism, and laid a claim to be Gurdjieff’s successor.
He was put to the test by delivering a lecture at Coombe Springs in the Autumn of 1962. According to Nile Green (2a, p.217ff) he delivered this, dressed in a camouflaged boiler suit, with matching cap, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, whilst seated cross–legged on the floor. He regaled them with accounts of the Illuminated Masters of Shangri–La and revealed that he had been sent from the East by “the Guardians of the Tradition”, the true name of the Sarmoung Brotherhood. He then proceeded to read from a document making it clear that he had been chosen by the Brotherhood to disseminate their “higher knowledge” in the West, and to demonstrate to a sleeping humanity that they could achieve a higher consciousness. Idries was a success – his lecture described as “a breath of fresh air,” in contrast to those of Bennett, generally dressed in tweeds, with a pipe, which were deemed rather pedestrian and stuffy. (The boiler suit & cigarette were surely a dig at Bennett, then.)
Entertaining – and possibly true – as that story is, it is a composite picture. Certainly Helena Edwards saw Idries, dressed in a wartime camouflage suit, with matching cap, and dangling cigarette, pushing a wheelbarrow in the grounds of Coombe Springs in 1964 – such a dress and attitude appearing to her to be inappropriate in view of J.G. Bennett’s instructions that one should practise inner exercises whilst doing daily tasks (2d, p.117). On another occasion (which may or may not have been the lecture Green refers to), when Bennett had invited Idries to meet with members of the community, and had pulled up an elegant armchair for him to sit on, Idries “instantly sat on the floor, cross–legged, and remained in that position for the duration of the meeting” (2d, p.118). Ivan Tyrrell’s account of the lecture (2c, p.55–6) describes it as “a breath of fresh air” but makes no mention of Idries’ dress or of his sitting cross–legged on the floor. It does, however, mention two documents circulated by Shah at “about that time”, these apparently being the source of Green’s “Guardians of the Tradition” etc.
In timely support of Idries’ credentials, in The Times (9 March 1964, p.12) (2a, p.222), under the heading “Elusive Guardians of Ancient Secrets”, there appeared an article by “A Correspondent” who, with his guide, Abdulmalik Khan, claimed to have been to the Hindu Kush, and to have attended a ceremonial congress of Dervishes there – true Dervishes, the wandering teachers of Sufism, not those who put on a dance for the tourists. The following bit is of interest, though a bit obscure:
Abdulmalik Khan translated the main outlines of the cult, after the mass ‘remembering,’ the Dervish zikker, of the name of the absent head of the community, the Sarkar. This took the form of the phrase Idd–rees Shaah ! – which was faithfully and literally translated for me as King Enoch. Mankind, it was stated, lacked a permanent thinking capacity. Mind, one might say, was an alternation. Humanity had to perfect itself by welding together, under rare and secret auspices, the scattered elements that it inherited, as well as imbibing certain secrets which took shape only rarely and under difficult conditions. Some of the methods were conventional study, hearing special music at carefully calculated times, manipulating an ancient mandala, or design of high sanctity, carrying out physical exercises.
There are suspicions that “a Correspondent” was none other than Idries himself, though there is no proof of that. As regards that “King Enoch”, we learn from The Sufis (6, p.195) that the Egyptian god Thoth (= the Greek god Hermes), god of wisdom & magic, and the inventor of writing, was known to Jews as Enoch and to Moslems as Idris.
A little later, in the 9 December 1965 issue of the magazine The Lady (p.870) (9), there appeared an article by a Major Desmond S. Martin titled “Below the Hindu Kush” (2a, p.220). In it the Major claimed to have seen the home of the Sarmoung (he calls it Sarmoun / Sarmouni) Brotherhood in Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush (thus dispelling any doubts on Gurdjieff’s claims) and confirming in its details that Gurdjieff’s teachers there had indeed been Sufis, though they are not named directly as such (thus vindicating Idries’ claims.) The Major also heard about Chungari (the Herb of Enlightenment), grown by the monks there, though he was not allowed to see it, let alone secure a sample of it. The Major also learned of the monastery’s use of trained emissaries to spread their message. “Were there any such emissaries in Europe?” the Major asked. There was one, he was told, but his name must remain secret... That Herb of Enlightenment echoes magic mushrooms, of course, and one has the sneaky suspicion that the emissary in Europe might be Idries. Unfortunately the identity of Major Martin has not been verified, and one suspects that like, William Foster, Arkon Daraul, and Omar M. Burke, he was yet another of Idries’ inventions!
Meanwhile, over in Paris, the Gurdjieffians also needed a new leader, and who better to fulfil that role than Idries’ older brother, Omar, of an ‘equally Afghan Sufi pedigree.’ Between them, the brothers effectively hijacked the whole Gurdjieff movement. Meanwhile, too, Idries was working on The Sufis, and in a decidedly non–Sufi manner, quizzing Graves about royalties and taxes on overseas sales, not to mention fixing a 10% of royalties for the Foreword Graves was to contribute (2a, p.224). When Graves suggested that Idries consulted the works on Sufism by Cambridge professor A.J. Arberry, Idries became indignant that the likes of Arberry had no real understanding of Sufism at all, and announced that he would show Arberry and other ‘orientalist’ scholars the true meaning of Sufism (2a, p.224), a reaction to academia which chimed with Graves’ own, note. Of course, his “true meaning of Sufism” was one having little connection with Islam, and curiously in tune with the mystically hungry swinging sixties!
Going back to the Gurjieffians, with the publication of The Sufis, J.G. Bennett was finally convinced that Idries was the Sufi Master he claimed to be. At this point Idries told him that since he was the spokesman of the People of the Tradition, sent by the Hidden Directorate, the very source of Gurdjieff’s teachings, then Bennett should, effectively, sign over Coombe Springs to him – or rather, to the People of the Tradition (2a, p.232.) Many of Bennett’s followers were rightly alarmed by this, but after much debate, and incredibly, Coombe Springs was gifted to a charitable foundation named the Society for Understanding the Foundation of Ideas (= SUFI, of course.)
Sufism at Coombe Springs became a bit of a pantomime, with outdoor readings by Idries, sat cross–legged on a leopard skin, at which everybody dressed up, Moroccan djellabahs for the men and kaftans for the women, all sprawled around the Master on rugs. At one such gathering, Idries’ brother Omar turned up, dressed as a Bedouin, wearing a checked keffiyeh scarf, and brandishing a musket (2a, p.233.) In the summer of 1966, a Midsummer Garden Party launched SUFI on swinging London, with acrobats, magicians, belly dancers, pop groups and jazz bands (2a, p.233–4; 2c, p.58–9.) I find it amusing that in his invitation to Graves to attend this ‘bash’, dated 9 June 1966 (1e, GB 473 RG/J/ShahI/84) Idries also invited Spike Milligan, he of Goon Show fame, and an unlikely friend of Graves (1f). Curiously these events seem not to have attracted the attention of the press, for I have seen no newspaper coverage of them.
At the end of that summer Coombe Springs was sold to a property developer for £100,000. Not long after (2a, p.234), Idries and his wife bought Langton House, formerly owned by the family of Baden–Powell, an 8–bedroomed Regency mansion in 12 acres of ground near Tunbridge Wells. Presumably this was a case of “off with the old, and on with the new.” Here he continued his work to promote his own brand of Sufism as the true successor to an outmoded Gurdjieffism, giving lectures and running courses of study.
The finale in ousting Gurdjieff from his Coombe Springs dominance took the form of a book, The Teachers of Gurdjieff, purportedly showing that Gurdjieff’s teachings were all adopted from the source of which Idries was the true representative. Published in 1966 its author was one Rafael Lefort, who, disenchanted with what Gurdjieffism had developed into, claimed to have gone to the Middle East to actually search out Gurdjieff’s original sources. He was directed from one Master to another, each of whom had taught or known Gurdjieff. The general picture that emerged was that Gurdjieff became a teacher who had tried to stick to his sources, but not successfully enough, for after his death his following had degenerated and become outmoded. Eventually Lefort was directed to a secret centre not ten miles from his own home. The secret centre remained unnamed, of course, and nor was Idries named as the true successor to Gurdjieff, but the list of “Recommended Reading” at the end of the book consisted totally of books by Idries, including, needless to say, The Sufis. It has been pointed out that Rafael Lefort is almost an anagram of “a real effort” (there is only one letter l in “a real effort”), though it is not clear what relevance that has, if any, but it is now generally thought that the name was yet another of Idries’ pen–names. I for one am pretty sure it was.
Readers will no doubt have noticed the minor role Idries’ older brother has thus far taken in the unfolding story. In fact, prior to the explosion onto the scene of the Graves Rubaiyat in 1967, Omar appears only to have published a translation into French, with a preface, of Saadi’s Gulistan or “Rose Garden”, Le Jardin des Roses, published in Paris in 1966. It is only after The Rubaiyat, and his taking over the leadership of the Paris branch of the Gurdjieffians, that he comes into his own with The Course of the Seeker (1988), Sufism for Today (1991), The Sufi Tradition in the West (1994) and Sufism as Therapy (1995). For some years, starting in the 1970s, he also became a Sufi guru in Spain, his teachings also dubbed “The Tradition” (2a, p.221) and his devotees chanting “Master! Master!” at him (2a, p.287). As for Idries, he had numerous sequels to his success with The Sufis, so Sufism became the Shah brothers’ sacred cow to be milked and milked, the Graves Rubaiyat, given Graves’ fame as a poet, a pot of cream. Unfortunately, that pot of cream was one doomed to turn sour, as it turned out. But that is to jump forward somewhat.
It would appear that seeing his brother’s blossoming success with Graves, Omar made contact with him as well, presenting himself as a Sufi, and telling him that he was working on the above–mentioned translation of Saadi’s Gulistan, this being a Sufi work, adding that he would like Graves to read the first draft. (2b, p.199) This seems to have resulted in an invitation to Mallorca (2a, p.236), and it was here that Omar (knowing that Graves had been a Captain in the Great War) put it about that he was a retired General in the Afghan Army (a piece of fiction – he had never even served in the army.)
It is not clear exactly what led to Omar’s collaboration with Graves on The Rubaiyat, but possibly the Shah brothers knew of Graves’ views on the ‘true poet’ and his dislike for the Victorian Poets, like Tennyson (1d, p.181 & 368–371) & his friend FitzGerald, along with other denizens of the ‘stagnant’ Oxford Book of English Verse and Palgrave’s Golden Treasury. Graves regarded Tennyson’s poetry as rather banal and lacking the true inspiration of a Muse, and his scorn for FitzGerald reached its peak in an interview for The Daily Telegraph (25 March 1968) in which he called him “a dilettante faggot trying to pretend he was a scholar,” adding, “People don’t realise what an extremely bad conception he had of English verse writing” and, “Some of his efforts would disgrace a fifth former.” Even granted that by this time Graves was perhaps deteriorating mentally, as noted above; that he had a fear of a homosexual streak in himself (1a, p.74 & 406); and that his Rubaiyat was facing accusations of being based on a forged manuscript, such venom makes one think that Graves was rather jealous of FitzGerald’s phenomenal success, and snobbishly dismissive of the poetic ‘credentials’ of his fans – “The Fitz–Omar Cult” – the title of his introduction to his Rubaiyat (10). More than that, Graves went on in his Introduction, FitzGerald was responsible for Omar’s quatrains being “erroneously accepted throughout the West as a drunkard’s rambling profession of the hedonistic creed” (p.2) rather than having mystical significance. It is true, of course, there are and have been plenty of people, in both west and east (11), who believe or believed that FitzGerald’s picture of Omar Khayyam as an Epicurean wine–drinking agnostic was totally wrong, and that Omar was really a Sufi poet, whose wine was merely symbolic of Divine Intoxication. Personally speaking, I would agree with FitzGerald, whose views (that Omar was no Sufi) were expressed in the introduction to his second and later versions, but let that pass. As we saw earlier, Ikbal Ali Shah held a Sufi view of Omar, which he seems to have passed on to his sons, for Idries devoted a whole chapter of The Sufis to Omar Khayyam (6, p.164–171), firmly claiming him as a Sufi poet, and citing his ancestor, Jan Fishan Khan (actually a warrior chieftain, remember) as “chief of the Hindu–Kush Sufis and a great nineteenth century master” who “used the quatrains of Omar in his teaching” (6, p.168.) Thus, intentionally or otherwise, Idries paved the way in Graves’ mind for his brother’s Sufic Rubaiyat.
It is in a letter from Omar to Graves dated Monday 13th June [1966] that he first raises the idea of their collaboration:
What would you say to a definitive translation of Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat ? The real thing with all the love and depth that it has ? Fitzgerald &, later, Whinfield did their best but I don’t think it was good enough.
I have a very early Mss indeed which could be the basis. But, what if it was blank verse (rather than my attempting to force it into an alien metre to rhyme it ?)
Comments, please, O noble Poet and Nightingale. (1e, GB 473 RG/J/ShahO/23)
To ensure that Graves got the message, Omar added: “in case the allegory of ‘Nightingale’ is dim, it is traditionally the lover of the Rose, which, in Saadi, is real Love.” Note again, then, the buttering up of Graves!
Omar’s idea seems to be that he will do a translation of this MS into blank verse, so that Graves can work his poetic magic on it. But where did the idea of this “very early” MS originate ? I do not know, but my mind is drawn back to the above–mentioned episode of his father Ikbal posing as an Afghan alchemist who was developing his skills using an old manuscript given to him by a dying uncle. But whatever, after the above–quoted letter, there then appears to be a gap in the correspondence relating to their collaboration, down to Omar’s problem with a slipped disc, for the next extant letter is dated 14 April 1967 and says:
I am contemplating seeking permission to quote the existence of a Rubaiyat Mss dated 76 years after Omar Khayyam’s death! I may not get permission as it is difficult but this is, to my knowledge the oldest in existence. (1e, GB 473 RG/J/ShahO/33)
Why would Omar need permission to “quote the existence” of this very early MS if, as he hinted in his earlier letter, he actually had it in his possession ? Had he been merely careless in the wording of his earlier letter, or had it occurred to him that Graves might actually want to see this literary treasure when they next met, or at least as soon as possible ? At any rate, it seems that Omar forestalled this possibility by offering Graves a translation done, not from the ‘original’, henceforth allegedly (and safely!) out of reach in Afghanistan, but from a ‘transcribed copy’ of it. Where and when that ‘copy’ was made, and by whom, remains unknown (though its source will become clear presently), but I would guess that “seeking permission” was a case of stalling for time while a ‘transcribed copy’ could be concocted. And why didn’t Graves query this sudden need for permission ? Perhaps he did, but if so, the letter has been lost. But whatever was going on, we know that their joint project came to fruition and was published, after much publicity, as The Rubaiyyat of Omar Khayaam in November 1967.
An unfavourable, though not yet damning, review of the book by J.C.E. Bowen, headed “The Rubaiyat of Graves.” appeared in The Times Saturday Review on 11 November 1967 (p.23). This prompted a reply from Omar Ali Shah in The Times on 20 November 1967 (p.9) and another reply from Graves in The Times on 30 November 1967 (p.11.) But so far these were relatively small fry issues. Things got more interesting when Bowen, responding to both Omar and Graves in The Times on 15 December 1967 (p.9), pointed out that the sample script depicted on p.82–3 of the Graves–Shah Rubaiyat was not that which would have been used by a Persian scribe responsible for the supposedly genuine 12th century manuscript used, and worse, that “of the first dozen quatrains in ‘the authentic MS’ no fewer than eight follow the exact sequence of the First Edition of FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.”
The significance of this perhaps requires a little clarification. Both Graves and Shah were under the misapprehension that Khayyam’s quatrains constituted a single poem, with the quatrains following on from each other in a fixed order determined by Khayyam himself. But such quatrains are actually written independently of each other, with no such definitive arrangement, so the order of the quatrains in various MSS varies considerably. (The traditional ordering in a MS is alphabetic, according to terminal letters, so different MSS with differing numbers of quatrains from differing sources will have different formats.) Now the order of the quatrains in FitzGerald’s first edition was designed to give the impression of a single poem going symbolically from sunrise at the start of the day to moonrise at its end. As he explained in his introduction, he had ordered the verses to form “something of an Eclogue.” This was FitzGerald’s own invention, then, not Omar’s. Thus the chances of a 12th century alphabetic collection of quatrains getting eight of the first dozen verses in the same order as in FitzGerald’s organised first edition would be so unlikely as to be suspicious.
A former colleague of Bowen’s, Laurence Elwell–Sutton (mentioned earlier in connection with Sufism), then noticed that the crib, supposedly taken from the ‘authentic’ MS, and supplied by Ali Shah for Graves to work from, was based on Edward Heron–Allen’s famous study Edward FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam with their Original Persian Sources (Bernard Quaritch, London 1899), a copy of which Idries had certainly seen (6, p.166.) Even Heron–Allen’s mistakes had been copied, it transpired. The words forgery and fraud started to be used.
Graves, who was still convinced that the Shah brothers were honest men and that the MS was genuine, reacted to these criticisms by dismissing them as demonstrating the insecurities of threatened academics. He denounced the Persian scholars as “a lot of imbeciles” (Sunday Times, 31 March 1968) (2b, p.200) and in the “dilettante faggot” interview quoted above, he said, “the idea that I have been taken in by Oriental crooks is ridiculous,” adding, “it is really a lot of fuss about nothing and the outcry is a sign of academic insecurity.” Graves, remember, was no friend of orthodox academia, and preferred poetic intuition to prosaic logic.
The unfolding story is well told in John Charles Edward Bowen, Translation or Travesty ?, subtitled “An enquiry into Robert Graves’s version of some Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam” (The Abbey Press, Abingdon, 1973.) It has a delightful cover depicting Graves being given a piggy back by Omar Ali Shah, and tilting at a windmill, after the manner of Don Quixote. (Parts of Don Quixote, by the way, have Sufi antecedents, at least according to Idries (6, p.65, 74, 89).)
Quite clearly it was time to produce the original MS which the Shah brothers maintained was in the hands of their family in Afghanistan. But when challenged to produce it, Omar dithered, with claims of being insulted by not being believed without having to produce the actual MS from distant Afghanistan; it was an offence to family honour to doubt its existence; to which Idries (who seems to have stayed largely out of things thus far) added that even if they produced the MS it could be simply dismissed as a forgery with no way of proving it; and so on. Eventually, the brothers just fell silent, and presumably just got on with their Sufism. Unfortunately, Omar did not keep the letters he received from Graves, and Idries “mislaid” almost all the letters Graves wrote to him after 1968 when the Rubaiyat controversy started (1c, p.281.) But Graves did keep a copy of a letter he wrote to Idries dated 11 November 1970 which tells us much (1c, p.282–3). It was addressed to “Dearest Idries” and signed “Robert”:
You and I are bound, not only by close bonds of personal friendship, but by having the same displayed eagle as a family crest, which suggests a Crusader–Saracen friendship dating from the twelfth century. And you and I first met and recognised each other in Palma when you were disguising yourself as a secretary of an old fraudulent witch–doctor.
Since then I have also made a very close alliance with Omar and his family, and in both cases I knew and valued the wife before I met the husband (12). This brings me to a matter of family honour: the Jan Fishan Khan Omar Khayyam manuscript. Its publication in translation by Omar and myself has done me a great deal of harm, especially from continually renewed attacks on my reputation in the powerful Sunday Times and in leading American newspapers, where Dr. Arberry’s pupils have tried to prove that this ms is a forgery. I am content to suffer if necessary, but I should not have accepted the task so cheerfully, in hospital (13) three years ago, had I known that I was putting my head into a trap from which the Shahs were unable to extricate me and I still do not believe this to be true. Moreover Omar was given full permission by your father to undertake this work.
Nor do I believe that the use of infra–red rays would be unable to reveal that the Cambridge University and the Chester Beatty Rubaiyyat mss., which deceived Professor Arberry, were modern forgeries (14). Or that the obvious ancientness of the parchment of the Jan Fishan Khan mss – which our enemies either date to the 1890s or deny to exist – plus an infra–ray (sic) test to prove that it is not a palimpsest, would not reveal its genuineness.
This letter of yours, by the way, completely contradicts two previous ones on the same subject, promising to produce this ms from Afghanistan, where the Guardians of the Tradition would allow you to borrow it for a while, as the senior member of the family to whom the Sultan gave it in 1153. The trouble is that what is now publicly considered to be my gross deception by the Shah brothers has cast doubt on all my historical writings. This smudge can be shown to have reduced the royalties drawn from these that keep my family alive. I have recently had to support, wholly or partly, about a dozen of them. So your decision, for reasons of family pride, not to submit the ms to scrutiny under any circumstances seems difficult to reconcile with either our personal or family friendship – especially as this would be to injure the family of the Prophet – may his name be praised!
I am sending a copy of this letter to Omar whom I unfortunately missed last time in London as I also missed you; but I expect to be along at the close of this month.(1e, GB 473 RG/J/ShahI/141)
The opening paragraph of this makes it clear that Graves had been taken in by many of Idries’ ‘tall stories.’ (The “old fraudulent witch–doctor” was Gerald Gardner, of course. Goodness only knows what Idries told Graves about posing as Gardner’s secretary!) As regards Graves’ complaints, Idries apparently made a non–committal reply to this saying, effectively, that they could talk about these things when they next met. I do not know whether they ever did talk about these things, but the fact remains that the Jan Fishan Khan manuscript never appeared, and neither Graves nor the Shah brothers ever admitted its forgery, though Graves continued to write in friendly terms to the two brothers until at least 1973.
The last letter from Graves to Idries known to me, hand–written and apparently unposted, is dated 19 January [1973.] The letter is addressed to “Dearest Idries” and ends with, “Much love to you all, Robert,” so clearly Graves still has much affection for Idries. After detailing a few personal matters, it goes on:
Sufism is Sufism, and seems to me intended by the Prophet (whose name be praised) as a wholly poetic (which means magical in a practical sense) way of behaviour. Burak was a Pegasus not a computer (sic).
To translate Sufism into scientific terms seems asking for trouble, especially as science has now come to be wholly in the pocket of the old universal Devil, Money.
But you are the HoiR–Sufi (sic) with Omar in charge of the practical Dervish side of the Way; so I dare not & cannot teach you how to crack or fry eggs. (1e, GB 473 RG/J/ShahI/142.)
Clearly Graves still has much respect for Idries & Omar, and their Sufism, despite the Rubaiyat fiasco, but the letter is clearly odd in a couple of places, as indicated. Burak (or Buraq) was the winged horse (hence Pegasus) which magically transported Mohammed from Mecca to Jerusalem and thence up through the Seven Heavens, its magic presumably being contrasted by Graves with the dull rational science of a computer, though aeroplane might have been a better choice of word in that case. HoiR could be the old French word for Heir (hence Heir to the Sufis) or the word could be Hock, referring to the wine (of Sufism). Either way, Graves’ wording is odd, perhaps indicative of his increasing mental decline at this time.
There is a postscript to this letter which is also of interest:
A curious spate of new poems has happened – they will soon appear in a limited edition at Rota’s. Some of them scare me, from their origin in the 5th Dimension.
Clearly the White Goddess was still very active and living in the 5th dimension! The “limited edition at Rota’s” was presumably Timeless Meeting, of which 536 copies were privately printed and distributed by Bertram Rota (Publishers) Ltd., London in 1973. However, in 1974 Rota also distributed the privately printed limited edition of 536 copies of Graves’ At the Gate.
But getting back to The Rubaiyat, the story really ends with Major Bowen, who, in 1969 set out for Afghanistan to settle matters. Writing in an (edited) letter published in The Listener (3 August 1972), but reproduced in full in Translation or Travesty ?, he gives the key part of the story thus:
I had two clues to help me locate the supposed manuscript: the first was the knowledge that before Omar Ali Shah’s family had been expelled from Afghanistan in 1842, they had lived in Paghman, not far from Kabul; the second was Graves’s assertion, when called upon to produce the A.D.1153 manuscript, that it was owned by an ‘old man of 80’, who refused to show it, because (as Graves kindly explained) ‘to be challenged by a lot of imbeciles naturally upsets the old man.’
When I reached Kabul, I sought out two Afghan savants, Professor Khalilullah Khalili, a famous poet who is Ambassador at Jidda, and Abdul Haq Waleh, the distinguished editor of the Karavan newspaper. Their friendly interest in the mystery I had come to solve resulted in Professor Khalili sending his car to Paghman to bring to Kabul Mir Jamal–ud–Din, the 85 year–old head of the Musavi Saiyid family to which Omar Ali Shah’s forebears originally belonged. In Waleh’s presence, the bright–eyed courteous old man told me that he had no ancient manuscript in his possession and had never heard of Omar Khayyam. (p.4–5)
Bowen wrote:
It appears from the deafening silence with which it (ie his letter to The Listener) was greeted by Robert Graves, his collaborator Omar Ali Shah, and their publishers – Cassell, Doubleday and the Penguin Press – that not one of them could think of any adequate reply. (p.1)
Perhaps Graves’ mental decline excuses him to some extent, but did the Shah brothers have any excuse at all for remaining silent while they pursued their careers as Sufi gurus ?
By the late 1970s the Shah brothers seem not only to have drifted away from Graves, but also to have drifted away from each other. This was partly on account of their differing models of the ‘new Sufism’ (2a, p.287), though something far less mystical might have come into play as well.
Idries had published a book of amusing Sufic anecdotes, The Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin (Jonathan Cape, London, 1966.) It was illustrated by the animator Richard Williams, already famous for his animated titles for The Pink Panther and later for the major project Who Framed Roger Rabbit ?, and who happened to have a keen interest in Sufism. It was Idries who suggested that they make the Nasrudin stories into a feature–length cartoon, with Graves recommending a Catalan musician to do the score, and with Kenneth Williams (of “Carry On” fame) doing the initial vocal track (2a, p.242.) Work began on the project in about 1968, but the feature–length film never came to fruition, and only a poor quality clip survives (15a). The failure was down mainly to financing the film, complicated by the fact that Idries wanted 50% of the royalties and his sister Amina wanted a cut too as she had done some of the translation. But a major problem was their brother Omar, Richard Williams’ business manager (how he came by that post isn’t clear), who had been helping himself to Studio funds in the early 1970s. Idries relinquished his claim for royalties to avoid Omar being prosecuted for embezzlement, but maintained control of the Nasrudin character. This may have been part of the reason for the estrangement of the Shah brothers, plus it meant that Williams had to drop the Nasrudin character and re–format the whole project. It was re–titled The Thief and the Cobbler and Williams worked on it for many years, though in the end it too never came to fruition (15b).
But there is a sequel to the story, told by Carl Gover, who joined Williams’ Soho Studio just after Omar had been dismissed (15b), and who says that Williams received a threatening letter in the post. Theatrically, it was formed from words and letters cut from a newspaper, pasted onto a backing–sheet, and read: “Lay off or he will kill or cripple you.” Gover believes it was sent by Idries, though there is no proof of that. But whatever, the letter was followed by a bomb threat, which likewise turned out to be a hoax. The upshot seems to have been, though, that the local Soho gossip mongers got to work and the story arose that the Shah brothers hailed from Liverpool and were well–known and feared thugs up there! Idries and Omar might have been guilty of a lot of things, but thuggery in Liverpool certainly wasn’t one of them!
1a) Martin Seymour–Smith, Robert Graves: His Life and Works (Hutchinson & Co., London, 1982.)
1b) Miranda Seymour, Robert Graves: Life on the Edge (Doubleday / Transworld Publishers, London, 1995.)
1c) Paul O’Prey (ed.), Between Moon and Moon: Selected Letters of Robert Graves 1946–1972 (Hutchinson & Co., London, 1984.)
1d) Paul O’Prey (ed.), Robert Graves – Collected Writings on Poetry (Carcanet Press, Manchester, 1995.)
1e) References are to the letters in the Robert Graves Collection in the library of St. John’s College, Oxford. My thanks are due to Sara Miller for supplying scans of the key letters.
1f) Pauline Scudamore, Dear Robert, Dear Spike: the Graves Milligan Correspondence (Alan Sutton Publishing, Stroud, Gloucestershire, 1991.) A Foreword by Spike Milligan and an Introduction by Pauline Scudamore give the background to their ’odd couple’ friendship which began in 1964 and lasted until Graves’ death.
2a) Nile Green, Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan, subtitled “the Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah” (W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2024.)
2b) Grevel Lindop, “From Witchcraft to the Rubaiyyat; Robert Graves and the Shah Brothers” in Dunstan Ward (ed.), The Art of Collaboration: Essays on Robert Graves and His Contemporaries (Universitat de les Illes Balears, Palma 2008.)
2c) Ivan Tyrrell, Listening to Idries Shah, subtitled “How understanding can grow” (HG Publishing, Chalvington, East Sussex, 2016.) HG Publishing = Human Givens Publishing.
2d) Helena Edwards, All this – and Heaven too? (Crucible Publishers, Bath, 2009.) The author is one of the few people who met Gurdjieff, J.G. Bennett and Idries Shah.
Note 3: Page numbers here refer to Robert Graves – The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth edited by Grevel Lindop (Carcanet Press, Manchester, 1997.) The Faber Paperback edition of 1999 has identical pagination.
Note 4: Graves seems to have been particularly fascinated by The Song of Songs (also known as The Song of Solomon or Canticles), for he re–wrote the text and added a commentary to it for his book The Song of Songs (Collins, London, 1973.) Oddly there is no mention in the commentary of Salmaah, the King of the Year, and the Flower Queen, though we do get a celebration of the marriage of the Semitic bull–god El with “the matriarchal Canaanite goddess Ashera” at the close of the sacred year (p.2 & 5–7.) As for “the little foxes that plunder the vineyards” in chapter 2, Graves sees these as connected with dried magic mushrooms which have “a foxy colour” (p.9–10.) Again, we are told, Jehova was originally bisexual, but thanks to the Catholic Church, he became firmly male and patriarchal, the result of which was the religious transvestitism of priests – “their female garments”, in other words, by which I suppose he means their elaborate robes – so that they could identify themselves with the Bride of The Song of Songs and thus fit in with the Church’s view that it symbolised the love of Christ for his Church (p.15)! The text though has not been distorted by these notions, and Graves presents it as “a pastoral drama sung at weddings and incorporating ancient folk songs” (p.4), whose theme is marital love. He believes the author to have been an Alexandrian Jew who was acquainted with the poems of Meleager and Theocritus (p.16.) Usefully he has turned the text into the form of a play, the text spoken by four named characters, the Bride, Bridegroom, Bridesmaids and Bridesmen, without which clarification parts of the text can be very confusing. The text, incidentally, is not a translation by Graves, for he writes, “being no Hebrew scholar, I have accepted whatever informed readings seem to make both poetic and historical sense” (p.16.) The inner flap of the dust–jacket, though, dubs it “this new translation” by “Professor Graves.”
Note 5: For the extraordinary author, artist and publisher of this book see my essay: http://www.bobforrestweb.co.uk/The_Rubaiyat/N_and_Q/OK_Revisited/OK_Revisited.htm or the booklet version of it.
Note 6: Page numbers cited are those in Idries Shah, The Sufis (Doubleday & Co., New York, 1964.)
Note 7: See Iain Martin’s online article, “Lost History – Is the Queen Descended from the Prophet Mohammed ?” at: https://www.reaction.life/p/lost-history-is-the-queen-descended-from-the-prophet-mohammed Just possibly, but very probably not, is the short answer, considering that, for example, “geneticists believe up to 16 million people alive today are descended from Ghengis Khan.”
Note 8: Hanish is much less known than the other gurus mentioned here, but he is such a classic case of a rogue mystical guru that he merits mentioning here. See my essay on him at http://www.bobforrestweb.co.uk/The_Rubaiyat/N_and_Q/Otoman_Hanish/Otoman_Hanish.htm or the booklet version of it.
Note 9: The original article in The Lady was reprinted in a slightly edited form (basically its first and last paragraphs were deleted) under the revised title, “Account of the Sarmoun Brotherhood” in Documents on Contemporary Dervish Communities (A Symposium: Collected, edited and arranged by Roy Weaver Davidon), published by the Society for Organising Unified Research in Cultural Education, London, 1966 (p.22–24). The booklet also contains the letter from “A Correspondent” in The Times (p.4–6), Omar Michael Burke, “Travels and Residence with Dervishes” (p.9–14), which is extracted from his articles in Blackwood’s Magazine; and Arkon Daraul, “A Sufi Organisation in Britain” (p.19–21.)
Note 10: The popularity of other poets did clearly irk Graves, and Tennyson had been very popular throughout much of the 19th century, his “In Memoriam” gaining the praise of Queen Victoria. He was considered “a great poet”, in other words – one with “a household name”, and one who many years after his death still merited several pages in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Browning was also very popular, but rated “vulgar” by Graves (1d, p.355–6.) Again, W.H. Auden was “synthetic” (1d, p.235); Dylan Thomas was simply “drunk with melody” (1d, p.237); and the “sick, muddle–headed, sex–mad” D.H. Lawrence wrote mere “sketches for poems” (1d, p.239.) A particular bugbear of Graves, though, was W. B. Yeats, for whom he had a long–term dislike for many reasons, popularity being but one. Yeats was another who had no Muse, merely “a ventriloquist’s dummy called Crazy Jane.” (1d, p.223ff)
Note 11: Notably, in Les Quatrains de Khèyam (Paris, 1867), the translation into French by J.B. Nicolas was influenced by a Persian Sufi teacher, hence the extended introduction to FitzGerald’s second version in 1868. Again, Govinda Tirtha, whose monumental book The Nectar of Grace (Allahabad, 1941) contained over 1000 quatrains, held Omar Khayyam to be a Sufi. See also my essay “A Sufi Pipkin Waxing Hot” for a range of modern authors on the topic at: http://www.bobforrestweb.co.uk/The_Rubaiyat/N_and_Q/Sufi_Pipkin/Sufi_Pipkin.htm or the booklet version of it.
Note 12: Idries married Cynthia Kabraji in 1963 and Omar married Anna Maria Manicardi in 1964. For the former, see 2a. p.222–3; the latter does not feature in Nile Green’s book, unfortunately.
Note 13: Graves apparently did the first draft of his Rubaiyat in St. Thomas’s Hospital in London whilst he was there for a gall bladder operation (1a, p.556.)
Note 14: See, for example, Ali Dashti In Search of Omar Khayyam (1971), p, 18–19 and Garry Garrard, A Book of Verse (2007), p.182. A.J.Arberry published a translation of the Chester Beatty Manuscript before it was shown to be a forgery, in his book The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, subtitled “edited from a newly discovered manuscript dated 658 (1259–60) in the possession of A. Chester Beatty Esq,” published in 1949. Arberry also published a translation of the Cambridge Manuscript before it too was unmasked as a forgery, in his book Omar Khayyam, subtitled “A New Version Based upon Recent Discoveries” published in 1952. Again, before its unmasking, Arberry also collaborated with J.C.E. Bowen to publish a translation of 60 quatrains from the Chester Beatty Manuscript in the book A New Selection from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, published in 1961. As Garrard notes, “Perhaps it was that experience that made Bowen treat all so–called new discoveries with caution, and the reason he was so quick to identify the anomalies in the translation by Robert Graves and Omar Ali Shah when it appeared in 1967.”
a) See “Richard Williams and the Shah Brothers” in the “uncategorised” section at https://pullingarabbitoutofahat.com .
b) See the Wikipedia page for Richard Williams (animator).
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