Omar Ali-Shah

Omar Ali-Shah (, ; 19227 September 2005) was a prominent exponent of modern Naqshbandi Sufism. He wrote a number of books on the subject, and was head of a large number of Sufi groups, particularly in Latin America, Europe and Canada.

Early life Omar Ali-Shah was born in 1922 into a family that traces itself back to the Prophet Mohammed, and through the Sassanian Emperors of Persia to the year 122 BC. He was the son of Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah of Sardhana, Uttar Pradesh, India and the older brother of Idries Shah, another writer and teacher of Sufism.

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

This translation quickly became controversial; Graves was attacked for trying to break the spell of famed passages in Edward FitzGerald's Victorian translation, and L. P. Elwell-Sutton, an Orientalist at the University of Edinburgh, maintained that the manuscript used by Ali-Shah and Graves – which Ali-Shah claimed had been in his family for 800 years – was a "clumsy forgery".

Schism

The two brothers, Idries Shah and Omar Ali-Shah, worked and taught together for some time in the 1960s, but later agreed to go their separate ways. Both brothers also worked with legendary animator, Richard Williams. Omar worked for a time as Richard's producer. They parted ways after Omar embezzled from the company. Their respective movements – Idries Shah's "Society for Sufi Studies" and Omar Ali-Shah's "Tradition" – were similar, giving some prominence to psychology in their teachings. Omar Ali-Shah's teachings had some distinctive features, however. Sufi travel was seen as a pilgrimage to sites that could both energise and purify the visitor.

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

The Sufi student and deputy, Professor Leonard Lewin (University of Colorado), led study groups under the guidance of Idries Shah, Omar Ali Shah and his son, Arif Ali-Shah.