Tahir Shah

Tahir Shah was born into the saadat of Paghman, an ancient and respected family hailing from Afghanistan. Bestowed with further lands and ancestral titles by the British Raj during the Great Game, a number of Shah's more recent ancestors were born in the principality of Sardhana, in northern India – which they ruled as Nawabs.

Tahir Shah attended Rose Hill Preparatory School in Tunbridge Wells, Kent – where Lord Baden Powell had also been a student. He has described the school as "a throwback to the Victorian age – sadistic and brutal in the extreme." At 13, he was sent to Bryanston School, near Blandford Forum, Dorset. He has written about his inability to keep up, as a result of "profound dyslexia". Despite this, he has been rated as the fifth most successful person to be been educated at the school.

Aged 17, Shah learnt to fly in Florida, and graduated with an FAA Private Pilot's Licence. He attended university in San Diego, London and Nairobi – where he studied African dictatorships at the United States International University. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations in 1987.

Shah avoids "self-congratulatory" literary festivals, although he had appeared as a speaker at a number of them in the past – including at Hay-on-Wye, Wigtown, Shute, Oxford, Deià, Gibraltar, and Vilnius. He writes on a rigid schedule, keeping to a daily target. At any one time he has ‘between 25 and 25 writing projects in development’. Shah’s earlier books fell into the travel literature genre, with more recent work being regarded as straight fiction. Most of Shah’s work blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction, and Shah himself condemns ‘the way Occidental society draws a rigid line in the sand between one and the other. He champions authors such as Bruce Chatwin and Rory MacLean who have walked a line between the two.

Tahir Shah is a prolific author of books, documentaries, book introductions, peer reviewed academic articles, and book reviews. The vast majority of Shah's books can be considered travel literature, with the exception of his 2012 release Timbuctoo. Shah's first published book was Cultural Research, written for the London-based Institute for Cultural Research. One of his more notable works is Trail of Feathers, an account of his trip through Peru, Machu Picchu, the Incas and Cusco. Another book, In Search of King Solomon's Mines, searching for undiscovered mines known only in folklore. Other books like In Arabian Nights and Travels with Myself are mostly about the author's journeys through exotic locations. His first traditional travelogue was in 1995 with Beyond the Devil's Teeth, covering a trip through Africa, India and much of Latin America.

After having published a number of books with traditional publishers, Shah made the move to self publishing in 2011 with his print-on-demand book Travels With Myself, which was published using Lulu.com. He later took his self publishing efforts a step further in 2012 with the release of Timbuctoo and again in 2013 with Scorpion Soup, two limited edition hardcovers that were designed by his wife Rachana.

Such methodology was the basis for uprooting his wife Rachana, and his two infant children from a small apartment in London's East End, and relocating to a mansion called "Dar Khalifa", said by locals to be haunted by Jinn, "set squarely in the middle of a Casablanca shantytown." The adventure formed the basis for Shah's book The Caliph's House (2006). Shah has written widely about Casablanca and Morocco, and is regarded as an expert on both, as well as on India, and a number of other destinations. His life at Dar Khalifa was widely covered in international media.

In July 2005 (a week after the 7 July London bombings) Shah and two colleagues from Caravan Film in London were arrested in Peshawar in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and held without charge in solitary confinement in a torture prison. Much of the time they were handcuffed, stripped virtually naked, and blindfolded. After sixteen days of interrogations in a "fully equipped torture room," Shah and his colleagues were released. The Pakistani government agreed that they had done nothing wrong. Tahir Shah gave an interview which was screened on British TV's Channel 4 News, and published an article in the British Sunday Times about the ordeal. Shah has publicly maintained his affection for Pakistan, despite the rough treatment he and his film crew received at the hands of the Pakistani secret services. The illegal custody earned Shah and his film crew a mention in the United States Department of State's 2005 report on Pakistan's human rights practices. The news story came back into the spotlight in July 2008, when a British MP claimed that the British government had 'outsourced' the torture of UK citizens to Pakistani security agencies.

Tahir Shah is also a champion of what he calls "the East-West Bridge". In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in the United States in 2001, Tahir Shah began to devote a great deal of time and energy into establishing and promoting a "cultural bridge" made up by those who, like him, are both from the East and from the West. One example of this work is the Qantara Foundation (from "qantara" meaning "bridge" in Arabic). He has spoken and written on the idea that people such as he have a responsibility to "show the East to the West, and the West to the East," highlighting the common cultural heritage of the two, and working towards a common goal. Shah's greatest interest within the East-West theme is probably the subject of the legacy of science in medieval Islam, and its role in creating a foundation for the Renaissance. He has lectured publicly on the subject and believes strongly in the importance of drawing attention to the polymath poet-scientists from the Golden Age of Islam.

Shah is descended from the Afghan warlord and statesman Jan Fishan Khan. In 1995 Tahir Shah married to the India-born graphic designer, Rachana Shah (née Devidayal), with whom he has two children – Ariane Shah and Timur Shah. The marriage ended in 2017, although the two remain close friends.

Shah's style is one of simple prose and overwhelming humour. He has said that his style of using short blocks of text, with a concluding denouement was influenced by Iron & Silk by Mark Salzman, which he first read in 1988; and that he writes with the intention to educate and inform his readers, while at the same time amusing them. In this capacity, one could liken Shah's work to the literary devise employed in several books by his father, Idries Shah, who used the wise fool Mulla Nasreddin to illustrate deeper ideas in human understanding.

His first appearance on television was in the 1972 BBC documentary about his father, Dream Walkers: One Pair of Eyes, in which Shah, his sisters, and their friends, are seen listening to Idries Shah tell the tale of The Lion Who Saw Himself in the Water.

During his childhood, Shah and his sisters would be taken to Morocco for extended periods, where his grandfather lived until his death in November 1969. Described in his book The Caliph's House, the journeys introduced Shah to "a realm straight out of The Arabian Nights."

Shah's father Idries Shah and English poet Robert Graves were close friends and confidants, and for a number of years, Spike Milligan and Robert Graves had a correspondence. The highlights were later published in a book called Dear Robert, Dear Spike. Shortly after Tahir Shah's birth, in a letter dated 6 February 1967, Robert Graves wrote to Spike Milligan: "I may be over in a few weeks to help two young Afghan Arabs named Tahir Shah Sayid and his twin sister with a name so beautiful that I forget it. He's the nearest to Mahomet in a straight line, of any Arab baby in existence. Isn't Tahir a splendid name."

Tahir Shah (Persian: طاهر شاه ‎, Gujarati: તાહિર શાહ ; né Sayyid Tahir al-Hashimi (Arabic: سيد طاهر الهاشمي); born 16 November 1966) is a British author, journalist and documentary maker of Afghan-Indian descent. He lives in Casablanca, Morocco.