Nile Green’s new book Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah unpicks the fictions of empire, Islam and identity woven by two generations of a displaced Afghan family. The Shah clan’s loyalty to the British during the Second Afghan War (1878-1880) forced them to flee south from Afghanistan into British India, where they were rewarded with the noble title of sirdar and an estate. Sent to study medicine at Edinburgh just prior to the Great War, Ikbal quickly went off script, neglecting his studies to write poetry. Disowned by his father and with a growing family to support, Ikbal threw himself into the booming “spiritual and occult marketplace” of inter-war Britain. Ikbal also sought to present himself to the British authorities as an expert on Afghanistan and liaison to the Muslim world. While Ikbal struggled to pull this off, his son Idries made a fortune as the Sufi guru of the 1960s and 1970s. Idries not only found  “an alternative Great Game”, he found a counterculture hungry for the “politics of identity and authenticity” peddled by his bestselling tales of a land neither he nor his father had ever visited. In this conversation, recorded on 22 November 2024, Jon asks Nile about how the Shahs were perceived by fellow Muslims, and how his own approach to their story evolved.

Episode 60 – Inventing Ikbal

For more about this book and more from Nile, you can read Jon’s review in the Los Angeles Review of Books and listen to Nile’s own podcast,  Akbar’s Chamber: Experts Talk Islam

Podcasts are published by TLP for the purpose of encouraging informed debate on the legacies of the events surrounding the Lausanne Conference. The views expressed by participants do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of TLP, its partners, convenors or members.

IMAGE: NICHOLAS ROERICH, PATH TO SHIMBHALA (1933). COURTESY NICHOLAS ROERICH MUSEUM, NEW YORK.