Idries Shah

When it first appeared in 1964, The Sufis was welcomed as the decisive work on the subject of Sufi thought....

First published in 1957, The Secret Lore of Magic contains within it a series of major source books of magical arts. Many of them translated into English for the first time, these works are annotated....

Condensed from more than three million words, these conversations involve housewives and cabinet ministers, professors and assembly-line workers, on the subject of how traditional psychology can illuminate current human, social, and spiritual problems....

Assembled by Idries Shah, The World of the Sufi is a comprehensive collection of learned essays and papers on the subject of Sufi thought....

The Way of the Sufi presents an unparalleled cross-section of material from Sufi schools, Sufi teachings, and classical writings as a basic course of Sufi study....

Oriental Magic is recognized as a brilliant study of how, what and why people think, in territories extending from North Africa to Japan....

Traditionally known as The Hundred Tales of Wisdom, this collection comprises excerpts from the life, teachings, and miracles of the Sufi teacher Jalaluddin Rumi, together with certain important stories from his works....

The Commanding Self, in Sufic terminology, is that mixture of the primitive and conditioned responses, common to everyone, which inhibits and distorts human progress and understanding....

Although enormously attractive as sheer entertainment, Dervish tales were never presented merely on the level of a fable, legend, or folklore....

Contemporary esoteric systems almost always play on the desire of mankind to seek or acquire knowledge. All but universally neglected in such systems are the often unrecognized barriers which prevent knowledge and understanding....

The stories of the Sufis are tools prepared for a specific purpose. On this level the movements of the characters in a story portray psychological processes....

In December of 1979, Soviet tanks rolled across the borders of Afghanistan, beginning a period of barbaric aggression that triggered a turning point in modern history. Idries Shah's brilliant novel chronicles the courageous 10-year resistance of the Afghan people....

How can it be that the same story is found in Scotland and also in pre-Columbian America? What can account for the durability and persistence of tales? These questions and more are answered in Idries Shah’s remarkable volume World Tales. Listen to learn more....

The Idries Shah Anthology is a special collection of previously published work by Idries Shah, and was edited by Saira Shah....

According to the Sufis, human faculties, although perceptive, are limited: Like a radio set, which can receive only certain electromagnetic waves and not other parts of this band. The inability to transcend the barrier of limited senses explains human subjectivity....

Many countries claim Nasrudin as a native, although few have gone so far as Turkey in exhibiting a "grave" of the wisest fool who ever lived, and holding an annual Nasrudin Festival. He is the greatest, most intriguing, character of folklore found in any Eastern land....

Thinkers of the East is a collection of anecdotes and "parables in action" illustrating the eminently practical and lucid approach of Eastern Dervish teachers....

The "perfuming of a scorpion", referred to by the great Sufi teacher Bahaudin, symbolizes hypocrisy and self-deception: both in the individual and in institutions. In A Perfumed Scorpion, Idries Shah directs attention to both the perfume and the scorpion - the overlay and the reality - in psychology, human behavior and the learning process....

In his best-selling Darkest England, Idries Shah asserts that the English hail from a little-known place called "Hathaby", but their roots go back much farther, perhaps to the distant Asian realm of Sakasina...

A treasure house of teaching materials, assembled in the Sufi manner. Seeker After Truth contains both traditional tales and stories gleaned from contemporary sources, and snippets of table talk, discussions and teachings, letters, and lectures by Idries Shah....