Eric, my whole point here is that the Shah article by Moore has a lot
of bad scholarship, including some outright errors. Whether or not
the assertions have any weight to them, I could not tell you. All I
can tell you is that, from my point of view, the lack of good
scholarship on Moore's part makes his claims about the Shah family
much less likely.
Point 1: How come nobody looks for any positive documents about Ikbal
Ali Shah? How could he not be dismissed from the Foreign Service if
his conduct was that bad? Something is amiss here. If all you are
looking for is the negative, that is all that you will find. Nobody
would have minded if a person of foreign extraction were dismissed
from the Foreign Service, especially if his conduct were that
damning. But Ikbal Ali Shah was not dismissed. Of course, he could
never have made political enemies in an institution such as the
Foreign Service. Especially given the split between P.M MacDonald and
the Labour Party at the time.
Point 2: The webpage concerning Munchhausen's syndrome speaks only
about feigning medical illnesses and medical conditions. And that is
what Munchausen's syndrome is, a feigning of medical symptoms. James
Moore was/is supposedly a good enough scholar to know how to research
that and understand that. He supposedly was/is a good enough scholar
to know the difference between "factitious disorder" and
"Munchhausen's Sydrome" and being a teller of tall tales, and to
render it appropriately in his article, unless he was trying to
portray Ikbal Ali Shah as mentally ill, or at least in a negative
light. It was and is not that hard to get hold of a diagnostic manual
or to interview a psychiatrist or medical school instructor to find
out details. James Moore was/is supposedly a scholar. That is what
scholar's do (or supposed to do). When it is outside their field,
they go to expert in that field. They consult. James Moore did not
do this. James Moore was/is a good enough writer to know exactly what
he was writing, and how he was writing it.
Point 3. In his article James Moore tries to dismiss Idries Shah's
descent from Abraham. And it does not rely upon descent from
Mohammed. However, many people consider Arabs to be descendants of
Ishmael, the first son of Abraham. And it should be noted that many
Jews also claim descent from Abraham. Why should James Moore get
upset about this? And it should be pointed out that Middle Eastern
genealogies are carried in people's names and in naming schemes, and
normally can't be approached in the Western method of genealogy. I
doubt very much that James Moore was/is anything remotely close to an
authority on Middle Eastern genealogy.
Point 4. In the article James Moore is also dismissive of J.G.
Bennett, even though Bennett was far greater than Moore
intellectually. And James Moore's proof is primarily excerpts from
Bennett's books that he, Moore, cites in a way as to cast negative
light by changing the context in which they were written.
Point 5. James Moore himself was not trusted by all of Gurdjieff's
people.
In an interview (http://www.gurdjieff-legacy.org/40articles/
moore.htm), James Moore himself says,
"Perhaps you have in mind Work secrecy and a-historicism? Well,
despite Michel de Salzmann's generous blessing, given when I spoke
with him in Paris on 12 March 1988, several key witnesses 'took the
Fifth'. The moral right of someone like Lise Tracol [Mr. Gurdjieff's
young pupil and housekeeper during his last years in Paris] to
maintain silence is unassailable but don't imagine it helps the
biographer. Vital unpublished texts I also found embargoed. "
and
"Oh yes, if you want to win friends and influence people don't write a
biography of Gurdjieff. A British editor named Nicolas Albery, in his
acidic review 'Gurdjieff — a hagiography', accused me of 'Bending over
backwards to make every explanation possible for his guru's outrageous
behaviour, except the obvious one: a rogue is a rogue is a rogue' — by
virtually the same post came a manuscript copy of Jeffrey P. Zaleski's
highly positive notice for Parabola. But this latter piece was killed,
spiked, never published. Why? According to Jeffrey because the
protective hand of The Gurdjieff Foundation hovering over Parabola
wields the blue pencil of censorship. The relevant Work editors — we
all know their names — evidently considered my portrait of Gurdjieff
unforgivably 'iconoclastic'! "
Point 6. James Moore's motiviation to attempt a smear job on Idries
Shah and his family --
"Telos: Is there any particular presentation of Gurdjieff which makes
your blood boil?
JM: How did you guess? Each time I hear him called 'charlatan'
negative emotion surges. The literati who libel Gurdjieff, themselves
glisten with fraudulence; their critique has no hinterland;
occasionally they cannot even spell his name. He 'had their number' of
course — only read his introduction to Meetings. Nevertheless it hurts
that some promising youngsters first encounter 'Gurdjieff' only in
spiteful caricature . . .. So how shall we, his 'grandsons',
intelligently answer his call: 'I need soldiers who will fight for me
and the New World'? I stress the word intelligently. " --
http://www.gurdjieff-legacy.org/40articles/moore.htm
It should be remembered that Idries Shah questioned in print some
aspects of Gurdjieff, something that provoked a big reaction from some
Gurdjieffians and 4th Way people.
The article by Moore on the Shah family, and the reaction of many
Gurdjieffians and the Gurdjeiff Foundation to Moore's work on
Gurdjieff by his, Moore's, own account, in my mind casts doubt upon
his scholarship and research (as does some other items in his
interview that do not concern the Shah's at all). It does not negate
it, but it does seem to me that one should approach his work much,
much more carefully and cautiously.
As far as Robert Graves, if you do a little research on Graves, you
will find that it is highly possible that he caused all the problems
around Shah concerning the Omar Khayyam manuscript, and possibly other
places. Graves refused to give his sources for his own work, and
looked down upon other scholars, sometimes insultingly so, who did not
share his belief that a poet was better at understanding and
explicating the past and it's works than other scholars. In other
words, it is quite likely that Graves triggered the whole debacle
himself. For example,
'Graves did not come out well from the affair. He had disparaged
FitzGerald’s ability as a translator and poet, and characterized him
as “a dilettante faggot trying to pretend he was a scholar” ' --
http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25336-1947980,00.html
Insults like that are not going get one a fair hearing and objective
treatment. And, in my own opinion, beneath a scholar.
And regarding his less than honest treatment of his source material:
"I understand Graves’ refusal to cite his sources when dealing with
poetic interpretations. Everyone has a right to read a poem and decide
for themselves what they think it means or what they will take away
from it. He has a right to mix up his poetic symbolism any way he
wants to uphold his own spiritual ideas. However, does Graves not have
some obligation to cite his sources correctly when he reconstructs a
historical argument? Does poetic freedom let him off the hook for
misquoting the title of Calder’s book not once but twice? Does it
allow him to quote Nash and credit Myvyrian Archaeology instead, or to
rebuild Cook’s argument step by step, including footnotes, and not
acknowledge it? " -- http://www.robertgraves.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=16&start=30
I have wondered if perhaps the Graves - Shah translation of Khayyam
was Graves' with Omar Shah's name on the cover. On the other hand, it
could be that Omar Ali Shah did not quite know what he was getting
into when it came to Graves' scholarship and manner. It is possible,
given how Graves' treated his sources, that he was the one who
"borrowed" from Edward Allen, and claimed it came from the Shah family
instead. However, this is just speculation. But it should be kept in
mind that Graves' behavior was such that it seems it was not without
reason that Idries Shah would not let him proof-read *The Sufis*.
As to L. P. Elwell-Sutton's claim that the Shah manuscript was a
forgery, I find it odd that he could prove that without access to the
original. One needs to examine the material it is written on, the
inks, the style of script in it's original language, and the usage,
stylistically and grammatically, in the original language, to
determine whether or not an ancient work is a forgery or not. As the
manuscript was not produced, it cannot be proven to be a forgery.
Scott
Post by Eric TCheers, Scott.
I brought the matter up on the Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah talk page at Wikipedia
and looking at the context in Moore, it's been decided that Moore was
talking figuratively and really meant that like Munchhausen, IAS was a
"teller of tall tales", so the Wikipedia article has been changed
accordingly.
Not perfect but still waiting for the cavalry to arrive to finally sort out
Moore and his like. As for the Foreign Office allegations against IAS, I've
read through all 19 documents (available in the files section of the Yahoo!
group The Tenth Donkey*) and I have to say they appear even more damning
than was written about them by Moore, alas.
*http://groups.yahoo.com/group/welcomeHomeFriends/
With good wishes,
eric.
--http://www.sarmouni.dyndns.org/
(server online most UK daylight hours and evenings)
Post by slpJames Moore, in his article, "Neo-Sufism: The Case of Idries
Shah" (http://www.geocities.com/metaco8nitron/moore.html) , wrote,
concerning Idries Shah's father,
"Charming and personable, Ikbal was a lifelong sufferer from
Munchhausen's syndrome -- a condition first diagnosed in 1929, when
he tried to compromise the P. M. Ramsay Macdonald, and Foreign Office
investigation revealed there 'was hardly a word of truth in his
writings.' "
This is very amazing, as Munchuasen's syndrome was not recognized or
even named until 1951 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Munchhausen_syndrome).
Rather amazing that they could diagnose it in 1929.
Farther on, James Moore also quotes Idries Shah,
' "These were the actual Dancing Dervishes -- of the Bektashi Order --
in action! I would have given any thing to have had my camera with
me." '
and then immediately after this writes,
"Alike in his conflation of the Bektashi and Mevlevi tariqas and in
his voyeuristic reaction -- the real Idries Shah exposes himself. "
James Moore is again in error. There are other sufi groups that
practice dancing, including spinning dances and other types of dancing
than the Mevlevi dervishes. The Bektashis being one of these groups
and they have the "Kirklar Semahi" (http://www.allaboutturkey.com/
hacibektas.htm) (http://www.let.uu.nl/~Martin.vanBruinessen/personal/
publications/Melikoff_review.htm) (http://www.mideastweb.org/Middle-
East-Encyclopedia/sufism.htm).
So it would seem to be what actually has occurred is that Idries Shah
has exposed himself as being correct and James Moore as being wrong.
There are other errors of fact, some of which he half-heartedly
attempts to correct in his footnotes.
Scott