Saira Elizabeth Luiza ShahIdries Shah, 72, Indian-Born Writer Of Books on Sufism, New York Times, Retrieved on 2009-01-03 (née Bessie Louise MacKenzie (14 October 1892– 15 August 1960) was a Scottish writer who wrote under the pen name Morag Murray Abdullah. She met the author, poet, diplomat, scholar, and savant Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah and wrote fictional accounts of her marriage and travels in the North-West Frontier Province of British India and the mountains of Afghanistan.Description of My Khyber Marriage, Octagon Press Retrieved on 2008-11-14.Description of Valley of the Giant Buddhas, Octagon Press Retrieved on 2008-11-14.
Life and work Bessie Louise Mackenzie– later Saira Elizabeth Luiza Shah – was born in Colmonell, Ayrshire.MCKENZIE, BESSIE LOUISE; F, 1892, 582 / 1 / 26; COLMONELL from Scotland's People; at Laigh Aldens, Colmonell, Ayrshire Her father, Charles MacKenzie, was a gamekeeper on the estate of Hugh Hamilton.1881 Census of Scotland, Parish: Colmonell; ED: 5; Page: 6; Line: 6; Roll: cssct1881_181 Her mother, née Bessie Margaret Bloxham, had been in domestic service to the Hamilton family.1881 Census of England, Class: RG11; Piece: 102; Folio: 106; Page: 29; GSU roll: 1341023 Bessie went to school first at Assel Primary School, Girvan Parish, and aged 13 moved to Pinwherry Public School.Admission Register for Pinwherry Public School in Colmonell Parish, CO3/10/7/71/8, Ayrshire Archives Her future husband, Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah, was descended from the Sadaat of Paghman. During World War 1 Bessie met him in Edinburgh, where he was studying medicine at Edinburgh Medical School.Octagon Press authors' biographical details Retrieved on 2008-11-14. Overcoming the resistance of both their families, they married, and travelled a great deal, including some brief visits to India. They had four children, the Sufi writers and translators Amina Shah (b. 1918), Omar Ali-Shah (b. 1922) and Idries Shah (b. 1924), and Osman Ian H Shah (b. 1929).
Writing under the pseudonym of "Morag Murray Abdullah", her first book, entitled My Khyber Marriage: Experiences of a Scotswoman as the Wife of a Pathan Chieftain's SonMorag Murray Abdullah, My Khyber Marriage, Octagon Press, . was described as an autobiography of meeting her husband, falling in love and leaving behind her family and her safe middle-class Scottish family life, to travel to the war-torn North-West Frontier Province of British India and her chieftain husband's ancestral homeland in the high mountains of the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan. It described a Protestant woman learning and adapting to a Muslim culture, laws and rigid codes of honour. The author depicted a journey from the predictable into the unknown.Description and biography of My Khyber Marriage at Amazon Retrieved on 2008-11-14. This account was described by Saira Shah, one of her grand-daughters, as a 'lightly fictionalized' account. Evidence cited by Nile Green suggests that some key elements in the book – such as whether her parents-in-law lived near the Khyber Pass on the border with Afghanistan, rather than in the plains just north of Delhi – are not supported by available evidence of her travels.
Her second book, Valley of the Giant Buddhas,Morag Murray Abdullah, Valley of the Giant Buddhas, Octagon Press, . was a travelogue describing a journey from Cairo through Arabia to Afghanistan when the author accompanied her husband on diplomatic missions and journeys. It was published in 1993 as a first edition, some 30 years after the author's death. The final chapters describe life in the valleys and remote mountain regions.Description and biography of Valley of the Giant Buddhas at Amazon Retrieved on 2008-11-14. The statues referred to in the book are the Buddhas of Bamyan which were blown up by the Taliban. The Weekend Telegraph described the work as "a book for connoisseurs of the unexpected."
She also wrote a paper, "The Kaif System", in New Research on Current Philosophical Systems, London: Octagon Press, (1968).
Saira Elizabeth Luiza Shah died on 15 August 1960, in Hampstead, London. Her grave is marked by a tombstone in the Muslim section of the cemetery at Brookwood, Woking, Surrey, England.Photographs of the Shah family gravestones Retrieved on 2008-11-14. Her husband died on 4 November 1969 in Tangier, Morocco, as the result of a motor accident.The Times, Obituary, Saturday 8 November 1969.
Further reading
References
External links Octagon Press (Archived)