Saira Elizabeth Luiza Shah

{{Infobox person

| name = Saira Elizabeth Luiza Shah

| image = S_E_L_Shah.jpg

| image_size =

| caption =

| birth_name = Bessie Louise MacKenzie{{Primary source inline|date=August 2024}}

| birth_date = 14 October 1892{{Primary source inline|date=August 2024}}

| birth_place = Colmonell, Ayrshire{{Primary source inline|date=August 2024}}

| death_date = 15 August {{Death year and age|1960|1892}}

| death_place =

| other_names = Morag Murray Abdullah

| known_for =

| occupation = Writer, traveller

| nationality =

| parents = Charles Mackenzie; Bessie Margaret Bloxham{{Primary source inline|date=August 2024}}

| spouse = Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah

| children = Amina Shah, Omar Ali Shah, Idries Shah, Osman I.H. Shah{{citation needed|date=August 2024}}

| relations =

}}

Saira Elizabeth Luiza Shah[https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE0DA133CF931A35751C1A960958260 Idries Shah, 72, Indian-Born Writer Of Books on Sufism], New York Times, Retrieved on 2009-01-03 (née Bessie Louise MacKenzie;{{Primary source inline|date=August 2024}} 14 October 1892{{Primary source inline|date=August 2024}} – 15 August 1960) was a Scottish writer who wrote under the pen name Morag Murray Abdullah. She met the Pashtun 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.[http://www.octagonpress.com/titles/books/mykh.htm Description of My Khyber Marriage, Octagon Press] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081014134218/http://www.octagonpress.com/titles/books/mykh.htm |date=14 October 2008 }} Retrieved on 2008-11-14.[http://www.octagonpress.com/titles/books/vagi.htm Description of Valley of the Giant Buddhas, Octagon Press] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080928163801/http://www.octagonpress.com/titles/books/vagi.htm |date=28 September 2008 }} Retrieved on 2008-11-14.

Life and work

Bessie Louise Mackenzie{{Primary source inline|date=August 2024}} – 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{{Primary source inline|date=August 2024}} 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{{Primary source inline|date=August 2024}} 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{{Primary source inline|date=August 2024}} 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{{Primary source inline|date=August 2024}} 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.{{cite journal

|last = Moore

|first = James

|author-link = James Moore (Cornish author)

|title = Neo-Sufism: The Case of Idries Shah

|journal = Religion Today

|volume = 3

|issue = 3

|pages = 4–8

|year = 1986

|url = http://www.gurdjieff-legacy.org/40articles/neosufism.htm

|doi = 10.1080/13537908608580605

|id =

|access-date = 2009-11-01

|url-status = dead

|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20130724030211/http://www.gurdjieff-legacy.org/40articles/neosufism.htm

|archive-date = 24 July 2013

|df = dmy-all

|url-access= subscription

}}[http://www.octagonpress.com/authors/moragmurrayabdullah.htm Octagon Press authors' biographical details] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081014223546/http://www.octagonpress.com/authors/moragmurrayabdullah.htm |date=14 October 2008 }} 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.{{Cite book |last=Green |first=Nile |title=Empire's Son, Empire's Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah. |date=4 July 2024 |publisher=W.W. Norton & Company |isbn=978-1324002413 |location=New York |page=62}} 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).{{Cite book |last=General Register Office, United Kingdom |title=Reference: Volume 2a, Page 673 |date=Jan-Mar 1927}}

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, {{ISBN|0-86304-055-1}}. 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.[https://www.amazon.com/dp/0863040551 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.{{Cite book |last=Shah |first=Saira |title=The Storyteller's daughter |publisher=Anchor Books |year=2003 |isbn=1-4000-3147-8 |location=New York |page=i |language=English}} 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, or 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, {{ISBN|0-86304-065-9}}. was a study of the people and customs of the Afghan people whom she said that she had encountered in her travels, accompanying her husband on diplomatic missions and journeys into the valleys and into the remote mountain regions.[https://www.amazon.com/dp/0863040659 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.[https://www.flickr.com/gp/61462977@N00/bH2t7f 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.