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The Caliph's House
By turns hilarious and harrowing, this work by an acclaimed English travel writer is the story of his family's move from the gray skies of London to the sun-drenched city of Casablanca, where Islamic tradition and African folklore converge--and nothing is as easy as it seems.
Sorcerer's Apprentice
As a child, Tahir Shah learned the secrets of illusion from an Indian magician. This is the story of his apprenticeship to one of India's master conjurors and his initiation into the brotherhood of godmen. Learning to unmask and practice illusion, he seeks out the subcontinents sadhus, sages, sorcerers, hypnotists, and humbugs. His quest exposes a side of India that most writers never imagine exists. Photos.
In Arabian Nights
Shortly after the 2005 London bombings, Tahir Shah was thrown into a Pakistani prison on suspicion of spying for Al-Qaeda. What sustained him during his terrifying, weeks-long ordeal were the stories his father told him as a child in Morocco. Inspired by this, on his return to his adopted homeland he embarked on an adventure worthy of the mythical Arabian Nights, going in search of the stories and storytellers that have nourished this most alluring of countries for centuries. Wandering through the medinas of Fez and Marrakech, criss-crossing the Saharan sands and tasting the hospitality of ordinary Moroccans, he collected a treasury of traditional stories recounted by a vivid and eccentric cast of characters: from master masons who work only at night to Sufi wise men who write for soap operas and Tuareg guides addicted to reality TV. Himself a link in the chain of scholars and teachers who have passed such tales down from father to son, mother to daughter, Shah reveals a world and a way of thinking that most visitors to Morocco barely know exist.
TIMBUCTOO
For centuries, Europe's great explorers were sent out to find Timbuctoo - a city supposedly built from pure gold. Most of them never returned alive. At the height of the Timbuctoo Mania, 200 years ago, an illiterate American sailor was found on the streets of snowbound London, claiming to have been taken there as a white slave.
Travels with Myself
TRAVELS WITH MYSELF is a collection of selected writings by Tahir Shah, acclaimed Anglo-Afghan author and champion of the intrepid. Written over twenty years, the many pieces form an eclectic treasury of stories from Latin America, Asia, Africa, and beyond. Some consider the lives of women in society, both in East and West. The women-only police stations of Brazil, for instance, as well as the female inmates waiting to die on America's Death Row, or the young widows who clear landmines for a living in northern Cambodia. More still look at Morocco, where Shah and his family reside in a mansion set squarely in the middle of a sprawling Casablanca shantytown. And, yet more reflect on the oddities and contradictions of the modern world. Such as why, in India each summer, hundreds of thousands line up to swallow live fish; or how the Model T Ford sounded the death knell of lavish Edwardian ostrich-feather hats.
The Tahir Shah Travel Reader
Over the last thirty years, Tahir Shah has roamed the furthest limits of the world, and produced a stupefying body of travel literature, embracing a cornucopia of quests. He has sought out the so-called Birdmen of Peru, studied magic with the godmen of India, searched for the mysterious lost city of the Incas, and for the fabled lost treasure of Mughal India. Shah has noted that seeking out the hidden underbelly of the lands through which he travels is centrally important to him. The themes of zigzagging adventure, spontaneity, and walking a path that's utterly original are found throughout his travelogues. As far as Shah is concerned, 'Travel itself is not only the destination, but the grea...
Jinn Hunter
Oddball and loner Oliver Quinn was raised by his uncle, the proprietor of New York's most bizarre emporium of Oriental rugs, Ozymandias & Son. Zoned out more than he's zoned in, Oliver perceives patterns in everything - from fallen autumn leaves in Central Park, to the freckles on a stranger's face. When his uncle gives him a mysterious paperweight - said to have been in the family for centuries - since it was discovered by a farmer on the Mongolian Steppes - Oliver's life changes in the most extraordinary way. Gaining entry into the secret Realm that shrouds all our lives, he learns what he imagines to be reality is no more than a fragment of what actually exists. In a multiverse, where eve...
The Reason to Write
As a child living in the English countryside, a constant stream of people turned up at Tahir Shah's family home, all in search of his father - the writer and thinker Idries Shah. Among them were literary giants, including the classicist Robert Graves, Nobel laureate Doris Lessing, and the celebrated American novelist, J. D. Salinger. On one occasion when Salinger had just departed, Tahir asked why the author of The Catcher in the Rye wrote books at all. His father responded by saying: 'Salinger writes because if he stops he'll turn to stone.' Inspired by this quote, The Reason to Write is an account of Tahir's journey through the trials and tribulations of what it is to be an author. Describ...
The Middle East Bedside Book
Did you know that... King John of England offered to convert to Islam and hand over fealty of his kingdom in return for help from the Moors? Goethe was much influenced by the Persian poet Hafiz, known to his 14th-century contemporaries as "sugarlips"? The world's oldest university was founded in Cairo - long before those in the West? Georgian architecture was anticipated in at least one Persian building of the 6th century B.C.? Freudian theories of dreams were propounded by Hakim Sanai of Ghazna centuries before Freud's birth? The idea of evolution appeared in the works of Rumi, who died in 1273? This book is packed with tidbits of new information, enchanting stories, anecdotes, and traveler...
In Search of King Solomon's Mines
King Solomon, the Bible's wisest king, was possessed of extraordinary wealth. The grand temple he built in Jerusalem was covered in gold. Over the ages, many have sought to find the source of the great king's wealth -- but none with so much flair, wit, or whimsy as Tahir Shah. Intrigued by a map he finds in a shop not far from the site of the temple, Shah assembles a multitude of clues to the location of Solomon's mines. From ancient texts to modern hearsay, all point across the Red Sea to Ethiopia. Shah's trail takes him on a wild ride by taxi, bus, camel, and donkey to the gold-bearing corners of this storied and beautiful country. He interviews the hyena man of Harar, is hauled up on a rope to enter a remote cliff-face monastery, and stumbles upon an illegal gold mine where thousands of men, women, and children dig with their hands. But the hardest leg of the journey is to the accursed mountain of Tullu Wallel, where legend says the devil keeps watch over the entrance to an ancient mine shaft... Book jacket.
