Inayat Khan

Hazrat Inayat Khan عنایت خان رحمت خان
Title	Pir-o-Murshid, Shaikh al-Mashaikh, Tansen Zamanihal, Yuzkhan, Bakhshi, Shah, Mir-Khayl[1]
Personal
Born	Inayat Khan Rehmat Khan 5 July 1882 Baroda, Bombay Presidency, British India
Died	5 February 1927 (age 44) New Delhi, British India
Religion	Islam
Spouse	Pirani Ameena Begum
Children	Vilayat, Hidayat, Noor, Khair-un-Nisa Inayat Khan
Denomination	Sunni
Jurisprudence	Hanafi
Creed	Sufism
Profession	Musician, Pir, Musicologist
Muslim leader
Successor	Vilayat
Profession	Musician, Pir, Musicologist

Inayat Khan عنایت خان رحمت خان
Universal Sufi Temple, Netherlands
Venerated in	Inayati
Major shrine	Dargah in Hazrat Nizamuddin, Delhi

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Category:Western Sufism
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Inayat Khan Rehmat Khan (Urdu: عنایت خان رحمت خان ‎) (5 July 1882 – 5 February 1927) was a professor of musicology, singer, exponent of the saraswati vina, poet, philosopher, and pioneer of the transmission of Sufism in the West.^[2] At the urging of his students, and on the basis of his ancestral Sufi tradition and four-fold training and authorization at the hands of Sayyid Abu Hashim Madani (d. 1907) of Hyderabad, he established an order of Sufism (the Sufi Order) in London in 1914. By the time of his death in 1927, centers had been established throughout Europe and North America, and multiple volumes of his teachings had seen publication.^[3]

Inayat Khan's teaching emphasized the oneness of God (tawhid) and the underlying harmony of the revelations communicated by the prophets of all the world's great religions. His discourses treated such varied subjects as religion, art, music, ethics, philosophy, psychology, and health and healing. His primary concern was the mystical pursuit of God-realization.^[4] To this end he established an Inner School comprising four stages of contemplative study based on the traditional Sufi disciplines of mujahada, muraqaba, mushahada, and mu‘ayyana, which he rendered in English as concentration, contemplation, meditation, and realization.^[5]

Life[]

Inayat Khan was born in Baroda to a noble Mughal family. His paternal ancestors, comprising yüzkhans (Mughal lords) and bakshys (shamans), were Turkmen from the Chagatai Khanate who settled in Sialkot, Punjab during the reign of Amir Timur. Inayat Khan's maternal grandfather, Sangitratna Maulabakhsh Sho'le Khan, was a pioneering Hindustani classical musician and educator known as “the Beethoven of India.” His maternal grandmother, Qasim Bibi, was from the royal house of Tipu Sultan of Mysore.^[6]

Inayat Khan's Sufi sources included both the traditions of his paternal ancestors (remembered as the Mahashaikhan) and the tutelage he received from Sayyid Abu Hashim Madani.^[7] From the latter he inherited four transmissions, constituting succession in the Chishti, Suhrawardi, Qadiri, and Naqshbandi orders of Sufism. Of these, the Chishti lineage, traced through the Delhi-based legacy of Shah Kalim Allah Jahanabadi, was primary.^[8]

Inayat Khan toured the United States with his brother Maheboob Khan and cousin Mohammed Ali Khan between the years 1910 and 1912. In New York, he met the woman who would become his wife, Ora Ray Baker (henceforth known as Ameena Begum). Further travels took him to England, France, and Russia. During the First World War, living in London, he oversaw the founding of an order of Sufism under his guidance. Following the war he traveled widely, and numerous Sufi centers sprang up in his wake in Europe and the U.S. He ultimately settled in Suresnes, France, at the house and khanqah (Sufi lodge) known as Fazal Manzil. In 1926 he returned to India, and on Feb. 5, 1927, he died in Delhi.^{[9][10][11][12]}

Foundational principles[]

Ten principles, known as the Ten Sufi Thoughts, enunciate the universal spiritual values that are foundational to Inayat Khan's mystical philosophy.

1. There is One God, the Eternal, the Only Being; none exists save God.
2. There is One Master, the Guiding Spirit of all Souls, Who constantly leads followers towards the light.
3. There is One Holy Book, the sacred manuscript of nature, the only scripture which can enlighten the reader.
4. There is One Religion, the unswerving progress in the right direction towards the ideal, which fulfills the life's purpose of every soul.
5. There is One Law, the law of reciprocity, which can be observed by a selfless conscience together with a sense of awakened justice.
6. There is One Brotherhood and Sisterhood, the human brotherhood and sisterhood, which unites the children of earth indiscriminately in the Parenthood of God.
7. There is One Moral, the love which springs forth from self-denial, and blooms in deeds of beneficence.
8. There is One Object of Praise, the beauty which uplifts the heart of its worshippers through all aspects from the seen to the unseen.
9. There is One Truth, the true knowledge of our being, within and without, which is the essence of all wisdom.
10. There is One Path, the annihilation of the false ego in the real, which raises the mortal to immortality, and in which resides all perfection.^[13]

Bibliography[]

Musicological works

Balasan Gitmala

Sayaji Garbawali

Inayat Git Ratnawali

Inayat Harmonium Shikshak

Inayat Fidal Shikshak

Minqar-i Musiqar

Sufi works

1914 A Sufi Message of Spiritual Liberty

1915 The Confessions of Inayat Khan

1918 A Sufi Prayer of Invocation

Hindustani Lyrics

Songs of India

The Divan of Inayat Khan Akibat

1919 Love, Human and Divine

The Phenomenon of the Soul

Pearls from the Ocean Unseen

1921 In an Eastern Rosegarden

1922 The Way of Illumination

The Message

1923 The Inner Life

The Mysticism of Sound

Notes from the Unstruck Music from the Gayan Manuscript

The Alchemy of Happiness

1924 The Soul—Whence and Whither

1926 The Divine Symphony, or Vadan

Posthumous Sufi works

1927 Nirtan, or The Dance of the Soul

The Purpose of Life

1928 The Unity of Religious Ideals

1931 Health

Character Building; The Art of Personality

1934 Education

1935 The Mind World

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

1936 The Bowl of Saki

The Solution of the Problem of the Day

1937 Cosmic Language

Moral Culture

1938 Rassa Shastra: The Science of Life's Creative Forces

1939 Three Plays

Metaphysics: the Experience of the Soul in Different Planes of Existence

1980 Nature Meditations

Collected works

1960-67 The Sufi Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan, 12 vols.

1988- Complete Works of Pir-o-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan: Original Texts, 12 vols. (to date)

2016- The Sufi Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan: Centennial Edition, 4 vols. (to date)

Music[]

Inayat Khan's maternal grandfather, Maulabakhsh Sho‘le Khan, having been raised to royal rank in Mysore, was invited to Baroda in the capacity of chief court musician. There, in 1882, he founded a state-sponsored school of music known as the Gayan Shala, which today survives as the Faculty of Performing Arts of the Maharaja Sayajirao University. Inayat Khan learned music from his grandfather as a child, continued his studies at the Gayan Shala, and became a professor at the school at the age of 17. Following successful tours of India in which he sang in exclusive circles, he stayed for four years in Hyderabad, where the Nizam dubbed him “the Tansen of the Age” (Tansen Zamanihal). In Calcutta, in 1909, the Gramophone Company Ltd. recorded thirty-one of his songs. Between 1910 and 1912, Inayat Khan traveled in the U.S., lecturing on music and performing. As an expediency, he and his brother and cousin accompanied the well-known orientalist dancer Ruth St Denis, but parted ways with her over artistic differences and her request for a certificate of proficiency. Shifting to Europe, musical engagements continued until the advent of the First World War.^[14] In Moscow, Inayat Khan collaborated with Leo Tolstoy on an operatic production of Kalidasa’s Shakuntala.^[15] In Paris, he met and influenced Debussy.^[16] Following the war, Inayat Khan discontinued performing music and devoted all of his time to Sufism. Inayat Khan's teachings on the spiritual dimensions of sound and music are collected in The Mysticism of Sound.^[17]

See also[]

• Inayati Order
• Vilayat Inayat Khan (son)
• Western Sufism

References[]

External links[]

• Works by Inayat Khan at Project Gutenberg
• Works by Inayat Khan at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Works by or about Inayat Khan at Internet Archive
• https://openthemagazine.com/columns/hazrat-inayat-khan-a-sufi-maestro-in-moscow/.