Please note that Pir Zia wrote the following letter on 8 February 2023, while visiting Baroda, the birthplace of Hazrat Inayat Khan.

Dear Companions on the Path,

May this find you well. I am writing to you on my phone from a picturesque room on the top floor of Naulakha—otherwise known as Maulabakhsh House—the house in Baroda in which Murshid grew up. With me here is Pirani Sartaj, close by are many family members, and across the courtyard are our Inayati guests, Tarana, Shams Al Haqq, and Ruhiya. As I write, I can hear Tarana singing Murshid’s songs from the Minqar-i Musiqar.

We’ve been in India for more than a week now. Our first days were spent in Delhi, visiting the tombs of the saints and poets, and searching for—and indeed finding!—writings of the great Delhiite Sufi theologian Shah Waliullah, whose Sata‘at and Lama‘at I mentioned in a recent Zephyr. I experienced great serenity at Shah Waliullah’s grave, which is inconspicuously situated in a little-frequented cemetery in Old Delhi. There was also an exquisite atmosphere at the tomb of Bibi Fatima Sam, the lady saint for whom Khwaja Nizamuddin Awliya had so much affection and esteem. When someone inaptly asked Khwaja Nizamuddin whether as a woman she could rightly be considered a saint, Khwaja Nizamuddin pointedly replied, “If a tiger leaps out at you from the brush, do you ask, ‘Is it a male tiger or a female tiger!’”

Murshid’s resting place, or Dargah, is where it is because the land was offered by the then-custodian of Khwaja Nizamuddin’s shrine, Murshid’s friend and admirer Khwaja Hasan Nizami. This year’s anniversary program, or Urs, lasted three days. On the third day, February 5th, we carried an embroidered sheet from the tomb of Khwaja Nizamuddin to the tomb of Murshid, where we recited prayers and listened to ecstatic music. Throughout the three days, music of a very exalted kind was pervasive, and the sounds of several instruments—violin, sitar, vina, rabab, santur, tabla, pakhavaj, tambura, and voice—together wove a tapestry of rhythms and tones as bright and fragrant as the golden sheet we carried through the urban village. You can find more pictures here.

Another splendid highlight of the Urs was the lively and impressive presentation made by students of the Hope Project, the initiative established by my father in the 1970s to help impoverished people in the district to meet their needs and find a promising path forward in life. The Hope Project has become a model for similar projects throughout India and beyond, and for good reason. One can see with one’s own eyes how the Hope Project is creatively answering great needs, and in doing so transforming the circumstances and outlooks of individuals and families over multiple generations. For more information about the Hope Project and how you can get involved—as I did nearly thirty years ago when I worked there for a year as a volunteer – please click here.

What moved me most of all during this year’s Urs was the consecration of two new maqams, or shrines, within the complex: the first dedicated to Murshid’s Murshid, Sayyid Abu Hashim Madani, and the second dedicated to Murshid’s daughter Pirzadi-Shahida Noor-un-nisa. This expansion of the Dargah was made possible thanks to the ongoing support of the Murshid Mohammed Ali Khan Foundation and the indefatigable efforts of Dr. Farida Ali, who looks after Murshid’s Dargah, and Syed Mustafa Kaleemi, who looks after Sayyid Abu Hashim Madani’s Dargah in Hyderabad. The two new memorials contain relics (tabarrukat) of Sayyid Abu Hashim and Pirzadi Noor respectively. Soon after visiting her father’s grave following his sudden departure from the world, Noor composed the “Song to the Madzub,” in which she expresses her earnest longing to find rest at the feet of her father. With the dedication of the new maqam, in a powerfully symbolic fashion Noor’s wish has been fulfilled.

Baroda is very different from Delhi, butone feels Murshid’s presence as strongly here at the place of his birth as one does at the place of his death. The room in which Murshid was born has been kept as a place of meditation, and, in conjunction with my aunt Harunnisa Begum, a generous German murid, Petra Beate Schildbach, has arranged for a spacious and attractive hall to be built downstairs, where concerts and Universal Worship services are sometimes held. We will convene there for a sama (mystical music soirée)—a gathering in which, by the time these lines reach you, many of you will have already taken part online. God willing, the sama will be followed the next morning by a public concert in memory of Maulabakhsh by my good friend Pandit Srinivas Reddy.

In this world, happiness and sadness are rarely far apart. In the midst of these blessed days of pilgrimage we received the news yesterday of the terrible earthquake that wreaked such utter and unimaginable destruction in Turkey and Syria. The pain and grief is simply beyond reckoning. In our meditation sessions in the Birth Room we are lifting up heartfelt prayers. At certain moments one is given a glimpse of the mobilization of the angels and spirit guides in great numbers who are tending to the transitioning souls and the shattered hearts of those they have left behind. As truly horrific as the tragedy is, just behind the curtain one is able to witness an enormous outpouring of love and light from the depths of existence, meeting what has happened with a care (inayat) beyond all limits. May we who still live in these bodies of matter ally ourselves with the invisible ones who are responding to the need, and offer what help we can, both spiritually and materially. Below please find information as to how those affected may be helped.

Yours ever,
Pir Zia

As of February 14th, the death toll in Turkiye and Syria has surpassed 40,000. We continue to pray for the situation. If you wish to donate money to support relief efforts, here is a list of organizations that we have put together in consultation with friends and the team at Closer Than You Think.

The Biography of Pir-o-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan
A Six-Part Course w/ Pir Zia Inayat Khan via Zoom
Sundays, April 16th to May 21st, 2:00 pm EDT / 8:00 pm CET

The highly anticipated reissue of the 1979 edition of the biography of Hazrat Inayat Khan is now back in print, ready for our collective study with Pir Zia Inayat Khan, Hazrat’s central lineage carrier (sajjada nishin).
Throughout this six-part course, all are invited to learn about Hazrat Inayat Khan’s life story, from his origins as an aristocratic young music professor in western India through to becoming the iconic sage Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan, whose spiritual teachings, a century later, continue to inspire countless people throughout the world. In this spring series, we will delve into Hazrat Inayat Khan’s life and teachings in order to deepen our understanding of the legacy he has bequeathed to those who travel in his caravan and to the world at large. Click here for details and to register.

Sama Live from Baroda
Recordings Now Available

As part of celebrations of Pir-o-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan’s 96th Urs, Pir Zia and friends invited us to gather via Zoom for a very special Sama, live from Baroda (Vadodara), India. Baroda is birthplace of our Murshid and the home of the living musical lineage of the Inayatiyya. Joining Pir Zia live from Baroda were classical Indian musician and scholar Pandit Srinivas Reddy, and samazan Shams al Haqq. Click here to view the recordings.

Inayatiyya Virtual Khanqah
February 24th, 2:00 pm EST / 8:00 pm CET

Our gathering this month is open to everyone and we invite you to join us Friday, February 24th at 2 pm EST for a very special event. Our sister on the path, Noorsema Ebru Goker will present her ground-breaking studies and article, “The Effect of Sufi Breath and Meditation on Quantitative EEG”, published by the Journal of NeuroPhilosophy in Turkey. She will share her scientific study carried out by neuroscientists in hospitals to observe the effect of two of Murshid’s teachings and practices (Zikr and Muraqba) on the brain. Please join us! Click here for more details.

Celebrating Black History Month
February 26th, 3:00 pm ET / 9:00 pm CET

The Inayatiyya teachings herald from Sufi traditions rooted in Persia and India. Join us for this unique opportunity to explore parallel Sufi teachings from West Africa. Before Hazrat Inayat Khan arrived in North America, in the early 1800s an enslaved Muslim man, Omar ibn Said, arrived on this continent. New scholarship unveils his Sufi connections! Scholars Dr. Carl Ernst and Dr. Mbaye Lo will share the findings of their research into Omar ibn Said’s life. Click here for details and to register.

The Zephyr is a monthly newsletter of Inayatiyya, an interfaith mystical fellowship with branches worldwide. For more gatherings, please visit our Inayatiyya Digital Programs Calendar for Spring 2023.

18 January 2023

Dear Companions on the Path,

When Hagar and her infant son Ishmael arrived in the Paran desert and Abraham took his leave (peace be upon the three of them), there was no water to be seen. Hagar set Ishmael down and walked back and forth seven times between the hills of Safa and Marwa. Returning to Ishmael, she found that a spring was welling up. It hadn’t been there until she took her walk – not visibly at least. When times are uncertain, sometimes a walk is exactly what is needed to reveal the way forward.

Just as lockdown was declared three years ago, Sartaj and I moved into a little house by the river in Richmond. A daily walk, whenever possible, has always been my custom, so I lost no time in exploring our new neighborhood by foot. To my fascination I found that there were virtually no cars on the roads, flâneurs were strolling in droves, and those who weren’t walking were on their porches, waving at passers-by, playing instruments, and drinking tea. I felt as though I had stepped into William Morris’ News from Nowhere. With time, however, normalcy gradually returned. Cars reappeared and porch sitters disappeared. My walks have continued, but – with the exception of an occasional runner or dog walker – the sidewalks are now largely vacant.

It isn’t always easy to make time for my walk. I might be tired after a long day, or my inbox might be overflowing. I remind myself then that a walk is not so much an expenditure of energy as an infusion of élan vital. My work won’t suffer but will instead gain a boost if I imbibe fresh air and stretch my limbs. What is more, a walk is a chance to greet human neighbors, cats, birds, trees, clouds, and sunbeams. It might be an opportunity to hail the last sycamore leaf of autumn or the first purple crocus of spring. You never know who is going to cross your path or what the sylphs of the sky will send down. Unless it’s torrential, rain isn’t a reason for me to cancel my walk. Why shouldn’t I bathe outdoors?

Walking runs in the family. Hazrat Inayat Khan was known to take regular strolls through Suresnes along a route he especially favored. Even more than Murshid was, my uncle Shaikh al-Mashaik is prone to long walks, in Suresnes and elsewhere, and I’m convinced it’s the secret to his excellent health and longevity. He turned ninety-five last year and is as vigorous as ever, God bless him.

Walking also runs in the larger spiritual family of the Inayatiyya. Murshid taught his murids to silently intone zikr while walking. The method is outlined in Shah Nizam ad-Din Aurangabadi’s Nizam al-qulub. When going briskly, illa’llahu is said with every footstep. When going slowly, on the right foot one says la, on the left foot ilaha, on the right foot illa, and on the left foot ‘llahu. When going at a moderate pace, on the right foot la ilaha is said, and on the left illa’llahu. Throughout, one is walking in the consciousness of one’s Murshid (and therefore Murshid’s Murshid, etc.).

As it was in the past, so may it be in the future. My grandson Kara-Suleyman, now a year old, has begun taking his first wobbly but determined steps. “To learn wisdom at every step on the path of life is the only work of the Sufi,” said Kara-Suleyman’s great-great-grandfather.

Sauntering is an interesting word. Thoreau believed it arose as a description of medieval pilgrims making their way to the sainte terre, or “holy land,” of Jerusalem. The truth is that sacred ground is already under the foot of every saunterer whose soul and soles are in good accord.

Now, isn’t it time to step out the door?

Yours ever,
Pir Zia

Inayatiyya Contributions 2022

We are incredibly grateful for all of your gifts in 2022. While we are still tallying totals, preliminarily it looks as though we raised $441,355 in donations last year, including $186,000+ toward our fall appeal and $74,322 from tithes. If you gave a gift in 2022, please look for a letter from us to arrive around the end of this month. Shukran!

Inayatiyya International Board
Monthly Newsletter, January 2023

This month we commence with a monthly newsletter from the Inayatiyya International Board (IIB). The IIB is leading on our global strategy, working closely with the World Wide Message Council, National Boards, the Astana, and Pir Zia. We have a few updates to share with you. Read more

The Zephyr is a monthly newsletter of Inayatiyya, an interfaith mystical fellowship with branches worldwide. For more gatherings, please visit our Inayatiyya Digital Programs Calendar for Spring 2023.

21 December 2022

Dear Companions on the Path,

When Shams met Rumi he set the latter’s books on fire. How do we know? The incident is described in a book (1). Book knowledge cannot compare with real knowledge – or so the books tell us. That being said, the same Shams-i Tabriz who thought so little of Rumi’s library also inspired him to compose Divan-i Shams, one of the great books of all time.

In the human body, old cells are continuously shed as new ones take shape. Looking at my bookshelves, I see the same phenomenon at play. Books I don’t expect to open again make their way back into the great Circle of Life. Meanwhile, new (or new-to-me) books routinely take their place.

I frequently borrow books from the library. In a world where buying and selling fills every visible nook and cranny of our urban topography, libraries and parks are a saving grace. Judging by their gentle manner, the librarians at my local branch are likely some of the happiest people I know. Borges wrote, “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” These librarians seem to be moved by just such a vision, and it gives them an abiding calm.

As the solar year nears its close, I am looking back on the books I had the pleasure of reading over the last twelve months. Let me share a few highlights.

As a child I read J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, but for one reason or another never went on to The Lord of the Rings. This year I corrected the omission. Tolkien is a masterful world-builder, and I find his evocations of landscape rapturous. My friend Peter Kingsley warned me at the outset, however, that despite the obvious spagyric symbolism in the books, there is something fundamentally contra-alchemical in the notion of the Ring as a thing to be destroyed rather than reckoned with, transformed, and redeemed (2).

As I made my way through the trilogy I could very well see what Peter meant, and was also taken aback by the attribution of “slanting” eyes and “swarthy” skin to the story’s villains. And then there is the matter of the Orcs, a whole race that is ostensibly lowly and evil by genetic predisposition. In The Two Towers, the plant-man Treebeard says of the Isengarders, “Are they Men he (Sauron) has ruined, or has he blended the races of Orcs and Men? That would be a black evil!” Comments like that, raising the specter of eugenics, truly give one pause. There is some consolation, however, in learning that Tolkien was vocally opposed to aparthied in South Africa and the maniacal racism of the Nazis. And there certainly are enchanting passages in The Lord of the Rings. These are a few that I noted down:

• Gandalf to Frodo: “Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends. I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it. And he is bound up with the fate of the Ring. My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end; and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many – yours not least.”
• Tom Bombadil to the traveling hobbits when asked his name: “Tell me, who are you, alone, yourself and nameless?”
• Gandalf to Saruman: “He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.”
• Pippin on Treebeard’s eyes: “One felt as if there was an enormous well behind them, filled up with ages of memory, and long, slow, steady thinking; but their surface was sparkling with the present; like sun shimmering on the outer leaves of a vast tree, or on the ripples of a very deep lake.”
• Treebeard to Merry: “Hill. Yes, that was it. But it is a hasty word for a thing that has stood here ever since this part of the world was shaped.”
• Gwaihir to Gandalf: “The Sun shines through you.”
• Aragorn to Pippin: “One who cannot cast away a treasure in need is in fetters.”
• Frodo’s sleeping face: “Frodo’s face was peaceful, the marks of fear and care had left it; but it looked old, old and beautiful, as if the chiseling of the shaping years was now revealed in many fine lines that had before been hidden, though the identity of the face was not changed.”
• Faramir on the ritual of the people of Gondor before each meal: “We look towards Numenor that was, and beyond to Elvenhome that is, and to that which is beyond Elvenhome and ever will be.”
• Frodo to Faramir: “Certainly I looked for no such friendship as you have shown. To have found it turns evil to great good.”

Turning now to Sufi books, I continue to take great delight in the collections at Fazal Manzil and the Astana (3). Specifically, I have been rediscovering some of the marvelous translations of Sufi classics issued by the once-prolific publisher Octagon Press.

Let me name three. ‘Abd ar-Razzaq Kashani’s Glossary of Sufi Technical Terms (Kitab al-istilahat as-sufiyya), translated by Nabil Safwat (with the original Arabic text included), is an extremely valuable handbook of Sufi terminology as explained by an major exponent of the school of Shaykh al-Akbar Ibn al-‘Arabi. This past spring we discussed its definitions at the Astana, and we plan to return to it in 2023. Abu Ghanim al-Maqdisi’s Revelation of the Secrets of the Birds and Flowers (Kashf al-asrar ‘an il-hikam al-muda‘a fi tuyur wa’l-azhar), translated by Irene Hoare and Darya Galy (again, with the Arabic included), is a highly refined work of spiritual belles lettres in which the author consults the animals and plants of the garden concerning the deeper meanings of life (4). As some of you may recall, we had recourse to it in The Whorl and the World.

Finally, Shah Wali Allah Dihlavi’s Sufism and the Islamic Tradition (Sata‘at and Lamahat), translated by G.N. Jalbani (alas, without the Arabic), is an extraordinary exploration of the workings of the inner planes by an Indian Sufi scholar who influentially undertook to bring contrasting schools of thought into harmony during the late Mughal period (5). These three volumes are now hard to find, but if you can track them down I highly recommend them. 

Octagon Press may be no more, but Suluk Press is thankfully as active as ever. In addition to my new book Immortality, which I’ve previously mentioned here in the Zephyr, Suluk Press plans to publish several volumes in the coming year, including an expanded and updated edition of Caravan of Souls, the long-awaited fifth volume of the Sufi Message series, Breathtaking Revelations by Carl W. Ernst and Patrick D’Silva (which includes Murshid’s “Science of Breath”), and No God Only God by Hassan Suhrawardi Gebel. A new edition of the classic Nekbakht Foundation Biography of Murshid has already come out, and we will be studying it online in the spring, God willing, thanks to our friend Jennifer Alia Wittman’s welcome suggestion.

There are many more books one could mention, but this has already become a lengthy letter, so let me close here by wishing you a luminous Solstice, a happy Hanukkah, a merry Christmas, a blessed Kwanzaa, and a splendid New Year. I appreciate all that each of you do in thought, word, and deed to support each other and our caravan as a whole. I hope to see you in the year ahead, at least online and hopefully face to face. Below are some possibilities. Meanwhile, enjoy your reading hours!

Yours ever,
Pir Zia

(1) Ibn Abi al-Wafa’s Al-Jawahir al-muzi’a. In Jami’s Nafahat al-uns, Shams is said to have thrown Rumi’s books in a well (and then restored them to him miraculously dry).

(2) On the subject of alchemy, let me recommend another friend’s artistic and scholarly work on the Royal Art: https://www.galipton.com/artblog.

(3) Qahira Wirgman recently organized the Fazal Manzil library, to great effect, and Josh Octaviani carefully curates the collection at the Astana.

(4) Speaking of consulting the green world, be sure to visit the new Ziraat website.

(5) Prof. Marcia Hermansen, whose spiritual itinerary has included Chamonix and Suluk, has produced a lucid translation of Shah Wali Allah’s Conclusive Argument from God.

New Year’s Day Attunement w/ Pir Zia
Sunday, January 1st, 12:00 pm EST / 6:00 pm CET

We invite you to join us for our annual New Year’s Day Attunement, to be united in the sacred transmission of the Sufi mystic and musician Pir-o-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882-1927). All are welcome.

*Video of the attunement will be posted to vimeo.com/inayatiyya within a day or two of January 1st.

More Details & Zoom Link

Suluk Global Online Course
March 2023 – December 2024
Applications Deadline Extension – January 18th, 2023

Due to a high volume of applications, we are expanding the size of the class, and will continue to admit applications on a rolling basis through January 18th, 2023!

Suluk is designed for initiates, called murids, within the Inayatiyya’s Inner School. Over the course of two years, students deeply explore the fundamentals of Hazrat Inayat Khan’s school of Sufism under the rubric of Concentration, Contemplation, Meditation and Realization. If you are interested in becoming a student of Suluk, please email suluk@inayatiyya.org or click on the link below for more details.

More Details & Application

The Inayatiyya’s Call of the Earth Initiative, galvanized by the climate needs of our collective moment, unites us all in spirit and action through the teachings of Hazrat Inayat Khan. The final offering from this year long initiative comes from Gulrukh Patel and Tariq Al-Olaimy on behalf of the Inayatiyya International Board: “Not only human beings, but animals, birds, insects, trees, and plants all have a spiritual attainment…” Read more

Inayatiyya Fall Appeal 2022

We are in the midst of our Inayatiyya Fall Appeal 2022! Please support the monthly creation of The Zephyr newsletter, as well as hundreds of other digital, programmatic, and community projects organized and held by the Astana each year, in collaboration with our network of teachers, guides, musicians, gatherers, healers, clergy, naturalists, heralds, knights, and other friends far and wide. To give today, please visit inayatiyya.org/donate.

The Zephyr is a monthly newsletter of Inayatiyya, an interfaith mystical fellowship with branches worldwide. For more gatherings, please visit our Inayatiyya Digital Programs Calendar for Spring 2023.