Omar Ali-Shah

Omar Ali-Shah (Hindi: ओमर अली शाह, Urdu: عمر علی شاہ, romanized: nq; 1922 – 7 September 2005) was a prominent exponent of modern Naqshbandi Sufism. He wrote a number of books on the subject, and was head of a large number of Sufi groups, particularly in Latin America, Europe and Canada.

Omar Ali-Shah – called "Agha" by his students – gave lectures which have been recorded for distribution in printed format. He died on September 7, 2005 in a hospital in Jerez, Spain and is buried in Brookwood Cemetery near Woking.

Following Idries Shah's death in 1996, a fair number of his students became affiliated with Omar Ali-Shah.

Omar Ali-Shah gained notoriety in 1967, when he published, together with Robert Graves, a new translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

The two brothers, Idries Shah and Omar Ali-Shah, worked and taught together for some time in the 1960s, but later agreed to go their separate ways. Their respective movements – Idries Shah's "Society for Sufi Studies" and Omar Ali-Shah's "Tradition" – were similar, giving some prominence to psychology in their teachings. Omar Ali-Shah's teachings had some distinctive features, however. He had many more followers in South America, and his movement attracted a younger following than his brother's. There were also more references to Islam in his teachings, and unlike his brother, Omar Ali-Shah's movement embraced some Islamicate practices.

Omar Ali-Shah was born in 1922 into a family that traces itself back to the Prophet Mohammed, and through the Sassanian Emperors of Persia to the year 122 BC. He was the son of Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah of Sardhana, Uttar Pradesh, India and the older brother of Idries Shah, another writer and teacher of Sufism.