Hazrat Inayat Khan

Inayat Khan Rehmat Khan (5 July 1882 – 5 February 1927) was an Indian professor of musicology, singer, poet, philosopher and writer, and a pioneer of the transmission of Sufism to the West.¹ The Arabic article describes him as an Indian Sufi and the founder of the International Sufi Movement.²

He was born in Baroda to a noble Mughal family; his maternal grandfather was the Hindustani classical musician and educator Maulabakhsh Sholay Khan, and his maternal grandmother came from the royal house of Tipu Sultan of Mysore.¹

His Sufi formation rested on his ancestral tradition and on the tutelage of Sayyid Abu Hashim Madani of Hyderabad, from whom he received four transmissions — succession in the Chishti, Suhrawardi, Qadiri and Naqshbandi orders, the Chishti lineage being primary.¹ In 1914, in London, he established an order of Sufism; by his death, centres had been established throughout Europe and North America and multiple volumes of his teachings published.¹ In teaching Western students he stressed universal spiritual values and did not require his disciples to convert to Islam.¹

His teaching emphasised the oneness of God and the underlying harmony of the revelations given through the prophets of the world's religions, and its primary concern was the mystical pursuit of God-realisation; his foundational principles are set out as the Ten Sufi Thoughts.¹

He returned to India in 1926 and died of pneumonia in Delhi on 5 February 1927; he is buried in his dargah in Nizamuddin, Delhi.¹ Since his death he has been viewed as an early pioneer in bringing Sufi teachings and practices to Western audiences.¹

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