Tahir Shah - Influences

Influences

Shah regards family friend Doris Lessing as a key influence, as well as his aunt Amina Shah—both now in their nineties. In addition, Shah maintains a close association with a number of travel writers and novelists, including Robert Twigger, Tarquin Hall, Jason Webster, Rory Maclean, Jason Elliot, and Marcel Theroux. Shah himself has written about his fascination with the works of Bruce Chatwin, especially his book The Songlines, as well as with a range of the classic nineteenth century explorers, such as Samuel White Baker, Heinrich Barth and Sir Richard Burton. He had a close friendship with Wilfred Thesiger, whom he considered a mentor and a source of inspiration.

Shah's father Idries Shah and English poet Robert Graves were close friends and confidants, and for a number of years, Spike Milligan and Robert Graves had a correspondence. The highlights were later published in a book called Dear Robert, Dear Spike Shortly after Tahir Shah's birth, in a letter dated 6 February 1967, Robert Graves wrote to Spike Milligan: "I may be over in a few weeks to help two young Afghan Arabs named Tahir Shah Sayid and his twin sister with a name so beautiful that I forget it. He's the nearest to Mahomet in a straight line, of any Arab baby in existence. Isn't Tahir a splendid name."

I can hear 'Tahir, Tahir'
Loud & clear
Shouted all the way from Kabul
Without the least trouble.

Kabul is locally pronounced to rhyme with 'trouble', not 'a 'bull', and in the book the surname Shah is misspelled as 'Shar'.