About the Author

Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882 1927) came to Europe and America from his native India with a message of love, harmony, and beauty that was a new approach to harmonizing Western and Eastern spirituality. He established a school of spiritual training based upon traditional Sufi teachings infused with the vision of the unity of religious ideals and the awakening of humanity to the divinity within. Inayat Khan died in India in 1927, leaving a significant body of recorded discourse and instruction on all things pertaining to spiritual ideals in the midst of life in the world.

Allyn Miner specializes in the history of North Indian music based on Sanskrit, Hindi, and Urdu sources. She has a PhD in Indian Musicology from Banaras Hindu University and a PhD in Sanskrit from the University of Pennsylvania. She spent eleven years in Varanasi, India, where she studied sitar performance with Thakur Raj Bhan Singh and musicology with Professor Prem Lata Sharma. She returned to the United States, became a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania and continued performance study, eventually becoming a disciple of Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. Allyn taught courses on sitar and Performing Arts in South Asia at the University of Pennsylvania until 2017. Her book Sitar and Sarod in the 18th and 19th Centuries is a definitive study of the early history of the sitar. Her Sangītopanişatsāroddhāra is a translation of a fourteenth-century Sanskrit musicological text. The Minqār-i Musiqār is a translation of the 1912 Urdu work by Hazrat Inayat Khan. She continues to do research and publish on North Indian music, and performs and teaches the sitar. She has an avid interest in Irish traditional music and plays fiddle, concertina, and banjo.

Pir Zia Inayat Khan, PhD, is a scholar of religion and teacher of Sufism in the universalist Sufi lineage of his grandfather, Hazrat Inayat Khan. Pir Zia is president of the Inayatiyya and founder of Sulūk Academy, a school of Sufi contemplative study and practice with offerings in North America and Europe, as well as online. He is editor of A Pearl in Wine: Essays in the Life, Music and Sufism of Hazrat Inayat Khan and Caravan of Souls: An Introduction to the Sufi Path of Hazrat Inayat Khan, and author of Saracen Chivalry: Counsels on Valor, Generosity and the Mystical Quest; Mingled Waters: Sufism and the Mystical Unity of Religions; and Dream Flowers: The Collected Works of Noor Inayat Khan with a Critical Commentary by Pir Zia Inayat Khan. Pir Zia divides his time between Richmond, Virginia and Suresnes, France. 

Reviews

The Indian Patriot of 8-9-1908. - Beyond and above what the Professor has inherited from distinguished musicians with whom he is connected by ties internal and paternal, he had the benefit of systematic course of training in the theory and practice of Indian music for over 12 years under Prof. Mowla Bux himself. He has made a critical study of the standard works on Sangit and is also the author of some good books in Hindi on the same subject. The Hindu of 23-3-1908. - He kept the audience spell-bound. His sweet melodious voice, his grasp of both the Hindustani and Carnatic science of music, his complete mastery over Swarams, the effective modulations of his voice touched the hearts of everyone whether he had a taste for music or not. The Daily Post of 20-1-1908. - He is one of the best musicians that we have in Southern India. His performances on the Jaltarang and other instruments have been greatly appreciated by Indians and Europeans alike. He has been honoured by invitations to give performances before Lord Elgin, Lord Curzon and Lord Ampthill, who expressed their admiration and appreciation.