Hazrat Inayat Khan

Inayat Khan Rehmat Khan Pathan (Urdu: عنایت خان‎; July 5, 1882 – February 5, 1927) was the founder of The Sufi Order in the West in 1914 (London) and teacher of Universal Sufism. He initially came to the West as a Northern Indian classical musician, having received the honorific "Tansen" from the Nizam of Hyderabad, but he soon turned to the introduction and transmission of Sufi thought and practice. Later, in 1923, the Sufi Order of the London period was dissolved into a new organization, formed under Swiss law, called the "International Sufi Movement". His message of divine unity (Tawhid) focused on the themes of love, harmony and beauty. He taught that blind adherence to any book rendered religion devoid of spirit. Branches of Inayat Khan's movement can be found in the Netherlands, France, England, Germany, the United States, Canada, Russia and Australia. In his various written works, such as the Music of Life and The Mysticism of Sound and Music, Inayat Khan interlocks his passion for music with his Sufi ideologies making a compelling argument for music as the harmonious thread of the Universe.

"Hazrat" is an honorific title meaning, roughly, "honorable." Inayat Khan's full name was Inayat Khan Rehmat Khan Pathan. He was born in Vadodara, Gujarat, to a noble family, as on his paternal side (made of mystics and poets) he descended from Pashtuns of Afghanistan initially settled in Sialkot, Punjab, and his maternal grandfather, Ustad Maula Bakhsh (1833–1896), called the 'Beethoven of India', founded, thanks to the local ruler Maharaja Sayajirao, Gayanshala, an academy of Indian music, and in fact the first of its kind in India, in Vadodara (nowadays serving as the Faculty of Performing Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University) and whose wife (thus Inayat Khan's maternal grandmother), Qasim Bi, was a granddaughter of Tipu Sultan, the famous eighteenth century ruler of Mysore.

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