Noor Inayat Khan

Noor Inayat Khan GC Croix de guerre
Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan c.1943
Nickname(s)	"Madeleine" (Callsign: Nurse) "Jeanne-Marie Renier" "Nora Baker"
Born	(1914-01-02)2 January 1914 Moscow, Russian Empire
Died	13 September 1944(1944-09-13) (aged 30) Dachau concentration camp, Bavaria, Nazi Germany
Allegiance	United Kingdom
Service/branch	Women's Auxiliary Air Force
Years of service	1940–1944
Rank	Assistant Section Officer
Unit	Special Operations Executive Cinema
Battles/wars	Second World War
Awards	George Cross Mentioned in dispatches Croix de guerre 1939–1945

Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan (نور عنایت خان) GC (2 January 1914 – 13 September 1944) was an Allied Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent during the Second World War who was posthumously awarded the George Cross, the highest civilian decoration in the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth nations. Also known as "Nora Baker", "Madeleine", and "Jeanne-Marie Rennier", she was of Indian and American origin. As an SOE agent, she became the first female radio operator to be sent from Britain into occupied France to aid the French Resistance.

Inayat Khan, the eldest of four children, was born on 2 January 1914 in Moscow. Her siblings were Vilayat (1916–2004), Hidayat (1917–2016), and Khair-un-Nisa (1919–2011). Her father, Hazrat Inayat Khan, came from a noble Indian Muslim family—his mother was a descendant of the uncle of Tipu Sultan, the 18th-century ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore. He lived in Europe as a musician and a teacher of Sufism. Her mother, Pirani Ameena Begum (born Ora Ray Baker), was an American from Albuquerque, New Mexico, who met Hazrat Inayat Khan during his travels in the United States. Ora Baker was the half-sister of American yogi and scholar Pierre Bernard, her guardian at the time she met Inayat (Hazrat is an honorific, translated as Saint). Vilayat later became head of the Sufi Order International.