Pirani Ameena Begum

Pirani Ameena Begum (Hindustani: अमीरा बेगम / امیرآ بےگم) (born Ora Ray Baker; 8 May 1892 – 1 May 1949) was the wife of Sufi Master Inayat Khan and the mother of their four children Noor-un-Nisa (1914-1944), Vilayat (1916-2004), Hidayat (1917-2016) and Khair-un-Nisa (1919).

Baker first met Khan when she attended one of his lectures in San Francisco, after which the pair quickly fell in love. However, resistance from Baker's family prevented them from marrying until 1913, at which point she took the name "Ameena Begum". After living in London and Moscow for a time, the family settled in Suresnes, near Paris. She left a collection of 101 poems, "A Rosary of one hundred and one beads". Some poems were lost during World War II, but 54 have been preserved and were published in 1998. She was a cousin of Mary Baker Eddy, founder of the Christian Science Church in the USA.

Hidayat Inayat Khan wrote: "In 1926, Hazrat Inayat Khan gave my Mother an exceptional initiation as "Pirani", which was only to be given to her. That special initiation was not to be given to any one else in the Sufi Movement, either in the present or in the future". Hazrat Inayat Khan said in his Autobiography that without Ameena Begum's help he would never have been able to bring his Sufi Message to the Western world.[1].

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