Tahir Shah

An English travel writer and author of Sorcerer's Apprentice describes his and his family's experiences after purchasing a rundown palace in the Moroccan city of Casablanca, as they work to renovate the house, exorcise the jinns--mischievous invisible spirits--haunting the structure, and cope with the house's human guardians. Reprint.

The Caliph's House

Follows the author's apprenticeship to one of India's master conjurers and his initiation into the brotherhood of godmen, during which he journeys the subcontinent, meeting a plethora of adhus, sages, sorcerers, hypnotists, and humbugs. Reprint.

Sorcerer's Apprentice

A Caravan of Moroccan Dreams

In Arabian Nights

The author recounts his journey into Ethiopia in search of the gold mines of the biblical King Solomon, a quest that brought him to the sites of a cliff-face monastery, the churches of Lalibela, and the cursed mountain of Tullu Wallel. Reprint.

In Search of King Solomon's Mines

EYE SPY

The author continues his account of his adopted home of Morocco, exploring the tradition of the spiritual quest in terms of his own journey of self-discovery and his father's legacy of storytelling as he reveals Morocco's history, mystical beliefs, and cu

House of the Tiger King

Kalifova kuća

On the morning of her fifth birthday, Miki Suzuki's grandfather gave her an unusual gift - the fragment of a story. The tale told of a magical realm where all the women were beautiful, dressed in the finest gowns, and where the men had the looks of movie stars. This place, young Miki learned, was a city in far off Europe - a city called Paris. The story took seed in Miki's mind and, over twenty years, she became quite obsessed with the French capital. Having studied its history, language, and traditions, she vowed that one day she would venture there. As the others in the tour group looked on in horror, the telltale signs of a rare and disturbing condition began to manifest themselves - a condition known as 'Paris Syndrome'. -- Amazon website.

Paris Syndrome

For centuries, Europe's great explorers were sent out to find Timbuctoo - a city supposedly built from pure gold. Most of them never returned alive. At the height of the Timbuctoo Mania, 200 years ago, an illiterate American sailor was found on the streets of snowbound London, claiming to have been taken there as a white slave.

TIMBUCTOO

King Solomon, the Bible’s wisest king, possessed extraordinary wealth. The grand temple he built in Jerusalem was covered in gold from the porch to the inner sanctum, where the Ark of the Covenant was kept. Long before H. Rider Haggard’s classic adventure novel King Solomon’s Mines unleashed gold fever more than a century ago, many had sought to find the source of the great king’s wealth. In this new adventure—“a hybrid of Indiana Jones and Herodotus” (Sunday Times, London)—Tahir Shah tries his hand at the quest. Intrigued by a map he finds in a shop not far from the site of the temple, Shah assembles a multitude of clues to the location of Solomon’s mines. Some come from ancient texts, including the Septuagint, the earliest form of the Bible, and some from geological, geographical, and folkloric sources. All point across the Red Sea to Ethiopia, the land of the Queen of Sheba, Solomon’s lover, who bore Solomon’s son Menelik and founded Ethiopia’s imperial line. Shah’s trail takes him on a wild ride—by taxi, bus, camel, donkey, and Jeep—that is sure to delight all travelers.

A Modern Adventurer's Quest for Gold and History in the Land of the Queen of Sheba

Look Into The Eyes Of A Jinn And You Stare Into The Depths Of Your Own Soul...Writer And Film-Maker Tahir Shah - In His 30S, Married, With Two Small Children - Was Beginning To Wilt Under Brash, Cramped, Ennervating British City Life. Flying In The Face Of Friends' Advice, He Longed To Fulfil His Dream Of Finding A Place Bursting With Life, Colour, History And Romance - Somewhere Far Removed From London - In Which To Raise A Family. Childhood Memories Of Holidaying With His Parents, And Of A Grandfather He Barely Knew, Led Him To Morocco And To 'Dar Khalifa', A Sprawling And, With The Exception Of Its Jinns, Long-Abandoned Residence On The Edge Of Casablanca'S Shanty Town That, Rumour Had It, Once Belonged To The City'S Caliph. And So Begins Tahir Shah'S Gloriously Vivid, Funny, Affectionate And Compelling Account Of How He And His Family - Aided, Abetted And So Often Hindered By A Wonderful Cast Of Larger-Than-Life Local Characters: Guardians, Gardeners, Builders, Artisans, Bureacrats And Police (Not Forgetting The Jinns, The Spirits That Haunt The House) - Returned The Caliph'S House To Its Former Glory And Learned To Make This Most Exotic And Alluring Of Countries Their Home. The Caliph'S House Is A Story Of Home-Ownership Abroad - Full Of The Attendant Dramas, Anxieties And Frustrations - But It Is Also Much More. Woven Into The Narrative Is The Author'S Own Journey Of Self-Discovery, Of Learning About A Grandfather He Hardly Knew, And Of Coming To Love The Magical, Multi-Faceted, Contradictory Country That Is Morocco.

A Year in Casablanca

During a career of thirty years, Tahir Shah has published dozens of books on travel, exploration, topography, and research, as well as a large body of fiction. Through this extraordinary series of Anthologies, selections from the corpus are arranged by theme, allowing the reader to follow certain threads that are of profound interest to Shah. Spanning a number of distinct genres - in both fiction and non-fiction work - the collections incorporate a wealth of unpublished material. Prefaced by an original introduction, each Anthology provides a lens into a realm that has shaped Shah's own outlook as a bestselling author. Regarded as one of the most prolific and original writers working today, Tahir Shah has a worldwide following. Published in hundreds of editions and in more than thirty languages, his books turn the world back to front and inside out. Seeking to make sense of the hidden underbelly, he illuminates facets of life most writers hardly even realize exist.

Jinns

The Anthologies

Dentro de la tradición de Un año en Provenza o Bajo el sol de Toscana, el aclamado escritor de viajes inglés Tahir Shah comparte el relato, enormemente entretenido y a veces conmovedor, del traslado de su fmilia desde la brumosa Londres a la ciudad de Casablanca empapada de sol, donde convergen la tradición islámica y el folklore africano, y donde nada resulta tan fácil como parece...

La mansión del Califa. Nuestro primer año en Casablanca

A Story in a Story

Scorpion Soup

Shortly after the 2005 London bombings, Tahir Shah was thrown into a Pakistani prison on suspicion of spying for Al-Qaeda. What sustained him during his terrifying, weeks-long ordeal were the stories his father told him as a child in Morocco. Inspired by this, on his return to his adopted homeland he embarked on an adventure worthy of the mythical Arabian Nights, going in search of the stories and storytellers that have nourished this most alluring of countries for centuries. Wandering through the medinas of Fez and Marrakech, criss-crossing the Saharan sands and tasting the hospitality of ordinary Moroccans, he collected a treasury of traditional stories recounted by a vivid and eccentric cast of characters: from master masons who work only at night to Sufi wise men who write for soap operas and Tuareg guides addicted to reality TV. Himself a link in the chain of scholars and teachers who have passed such tales down from father to son, mother to daughter, Shah reveals a world and a way of thinking that most visitors to Morocco barely know exist.

When the Spanish Conquistadors swept through Peru in the sixteenth century, they were searching for great golden treasure. In 1572 they stormed the Inca stronghold of Vilcabamba, only to find the city deserted, burned,a nd already stripped of its wealth. According to legend the Incas had retreated deep into the jungle where they built another magnificent city in an inaccessible quarter of the cloud forest.For more than four centuries explorers and adventurers, archaeologists and warrior-priests have searched for the gold and riches of the Incas, and this lost city of Paititi, known by the local Machiguenga tribe as 'The House of the Tiger King'.After the lost city obsession had gnawed away at Tahir Shah for almost a decade, he could stand it no more. He put together an expedition and set out into Peru's Madre de Dios jungle, the densest cloud forest on earth. He teamed up with Pancho, a Machiguenga warrior who asserted that in his youth he came upon a massive series of stone ruins deep in the jungle. Pancho's ambition was to leave the jungle and visit a 'live', bustling city, so the two men made a pact: if Pancho took Shah to Paititi, then Shah would take Pancho to the Peruvian capital.House of the Tiger King is the tale of Shah's remarkable adventure to find the greatest lost city of the Americas, and the treasure of the Incas. Along the way he found himself considering others who have spent decades in pursuit of lost cities, and asks why anyone would find it necessary to mount such a quest at all.

A Jungle Obsession

In the tradition of A Year in Provence and Under the Tuscan Sun, acclaimed English travel writer Tahir Shah shares a highly entertaining account of making an exotic dream come true. By turns hilarious and harrowing, here is the story of his family’s move from the gray skies of London to the sun-drenched city of Casablanca, where Islamic tradition and African folklore converge–and nothing is as easy as it seems…. Inspired by the Moroccan vacations of his childhood, Tahir Shah dreamed of making a home in that astonishing country. At age thirty-six he got his chance. Investing what money he and his wife, Rachana, had, Tahir packed up his growing family and bought Dar Khalifa, a crumbling ruin of a mansion by the sea in Casablanca that once belonged to the city’s caliph, or spiritual leader. With its lush grounds, cool, secluded courtyards, and relaxed pace, life at Dar Khalifa seems sure to fulfill Tahir’s fantasy–until he discovers that in many ways he is farther from home than he imagined. For in Morocco an empty house is thought to attract jinns, invisible spirits unique to the Islamic world. The ardent belief in their presence greatly hampers sleep and renovation plans, but that is just the beginning. From elaborate exorcism rituals involving sacrificial goats to dealing with gangster neighbors intent on stealing their property, the Shahs must cope with a new culture and all that comes with it. Endlessly enthralling, The Caliph’s House charts a year in the life of one family who takes a tremendous gamble. As we follow Tahir on his travels throughout the kingdom, from Tangier to Marrakech to the Sahara, we discover a world of fierce contrasts that any true adventurer would be thrilled to call home.

Oddball and loner Oliver Quinn was raised by his uncle, the proprietor of Ozymandias & Son, New York's most bizarre emporium of Oriental rugs. Through a series of what he believes to be coincidences, Oliver discovers a portal in the basement of the shop - a portal to a magical world called Zonus. Gradually, Oliver begins to understand that everything he'd ever considered fact is fantasy, and that if he is to survive, he'll have to start thinking in an entirely new way. In reality, our world is nothing but a backwater in a colossal multiverse, where every permutation is not only possible, but certain. With the veil lifted, Oliver is introduced to the parallel life form with which we share the multiverse - the mysterious and all-powerful race of jinn. Far from the loveable blue-skinned giants projected by Hollywood, jinn are capable of wreaking terror on an unknown scale. When they go rogue, as they frequently do, they must be captured and incarcerated in the Prism, a vast penitentiary. Trapping rogue jinn is a perilous task entrusted to the Jinn Hunters, the bravest fraternity of warriors in existence. Having been accepted into the Cadenta, the training academy of Jinn Hunters, Oliver is pitted against the gravest new reality: the fact that Nequissimus, the most evil jinn in all existence, has just escaped... Born into the hallowed ancestry of the Jinnslayers, Oliver Quinn is the only man alive with a chance at defeating the great jinn, and returning him to his cell in the Prism. A cross between A Thousand and One Nights and Men in Black, THE JINNSLAYER is the second awe-inspiring novel in Tahir Shah's much-celebrated JINN HUNTER series. One of the most original books of its age, it lures the reader into a twilight zone conjured from pure imagination.

Book Two: The Jinnslayer

Jinn Hunter

Enthralled by the chronicle of a 16th-century Spanish monk, which said that the Incas 'flew like birds' over the jungle, and by the recurring theme of flying in Peruvian folklore, Tahir Shah set out to discover whether the Incas really did fly or glide above the jungles of Peru. Or was it flight of a different kind, inspired by powerful drugs? The long quest begins in the mountains of Peru, with a trek to Machu Picchu, the Incas' most sacred city. Then on to the coast and through the desert, to the immense animal-like etchings which form the Nazca Lines and a remote burial ground for 30,000 mummified corpses. And finally to an epic river-journey up the Amazon to discover the secrets of the Shuar, a tribe of legendary savagery. Even for a traveller so used to surreal adventures, there are many strange encounters - some gruesome, some hilarious - among madmen and dreamers, sorcerers, con-men and jungle experts, before he can at last discover the truth about the Birdmen of Peru.

Tahir Shah

About

Books

Join the club