outside observers did not have the perspective to see the pattern. According to Professor L. F. Rushbrook Williams, the editor of a work published in honor of the services to sufi studies of Ikbal Ali Shah's son Idries, "Sirdar Ikbal and his son [Idries Shah], both in writing and in other ways, were ultimately to show how Sufi thought and action, educational and adaptive as they are, could be of service to contemporary thinking" and he concluded in 1973 that "... whereas Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah, who pioneered the effective study of Sufi philosophy in the West, found that the time was not quite ripe for his message to be appreciated at its true value, Idries Shah has discovered that in this age of spiritual uncertainty and a dawning reaction against the prevalent materialism, the outlook and practices of Sufism are meeting exactly the needs that so many people are now experiencing." Edinburgh orientalist L. P. Elwell-Sutton considered many of the claims made in Rushbrook Williams' book on behalf of Ikbal Ali Shah and his son Idries, concerning their representing the Sufi tradition, to be self-serving publicity, filled with "sycophantic phraseology, fawning adulation, and disarming disregard for facts." Beginning in the 1970s, the Octagon Press, as part of its aim to establish "the historical and cultural context" for Idries Shah's Sufi work, began re-issuing several of Ikbal Ali Shah's books, among them The Book of Oriental Literature in 1976, a 400-page anthology containing extracts from important mystical and secular literature from all over the East, including excerpts from several classical Sufi authors. A review of the reprint in the University of Oklahoma Books Abroad journal wondered why the book had been reprinted, since it no longer appeared to meet contemporary standards; the amount of space given to various national literatures appeared very uneven, the section on Arabia lacked many essential authors, and the section on Japan, consisting of just two pages, failed to give the names of the writers whose poems were featured. As an anthology, it was considered woefully inadequate. In 1986, James Moore researched Foreign Office records on Ikbal Ali Shah for a paper critical of his son Idries, and claimed to have found that "damaging material on Ikbal abounds throughout FO 371 and FO 395 from 1926 to 1950"; he came to the conclusion that Ikbal Ali Shah had been "charming and personable" but an inveterate teller