believed that the Sufi message "might form a bridge between the Western and the Eastern ways of thinking, and that the methods that [the Sufis] were using to convey it— methods well-tested by centuries of successful practice— would certainly be of interest and might be of value to the Western world in the quest for the best ways of promoting independent thought and the re-examination of accepted values to test their suitability to the needs of modern social organization." In his book Islamic Sufism, Ikbal Ali Shah stated that he was instructed in the Sufi Way by his father, to whom he referred as "that Fountain of Goodness Hadrat Syedna Nawab Amjed Ali Shah Naqshbandi Paghmani". He said that the Nawab had, in turn, been taught by his father Nawab Mohammed Ali Shah, who is buried in the Delhi shrine of the Naqshbandi Khwaja Baqi Billah (and an extract from whose Nishan-i-Ghaib, Signs of the Unseen, is given in the "Letters and Lectures" section of Idries Shah's The Way of the Sufi). Nawab Mohammed Ali Shah's father was Jan-Fishan Khan, who in turn had been a disciple of the celebrated Naqshbandi master Haji Dost Muhammad Qandhari. Ikbal Ali Shah sets out the remainder of this silsila, from Qandhari backwards to Yaqub Charkhi (the disciple of Bahauddin Naqshband) in Islamic Sufism (where it is described as "The Punjab Tradition"). In addition to his father Ikbal Ali Shah also gives credit, in his introduction to "Islamic Sufism", to 'the earlier discourses of Sheikh al Akbar Hadratna Shah Abdul [sic] Khair Mujaddadi'. Shah Abul Khair Naqshbandi Dihlawi (1855-1922) was the successor of Shah Muhammad Umar Mujaddidi, who in turn was the son of Ahmad Saeed Mujaddidi Fārūqi Dehlavi, the teacher of Haji Dost Qandhari. Abul Khair took over responsibility for the 'Delhi house' - the dargah and burial place of Mirza Mazhar Jan-i-Janaan and Ghulam Ali Dihlawi by the Turkmen Gate of the old city of Delhi - from Haji Dost Qandhari's deputy Rahim Bakhsh Ajmeri, and today it bears his name. It seems most likely that Ikbal Ali Shah attended Abul Khair's assemblies in person, prior to his coming to Edinburgh, thus linking his Sufi teaching (and, by extension, that of his sons) directly into the main line of the Naqshbandiyya Mujaddidiya. Ikbal Ali Shah introduced this tradition of Sufism in the West, with special reference to the controversial metaphors in Sufi