Three Essays

By Tahir Shah

Eclectic and beguiling observations by bestselling author Tahir Shah, Three Essays considers three quite different subjects in ways they have never been considered before.

 

The first piece looks at cannibalism, noting how prevalent it has been throughout human history. Only frowned upon in relatively recent times, Shah makes the point that cannibalism was never regarded as shocking.

 

The second essay considers the Kumbh Mela - an Indian cultural extravaganza and the greatest human gathering of all time.

 

The third text looks at the way Arab Science from the so-called 'Golden Age' of Islam shapes the world in which we live - making everything from mobile phones to medical transfusions possible.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Secretum Mundi Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Aug 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9781915876386

Book preview

Books By Tahir Shah

Travel

Trail of Feathers

Travels With Myself

Beyond the Devil’s Teeth

In Search of King Solomon’s Mines

House of the Tiger King

In Arabian Nights

The Caliph’s House

Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Journey Through Namibia

Novels

Jinn Hunter: Book One — The Prism

Jinn Hunter: Book Two — The Jinnslayer

Jinn Hunter: Book Three — The Perplexity

Hannibal Fogg and the Supreme Secret of Man

Hannibal Fogg and the Codex Cartographica

Casablanca Blues

Eye Spy

Godman

Paris Syndrome

Timbuctoo

Midas

Zigzagzone

Nasrudin

Travels With Nasrudin

The Misadventures of the Mystifying Nasrudin

The Peregrinations of the Perplexing Nasrudin

The Voyages and Vicissitudes of Nasrudin

Stories

The Arabian Nights Adventures

Scorpion Soup

Tales Told to a Melon

The Afghan Notebook

The Man Who Found Himself

The Caravanserai Stories

The Mysterious Musings of Clementine Fogg

Miscellaneous

The Reason to Write

Zigzag Think

Being Myself

Research

Cultural Research

The Middle East Bedside Book

Three Essays

Anthologies

The Anthologies

The Clockmaker’s Box

Tahir Shah Fiction Reader

Tahir Shah Travel Reader

Edited by

Congress With a Crocodile

A Son of a Son, Volume I

A Son of a Son, Volume II

The Moroccan Anthologies

Screenplays

Casablanca Blues: The Screenplay

Timbuctoo: The Screenplay

Secretum Mundi Publishing Ltd

Kemp House

City Road

London

EC1V 2NX

United Kingdom

www.secretum-mundi.com

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First published by Secretum Mundi Publishing Ltd, 2022

VERSION 12102021

THREE ESSAYS

© TAHIR SHAH

Tahir Shah asserts the right to be identified as the Author of the Work

in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Visit the author’s website at:

Tahirshah.com

ISBN 978-1-915876-38-6

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Cannibalism: It’s Just Meat…?

The Kumbh Mela: The Greatest Show on Earth

The Legacy of Arab Science

CANNIBALISM:

IT’S JUST MEAT…?

THE PROTAGONIST OF A NOVEL I once wrote is a surgeon who develops a secret delight in eating human eyes.

The more of them he devours, the more he begins to realize that human flesh — and eyes in particular — are a kind of manna sent from heaven. And what’s more, he comes to understand that, when eaten, eye tissue has an astonishing and ameliorating effect on the human psyche. He doesn’t understand why we’re not all scoffing down our friends and neighbours — as research suggests our ancient ancestors probably did.

Last night, while sitting in bed, I read my wife a random passage from the work, which is called Eye Spy. The main character had just sucked out a drug addict’s eyes in Paris. Clasping hands to her cheeks, my wife let out a shrill scream and then exclaimed:

‘You can’t publish that!’

‘Why not?’

‘Because people will be horrified.’

‘Who will?’

‘Everyone will,’ she said.

Cannibalism has been described as the last taboo, and is the one that seems to shock the masses more than anything else. It’s right up there with incest, cold-blooded murder, and human sacrifice. In researching my novel, I have done a great deal of background reading on the subject, and have found myself wondering constantly why we regard it with such disdain — after all, dead people are just meat, aren’t they?

I think the answer lies in the way our society has structured itself around great monolithic pillars of right and wrong. An advanced culture has to lay down certain ground rules, without which a kind of disintegration begins to occur or, rather, without which advancement can’t take place. It may seem like obvious stuff, but I’d argue that it isn’t obvious at all.

As I see it, thinking that cannibalism is wrong is a hugely sophisticated idea, one that took millennia to become ingrained in human civilization. After all, most animals are quite happy to eat their own kind. I found a list of almost two thousand species online that regularly gulp down their mates, their young, or those around them. With the exception of apes perhaps, the animal kingdom doesn’t have anything the majority of us would regard as real civilization. And so, I suppose we can draw a baseline under our society and say, ‘We are civilized because we don’t eat people.’

The same can’t be said for a great many of the generations which came before us. There’s no doubt at all that ancient man ate his fellow men in a great many places and circumstances.

I’ll come to that in a moment.

All the more interesting is that cannibalism was, it seems, a tolerated taboo across almost all societies until relatively recent times. It’s a subject that is