Idries Shah (16 June 1924 – 23 November 1996) (Persian: ادریس شاه‎, Hindi: इदरीस शाह), also known as Idris Shah, né Sayed Idries el-Hashimi (Arabic: سيد إدريس هاشمي), was an author and teacher in the Sufi tradition who wrote over three dozen critically acclaimed books on topics ranging from psychology and spirituality to travelogues and culture studies.

Born in India, the descendant of a family of Afghan nobles, Shah grew up mainly in England. His early writings centred on magic and witchcraft. In 1960 he established a publishing house, Octagon Press, producing translations of Sufi classics as well as titles of his own. His most seminal work was The Sufis, which appeared in 1964 and was well received internationally. In 1965, Shah founded the Institute for Cultural Research, a London-based educational charity devoted to the study of human behaviour and culture. A similar organisation, the Institute for the Study of Human Knowledge (ISHK), exists in the United States, under the directorship of Stanford University psychology professor Robert Ornstein, whom Shah appointed as his deputy in the U.S.

Tahir Shah (Persian: طاهر شاه‎, Gujarati: તાહિર શાહ), né Sayyid Tahir al-Hashimi (Arabic: سيد طاهر الهاشمي) (born 16 November 1966 in London) is an Anglo-Afghan Indian author, journalist and documentary maker. He lives in Casablanca, Morocco.

Shah was born into a distinguished family of Saadat (= Arabic plural of Sayyid) who had their ancestral home at Paghman, not far from Kabul. His paternal great-grandfather, Sayyid Amjad Ali Shah, was the nawab of Sardhana, in the North-Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The principality was awarded to his ancestor Jan-Fishan Khan during the British Raj, and had been ruled formerly by the Kashmiri-born warrior-princess, the Begum Samru. His mother is of Indian Parsi ethnicity.

Tahir Shah is the son of the well-known Sufi teacher and writer Idries Shah, and the grandson of the writer and diplomat Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah. His elder sister is the award-winning documentary filmmaker Saira Shah. He also has a twin sister, Safia Nafisa Shah.

Born and brought up in Britain, Shah says he was encouraged from an early age to never follow the pack, and to strive for originality. His father believed strongly that education was about more than school lessons, and was something that continues after childhood throughout one's life. This sense of a quest for knowledge colours all of Shah's work, most notably his travel literature.