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Noor’s father, Inayat Khan, was born in 1882 and was the overriding influence in Noor's life. A ‘Sufi’ mystic, he was descended from Tipu Sultan - the legendary 'Tiger of Mysore' - a man responsible for fighting the British presence in India.
A devout Muslim, Inayat was sent to Europe to bring Sufism to the West. Noor's nephew, David Harper, described his grandfather's form of Sufism as 'a philosophy of the heart' rather than a religion itself, as it embraced many other religions. Inayat travels took him to the United States, where among others he became friendly with Henry Ford who gave him a car.
It was while he was in America that he met Noor's mother, Ora Ray Baker, and together they had four children, two of whom are still alive. Inayat was also a musician and at the time of Noor’s birth was teaching music at the Imperial Court in pre-revolutionary Russia. He supposedly knew Rasputin, but there is no evidence to the much repeated story that Noor was born in the Kremlin.
At the outbreak of World War One, Noor's father took the family to Britain. Then in the early 1920s, Inayat moved his family to Suresnes, a suburb to the west of Paris where they lived in a house given to him by a Sufi benefactor. He called the villa ‘Fazal Manzil’ which means 'house of blessings'. Noor's father died in February 1927, aged 44, while on a trip to India.
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