Ameena Begum

Pirani Ameena Begum (Hindustani: अमीरा बेगम / امینہ بیگم; born Ora Ray Baker; 8 May 1892 – 1 May 1949)[1] was the wife of Sufi Master Inayat Khan[2] and the mother of their four children: World War II spy Noor-un-Nisa (1914-1944), Vilayat (1916-2004), Hidayat (1917-2016) and Khair-un-Nisa (Claire) (1919-2011).[3]

Pirani Ameena Begum

Baker first met Khan in New York in 1911 when her guardian, Pierre Bernard, engaged the master musician and mystic to teach his ward Indian music. However, he forbade the marriage and Khan sailed for London. Baker found his Indian home address among Bernard's papers when cleaning his desk; the letter was forwarded and she sailed for England alone. They married in 1913 in London, at which point she took the name "Ameena Begum".[4] After living in London and then Paris, they traveled to Moscow, where she gave birth to Noor (January 1, 1914) the new family returned to Paris in July. World War I started in August and they left for England where they remained for the duration of the war. She left a collection of 101 poems, "A Rosary of one hundred and one beads". Some poems were lost during World War II, but 54 have been preserved and were published in 1998. She was a cousin of Mary Baker Eddy,[5][6][7] founder of the Christian Science Church in the USA.

Hidayat Inayat Khan wrote: "In 1926, Hazrat Inayat Khan gave my Mother an exceptional initiation as "Pirani", which was only to be given to her. That special initiation was not to be given to any one else in the Sufi Movement, either in the present or in the future".[8] Hazrat Inayat Khan said in his Autobiography that without Ameena Begum's help he would never have been able to bring his Sufi Message to the Western world.[9].