Welcome to the Nekbakht Foundation.
The Foundation derives its name from Nekbakht Furnée, a disciple of the Indian musician, mystic and philosopher Inayat Khan (1882 to 1927) In full: Pir-o-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan. A short biography can be found on this site.
Nekbakht Furnée lived across the road from Inayat Khans’s home in Suresnes (Paris). She acted as one of his secretaries, and after Inayat Khan’s death set herself the task of preserving his papers and turning them in into publications for the benefit of anyone interested in Sufism. To this end, she took the initiative to set up the Nekbakht Foundation, which is still active today.
The Foundation owns handwritten letters, photographs, newspaper cuttings, and much more. In addition to these personal items, the archive has the original shorthand of its founder, Nekbakht Furnée. She took down Inayat Khan’s lectures from 1922 to the final lectures in 1926.
From 1988 onwards the Foundation has been publishing new transcripts of these lectures in chronological order. They are known as the Complete Works and downloads of the Complete Works are freely available.
Part of the Foundation’s mission is to make the contents of the archives available and to answer queries from academics, seekers, and mureeds. Please email your query to us, using the contact form.
On April 13, Nekbakht’s birthday, The Nekbakht Foundation organised a special meeting to celebrate the life and work of Nekbakht Furnée. As a venue we chose the building of the Sufi Center in The Hague, with its beautiful meeting hall.
The work of the Foundation was presented, as well as a new book that has been funded by us: Inayat Khan through the eyes of his students.
The meeting was a great success and will be reported in the next issue of our newsletter. If you want to enroll for the newsletter, you can find the registration form under de “Contact” pull-down menu.
Many visitors of this site are interested in historic pictures of Inayat Khan’s life and times. A shortcut to these is the button “photographs” below.