The first seed from Beirut, the one to give a renewed spiritual flowering that started at Columbia University and spread to the Village to New York City ghettoes and beyond and across the Great Pond to the Old Country, was a brilliant Jazz musician that died before his time--a martyr--slain by the men in blue. When we search for the roots of the Moorish Orthodox Church, we find a tender soul, Walid al-Taha.
The Sultan brought him into the Noble Order of Moorish Sufis ("NOMS") in Baltimore in 1959 after being introduced by a mutual friend and Noble Order member, Rachel Yaqubi El. Walid was fifteen or sixteen at this point and had a wandering, questioning mind. From the Sultan he would learn about Hassan Sabah and the Assassin Ismaili Dervish Order. Walid was born as Warren Tartaglia in Upstate New York. He would often travel from there to Baltimore to visit his mother's relatives and the Sultan. He rose quickly in the ranks of the Noble Order of Moorish Sufis, was given a Moorish name and title, and the honor of heading the second temple. When he enrolled in New York University (Washington Square) he ran a temple there and became the head of Orissa Province (New York State). His friend G.M. Foster (Ghulam El Fatah) would head Temple No. 14 in Newark, New Jersey, and be Governor of Behar Province (New Jersey). Walid was also responsible for the chartering of Noble Order Temples 7, 22, and 23. Later, in 1965, some initiates of those temples would start the Moorish Orthodox Church ("MOC") at New York City's Columbia University.
Like the Sultan and the Sultan's father, Walid was a jazz musician and shared interests in worker rights. Walid was an alto sax player, a talented poet, and an artist. He had the honor of playing with such noted musicians as Yusuf Lateef, Art Blakey, Jim Green, Freddie Mitchel, and Pony Poindexter. Art Blakley's son and his Native American daughter-in-law would join the Noble Order Moors.
Walid brought the NOMS and the MOC to a wide audience as a preacher and a radio talk show host on WBAI. There he had such notables as Al Fowler, Ed Sanders, Ghulam El Fatah, Barbara Holland, and Harry Fainlight read their works over the airwaves. Barbara Holland has lines about Moors in her poems "Of Jazz and Hierophants" and "Moresco" in the collection Return in Sagittarius (NYC: The Eventorium Press, 1965). Likewise we find Ed Sanders writing about Ancient Egypt in his Egyptian Hieroglyphs. Ghulam El Fatah became a full-fledged Noble Order Moor and continued to write poetry with Moorish themes. Harry Fainlight only had one twelve-page booklet of poems published in his life time Sussicran (London: Turret Books, 1965). Harry Fainlight's poetry tends toward themes of love, isolation, and addiction much like Walid's. Harry's sister Ruth Fainlight is also a poet and has written on Moorish/Egyptian themes.
Walid had a dark side as well - a love of opium. This hindered his eduation, his career as a musician, and ultimately led to his martyrdom. He collapsed into a coma in a New York City park, was handcuffed, and taken to a hospital where he died ten days later. Today he is memorialized by having NOTSMS Temple No. 2 named Walid al-Taha Memorial Temple.
The following is an excerpt from Walid's The Hundred Seeds of Beirut, a brief text attempting to blend the search of meaning and self on the path of chemical enlightenment with that of the spiritual Moorish Path of Love, Truth, Peace, Freedom, Justice, and Beauty. When you read this shed a tear for our dear Moorish brother and remember the Moorish Covenant of Brotherhood given to us in the Circle Seven (chapter XXV), and please say a Fatihah for all the diligent work of our Moorish brothers and sisters who are trying to uplift all humanity.
The introductory comments above by Amid Ahari El, Governor of Orissa Province, as well as the excerpt AGENTS OF CHAOS are taken from The Hundred Seeds of Beirut: The Neglected Poetic Utterances of Our Moorish Martyr Warren Tartaglia (Walid al-Taha), Magribine Press, Chicago, ©2000, which was taken from the original manuscript of Walid's poems provided by Sultan Sheikh Rafi Yahya Sharif Ali Shah Bey. The Dervish scabbard is over one hundred years old and resides protectively in Apollo Temple No. 13, Samarkand Province V of the Noble Order Temples of Sufi and Moorish Science.
