Noor Inayat Khan

Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan (1 January 1914 – 13 September 1944), also known as Nora Baker and by her SOE codename Madeleine, was a British-Indian agent of the Special Operations Executive in the Second World War, the first female wireless operator sent from Britain into occupied France.¹ The Arabic article introduces her as an Indian Muslim princess who resisted the Nazis.²

She was born in Moscow, the eldest of four children of Inayat Khan, the musician and teacher of Sufism, and his American wife Ameena Begum.¹ The family left Russia for Britain in 1914 and moved in 1920 to Suresnes near Paris; after her father's death in 1927, the thirteen-year-old Noor helped care for her younger siblings, studied child psychology at the Sorbonne and music at the Paris Conservatory.¹

As a young woman she published poetry and children's stories in English and French and contributed to children's magazines and French radio; her book Twenty Jataka Tales, retelling Buddhist Jataka stories, was published in London in 1939.¹

The family fled France in June 1940 ahead of the German conquest, reaching Falmouth by sea.¹ She joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force in November 1940 and trained as a wireless operator, was recruited by the SOE's F Section, and was sent into occupied France, where she was betrayed and captured.¹ She was executed at Dachau concentration camp on 13 September 1944.¹²

She was posthumously awarded the George Cross and the French Croix de Guerre.¹ A memorial to her stands in Gordon Square, London; the Urdu article notes that it was the first memorial in England to a Muslim woman.³

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