Umar Farooq was appointed chief priest, the Mirwaiz, after his father, the former Mirwaiz, was assassinated in 1991 when Umar was 16 and had graduated Burn Hall high school, established by the Jesuits. Mirwaiz is a 600 year old institution that, in the modern Islamic world, is unique to the Vale. The history of Mirwaizes is inseparable from the history of Kashmir. Future historians will no doubt delight in the consequences of Umar's recent marriage to a second generation Kashmiri-American born and raised in Buffalo, New York.