The Aga Khan IV, who as the leader of the world’s Ismaili Muslims fused entrepreneurship and philanthropy in becoming one of the world’s wealthiest hereditary rulers, died on Tuesday in Lisbon. He was 88.
His death was confirmed by his Aga Khan Development Network in a post on X. No cause was given.
Urbane, cosmopolitan and often media-averse, the Aga Khan — born Prince Karim Al-Hussaini — rejected the notion that expanding his personal fortune would conflict with his charitable ventures. He said his ability to prosper complemented his duty to enhance the lives of Ismaili Muslims, a branch of the Shia tradition of Islam with a following of 15 million people in 35 countries.
An imam, or leader of his faith, was “not expected to withdraw from everyday life”, he once said after becoming the Aga Khan. “On the contrary, he’s expected to protect his community and contribute to their quality of life. Therefore, the notion of the divide between faith and world is foreign to Islam.”
His projects included developing the island of Sardinia’s ritzy Costa Smeralda resort area, breeding thoroughbred racehorses and establishing health initiatives for the poor in the developing world.
He took issue with descriptions of his lifestyle as lavish, though he travelled on his own private jets and a luxury yacht, owned a private Caribbean island and shuttled among a variety of residences, including Aiglemont, a sprawling estate north of Paris that became the headquarters of his development network and a training centre for his horses.
“The role and responsibility of an imam,” he said, “is both to interpret the faith to the community and also to do all within his means to improve the quality, and security, of their daily lives.”
Even though he had no inherited realm in the manner of other hereditary rulers, the Aga Khan’s fortune was variously estimated at $1 billion to $13 billion, drawn from investments, joint ventures and private holdings in luxury hotels, airlines, racehorses and newspapers, as well as from a kind of Quranic tithe levied on his followers.
Unusually, the Aga Khan — the name is often translated as a blend of Turkish and Persian meaning commanding chief — inherited his title from his grandfather the Aga Khan III, who bypassed his other descendants to name his grandson as his successor. With his assumption of the leadership as 49th imam of Ismaili Muslims in 1957, the Aga Khan IV took the reins of a Shia lineage that claimed descent from the Prophet Muhammad and imposed what he said were clear responsibilities on him.
At the time, he was a 20-year-old student of Islamic history at Harvard. That same year, Queen Elizabeth II of Britain conferred on him the non-hereditary title of His Highness, a reflection of the close ties between the two dynasties, bonded in a shared fascination with fine horses.
In his will, his grandfather Sultan Mohamed Shah said he had chosen to skip a generation in part because the “fundamentally altered conditions in the world” — including advances in atomic science — required a “young man who has been brought up and developed during recent years and in the midst of the new age, and who brings a new outlook on life to his office”.
Indeed, the Aga Khan IV confronted several modern-day crises afflicting his followers, who are concentrated in Central Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and East Africa. Many of them faced upheavals, like the 1972 decision by the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin to expel Asians and the turmoil in Tajikistan following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The Aga Khan was long known as a well-connected person. As such, he was able to persuade Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau of Canada, whom he had met in the 1960s, to permit thousands of Ismaili Muslims to emigrate to Canada when they were forced to leave Uganda.
His friendship with Trudeau reflected an ambiguous relationship with Canada, where he became an honorary citizen in 2010. In 2017, Trudeau’s son, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, drew censure from Canada’s ethics commissioner after he and his family accepted the Aga Khan’s hospitality with an unannounced vacation at the prince’s private residence in the Bahamas.
The trip was deemed to represent a conflict of interest, because the Aga Khan Foundation had recently received $38 million worth of federal support from the Canadian authorities.
But the Aga Khan’s revered status among Ismaili Muslims, living mainly in Tajikistan’s Gorno-Badakhshan province, reportedly stirred resentments and resistance among the country’s secular leaders, who sought to block support for the Aga Khan.
New York Times News Service