The Aga Khan IV, which as the leader of the Ismaili Muslims in the world has merged entrepreneurship and philanthropy to become one of the richest hereditary leaders in the world, died Tuesday in Lisbon. He was 88 years old.
His death was confirmed by his aga khan development network in A post on xthe social media site. No cause has been given.
Urban, cosmopolitan and often opposed to the media, Aga Khan – born Prince Karim al -Hussaini – rejected the idea that the enlargement of his personal fortune in conflict with her charitable companies. He said that his ability to prosper has completed his duty to improve the life of Ismaili Muslims, a branch of the Shiite tradition of Islam with 15 million people in 35 countries.
An imam, or chief of his faith, should “not withdraw from daily life,” he said once after having become Aga Khan. “On the contrary, he should protect his community and contribute to their quality of life. Consequently, the notion of gap between faith and the world is foreign to Islam. »»
His projects included the development of the Ritzy Costa Smeralda Ritzy Costa Smeralda’s Ritzy area, raising thoroughbred horses and establishing health initiatives for the poor in the developing world.
He challenged the descriptions of his lifestyle as sumptuous, although he has traveled on his own private jets and a luxury yacht, owned a private Caribbean island and commute among a variety of residences, including Aiglemont, A sprawling area north of Paris which has become the head office of its development network and a training center for its horses.
“The role and responsibility of an imam,” he said in a discourse in 2006, “is both interpreted the faith in the community and also doing everything according to his means to improve the quality and security of their daily life. “
Even if he did not have a domain inherited like other hereditary leaders, the fortune of Aga Khan was variously estimated at $ 1 billion at $ 13 billion, from investments, joint ventures and private property In luxury hotels, airlines, horses and newspapers, as well as a sort of Koranic tithe perceived on his disciples.
Unusually, Aga Khan – The name is often translated as a mixture of Turkish and Persian meaning commanding the chief – inherited his title of his grandfather the Aga Khan III, who bypassed his other descendants to name his little -Fils like his successor. With its hypothesis of management as 49th imam of Muslims Ismaili in 1957, Aga Khan IV took the reins of a Shiite Muslim line which claimed the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad and imposed what he said was responsibilities clear on him.
At the time, he was a 20 -year -old student in Islamic history at Harvard. The same year, Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain gave her the non-hereditary title of her Highness, reflecting close ties between the two dynasties, linked to a fascination shared with the beautiful horses.
In his will, his grandfather Sultan Mohamed Shah said that he had chosen to jump a generation in part because “fundamentally modified conditions in the world” – including the progress of atomic science – required a “young A man who has been raised and developed in recent years and in the middle of the new age, and who brings a new perspective on life at his office. »»
Indeed, Aga Khan IV has confronted several modern crises distressing its disciples, which are concentrated in Central Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and East Africa. Many of them have faced upheavals, such as the 1972 decision of the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin to expel the Asians and the Tadjikistan disorders following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
AGA Khan has long known as a well -connected person. As such, he was able to persuade Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau from Canada, whom he had met in the 1960s to authorize thousands of Muslims Ismailis to emigrate to Canada when they were forced to leave the Uganda.
His friendship with Mr. Trudeau reflected an ambiguous relationship with Canada, where he became a honorary citizen in 2010. Hospitality with unexpected holidays 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 in federal support from Canadian authorities. For its part, Aga Khan was officially exempt.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the disciples of Aga Khan in the mountainous region of Pamir of Tajikistan were among those involved in a ruinous civil war in the 1990s against the government led by Emomali Rahmon. In response, Aga Khan accelerated investments in electricity production and a mobile phone business in Tajikistan and then built health care, microfinance and other facilities, as well as the University of Central Asia in Khorog.
But the venerated status of Aga Khan among the Muslims Ismaili, living mainly in the autonomous province of Tajikistan Gorno-Badakhshan, would have aroused resentments and resistance among the lay leaders of the country, who sought to block the demonstrations of support for Aga Khan.
Prince Karim al-Hussaini was born in Geneva on December 13, 1936. He was the eldest son of the Playboy, Prince Aly Khan, and his first wife, Joan (Warde-Buller) Khan, a descendant of the British aristocracy. Her younger brother, Amyn Aga Khan, was born the following year.
In 1949, their parents divorced and Prince Aly married the American actress Rita Hayworth, with whom he had a daughter, Princess Yasmin Aga Khan.
Known in its youth under the name of Prince Karim, Aga Khan grew up in Nairobi, Kenya, before attending school at the Le Rosey exclusive institute in Geneva. At the end of the twenties, he contributed For pre-revolutionary Iran in skiing at the 1964 Olympic Games in Innsbruck, Austria.
He continued in Harvard, where he studied Islamic history when he became Aga Khan IV at the death of his grandfather.
“It was a shock,” he said in an interview in 2013 with Vanity Magazine, “but I don’t think anyone in my situation would have been prepared.”
His new status, he said, meant that the course of his life was now settled on immutable coordinates. “I was a undergraduate student who knew what his work would be for the rest of his life,” he said.
Some of his disciples assigned divine status to him, but he rejected such notions of piety.
In 1969, he married Sally Croker Poole, a British model and a former beginner who became Salima Aga Khan. The couple had three children, Princess Zahra, Prince Rahim and Prince Hussain, before divorcing in 1995. The three brothers and sisters continued to work in Aga Khan organizations.
In 1998, Aga Khan married Gabriele Thyssen Zu Leiningen from Germany, which has become inara Aga Khan. They had a son, Prince Aly Muhammad. The couple broke up a few years later and spent a decade negotiating a divorce regulation which was worth around 60 million dollars when they were adjusted for inflation.
He leaves to mourn his children; His brother, Prince Amyn Muhammad; Her half-sister, Princess Yasmine; and four grandchildren.
Over the years, Aga Khan’s commercial companies were eclectic. It was a first -rate engine in the 1960s in the construction of the seaside resort of Porto Cervo, with a yacht club and polo tournaments, as part of the development of the northern Costa Smeralda in Sardinia as a Playground for the Superrich. He has shown a taste for Maserati sports cars, but he has also invested in the developing world in basic industries that have made fishing nets, plastic bags and matches.
In Uganda, after the overthrow of Idi Amin and the last climb of Yower Museveni, he joined investment capital giants such as Blackstone Group in a hydroelectric program of $ 750 million.
In 1960, Prince Aly, the father of Aga Khan, died in a car accident in Suresnes, outside Paris, and his children inherited his lucrative equestrian empire, which included nine farms in Ireland and in France. “The three of us found ourselves with this family tradition, none of us knew the first thing,” he told Vanity Fair in 2013.
Since then, Aga Khan had owned, trained and high Lots of champion horses. In France, his filly Valyra won the prestigious Diane Prize in 2012, to establish a new record for owners of seven victories. In the 1980s, its shergar stallion was removed in Ireland and never saw again. (He refused to pay a ransom request.)
“I came to love it-it’s so exciting, a constant challenge,” he said one day about the equestrian company. “Whenever you sit down and reproduce yourself, you play a game of chess with nature.”
