ISLAMABAD: Spiritual leader of the Ismaili community, Prince Karim Al-Husseini, Aga Khan IV, died in Lisbon at the age of 88, according to the Aga Khan Development Network.
In a post on X, the network confirmed the news of death of the spiritual leader who was known for his development work around the globe.
The network further said the announcement of his designated successor will follow. The 49th hereditary imam or spiritual leader of the world’s over 15 million Ismailis, his name also became synonymous with success as a racehorse owner, with the thoroughbred Shergar among his most famous.
Born in 1936, the deceased held French, Swiss, British, and Portuguese citizenship and poured millions into helping people in the poorest parts of the globe.
“If you travel the developing world, you see poverty is the driver of tragic despair, and there is the possibility that any means out will be taken,” he told the New York Times in a rare interview back in 2007. He believed that by assisting the poor through business, they were developing protection against extremism, according to the newspaper.
Born on December 13, 1936 in Geneva, Prince Shah Karim Al-Husseini spent his early childhood in Nairobi, Kenya. He later returned to Switzerland, attending the exclusive Le Rosey School before going to the US to study Islamic history at Harvard.
Al-Husseini became the imam of the Ismailis at the age of 20 after his grandfather Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan died in 1957.
What ‘Aga Khan’ means?
Word ‘Aga Khan’ has been derived from Turkish and Persian words meaning commanding chief. Al-Husseini was the fourth holder of the title which was originally granted in the 1830s by the Persian emperor to Karim’s great-great-grandfather when the latter married the emperor’s daughter.
The role included providing divine guidance for the Ismaili community, whose members live in Central Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, Europe and North America.
After his father died in May 1960, the Aga Khan initially pondered whether to continue his family’s long tradition of thoroughbred racing and breeding. But after winning the French owners’ championship in his first season he was hooked.
“I have come to love it,” he said in a 2013 interview with Vanity Fair. “It’s so exciting, a constant challenge. Every time you sit down and breed you are playing a game of chess with nature.”
His stables and riders, wearing his emerald-green silk livery, recorded great successes with horses like Sea the Stars, which won the Epsom Derby and the 2,000 Guineas; and Sinndar, which also won the Irish Derby, the Epsom Derby, and the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in the same year, 2000.
But perhaps his most famous horse was Shergar, which won the Epsom Derby, the Irish Derby and the King George, before being kidnapped in February 1983 from Ireland’s Ballymany stud farm.
The Aga Khan established the Aga Khan Development Network in 1967. The group of international development agencies employs 80,000 people helping to build hospitals and schools and providing electricity for millions of people, especially in the poorest parts of Africa and Asia.
He was married twice, first in 1969 to Sarah Croker Poole, former British model, with whom he had a daughter and two sons. The couple separated in 1995.
In 1998 he married German-born Gabriele zu Leiningen, with whom he had a son. The couple divorced in 2014.
