Aga Khan, spiritual leader to the Ismaili Shia Muslim community died in Lisbon aged 88. Famous the world over for his work on development, he leaves at the end of an era in many people’s lives.
The Aga Khan Development Network has now released a statement stating that plans naming a successor to Karim al-Husseini will be announced shortly. Per Ismaili tradition, the successor must be a male descendant of the Aga Khan.
Having spent much of his life in France and having lived in Portugal in recent times, the headquarters of the Aga Khan’s development network are in Switzerland. He will be buried in Lisbon, leaving three sons, a daughter, and several grandchildren.
Born in Geneva on December 13, 1936, he was a child in Nairobi, Kenya. He later went to Switzerland, going to the high-status Le Rosey School before going to Harvard in the United States to do Islamic history. Upon his grandfather Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan’s death in 1957, he became at a very young age of 20 years the imam of the Ismaili Muslims.
The title “Aga Khan” means “commanding chief” in Turkish and Persian and is held to signify a direct lineage from the Prophet Muhammad through his cousin and son-in-law Ali and his daughter Fatima.
All his life, Aga Khan had been an outspoken advocate of Islamic culture and traditions, and for encouraging bridges between the Muslim world and the West, while keeping his distance from politics. He lived a life of opulence: private jets, superyachts, and a private island in the Bahamas. He held citizenship in Britain, France, Switzerland, and Portugal.
His most extensive philanthropic arm, the Aga Khan Development Network, ranges from health and housing to education and rural economic development. Operations in more than 30 countries, the group employs 96,000 staff, with a yearly budget of about $1 billion that’s spent on various development projects-from building schools and hospitals in the poorest corners of the world.
