Spiritual guidance and business genius: The life and times of the Aga Khan

There are and have been people in our world who lead extraordinary lives. Prince Karim Al-Husseini, known to the world for the past seven decades as the Aga Khan, lived many such lives. 

He was different things to different people. To the international community, he was a globe-trotting senior statesman with British, Portuguese, and Canadian citizenship. In development circles, he was a billionaire with a vision for a world who became known for his philanthropy, vast resources, patronage of the arts, and connections. To the social elite of Europe and beyond, he was an exotic but noble gentleman of means; he lived in a Chateau in France, had a palace in Lisbon, remained a close personal friend of the King of England, and was a famed horsebreeder. 

But to the 1.5 crore Nizari Ismailis spread across 25 countries, he was the Hazar Imam of his age — the ultimate religious authority in this world with the sole authority to interpret the hidden meaning of religious scripture. A direct claimant to the legacy of the Fatimid Caliphate, the most powerful Muslim Empire of the 10th and 11th centuries, he will be laid to rest in Egypt next to his grandfather in Aswan. 

His legacy spans across a vast expanse comprising religion, philanthropy, medicine, media, hospitality, education, banking, architecture, heritage, to name only a few things. In Pakistan as well, the name Aga Khan carries weight with it. Prince Karim’s grandfather, Aga Khan III, was born in Karachi and was the founding President of the All India Muslim League. The Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (AKFED), a for-profit organisation founded in 1984, owns HBL, Pakistan’s largest and oldest bank. It also owns Jubilee Insurance, the largest private-sector insurance company in the country. The work of his charitable organisation, The Aga Khan Foundation, goes far beyond these two entities. In fact, Prince Karim Aga Khan had a significant personal impact on the development of Gilgit Baltistan, where a large number of his spiritual followers reside.

By lineage, Prince Karim was the 49th Imam of the Nizari Ismailis. The last in an unbroken chain of leaders. Many of his ancestors were emperors. Others were ascetics and exiles. He was only the fourth to bear that title Aga Khan, but within the modern history of Pakistan and the Islamic World, he was a singularly unique individual. 

As the world remembers Prince Karim Aga Khan IV, it is important to remember the multiplicity that governed his seven decades as the leader of the Nizari Ismailis. As a businessman, he has amassed personal wealth from real estate, hospitality, horsebreeding and other enterprises with a distinct business philosophy. As the Hazir Imam, the Aga Khan used tithes paid by his followers to turn the Ismailis into a unified, cooperative, community unlike any other in the world.  It is a multiplicity that began when he was young. When he superseded his own father to become the Imam of his people, whilst still a 20-year old undergraduate at Harvard University. 

An evolving community 

When Prince Karim Al Husseini became the leader of the Nizari Ismaili community, he was still a Sophomore. At the age of 20, he was a generation removed from the title of Aga Khan, but his grandfather’s will saw him ascend to the head of the community ahead of his father Prince Aly. 

As Aga Khan IV, Prince Karim inherited a delicately balanced community. The Ismailis were in the midst of a period of prosperity in the middle of a fraught history. In the 10th and 11th Century, Prince Karim’s ancestors had ruled the Fatimid Empire, but exile and the fall of their Caliphate eventually followed. By the 19th century, the Nizari Imam was based in Iran where followers from all over the world would come to pay homage.