Obituary
By Ebrahim Moosa
The passing of His Highness Prince Karim al-Hussaini Aga Khan IV, at the age of 88 in Lisbon, Portugal on 4 February 2025, surrounded by his family, ends an illustrious and transformative 49th Imamat, the office of spiritual leadership of the Nizari Ismaili Muslims. His son, Prince Rahim Aga Khan (His Highness the Aga Khan V) now takes over the reins of the Imamat. To say that he has big shoes to fill would be an understatement. His father turned the office of the spiritual leadership into a global nerve center. During his reign the Imamat became an unprecedented catalyst for development, education and philanthropic work on a global scale, combined with his personal and passionate interest in art and architecture.
At his death one recalls a very poignant philosophical point he made in a wide-ranging interview with Indian television journalist, Rajiv Mehrotra, some decades ago. Asked about how he imagined his contribution to the world, he paused, with a shy and charming smile, then shared some brief, but stirring words. In a voice tinged with contemplation, he said: “After all, everyone’s life is a passage, and perhaps the most one can do is to have left something behind during that passage, which contributes and assists people to look to their future with more confidence, more stability and more hope.” Nothing could capture his mission and legacy better than his own words.
Born in Geneva on 13 December 1936 to Prince Aly Khan and British-born Joan Yarde-Buller, the Aga Khan IV at the age of 20, dramatically succeeded his grandfather, Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan III at the latter’s passing in 1957 to the office of the Imamat. His ambitions to continue his education were temporarily deferred set aside to take on the spiritual and administrative leadership of the global Ismaili community, which today number around 15 million members worldwide. His body has been interred alongside his grandfather, on a hill overlooking the Nile in Aswan, Egypt.
A few years after September 11, 2001, a provocative Pakistani journalist asked him if he could explain why that country alone had such surplus Islamic zeal. Respectfully disagreeing with the questioner, he replied that his experience and travels revealed to him that “everywhere the umma was in pain.”
There might be many reasons for his extraordinary success in not only inspiring his community to join his goals, but he was also a global leader whose advice was solicited and his voice was heard by laypeople on several continents, monarchs and princes, political leaders and spiritual sages in the East and the West. He operated, first from his office in Switzerland, then for most of his life in France, at the Aiglemont estate, outside Paris, and when the Portuguese state recognized the office of the Ismaili Imamat, he moved his spiritual office to Lisbon, Portugal.
The Aga Khan IV was fondly remembered by his followers as Mawlana Hazar Imam or by the abbreviation, “HH,” for His Highness. He was a beloved and revered leader who inspired his community and all those whom he touched. Given that he was also partly raised in Nairobi, Kenya, where he was responsible for establishing the first newspaper run by Black Africans representing their aspirations even before the advent of political independence, one key area Aga Khan IV developed was a network of schools and health institutions named after his family name—which today form part of the Aga Khan Development Network(AKDN) which is the Imamat agency through which the social conscience of Islam finds expression in practical action.
The Aga Khan University(AKU) with faculties in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and the United Kingdom. has schools, faculties, programmes and research initiatives in nursing and medical sciences as well as in media and communication studies, education, arts and sciences, human development and the environment and global warming in the various countries where the AKU faculties are operating today. It forms part of the AKDN. In addition, the AKDN established the University of Central Asia (UCA) in partnerships with the governments of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan.
The Aga Khan IV saw education as the pathway to unleash human capacity since he said that he had the good fortune to receive an excellent education and wished the same for others. In a sense, he saw in education the making of the self in the service of the world, as he imagined his own role to his community and the world.
Among Muslim groups, the AKDN took the sustainable development goals of the UN seriously, since the Aga Khan IV himself contributed to the advancement of development to end poverty and illiteracy. He had an extraordinary concern for rural life and strived to make it better for people in those areas, since he valued, as he put it, that they live “in their own vocabulary.” His thinking was animated by the concern that urbanization came with “cataclysmic” consequences, in his words, and might not deliver the best quality of life. Rural life had to be sustainable since it provided a meaningful way of life for their inhabitants.
[Photo: His Highness Prince Karim al-Hussaini Aga Khan IV with His Majesty King Charles III. Photographer Ian Jones/KDN]
The stabilization of developing countries was one of his major concerns. And he was encouraged that the pessimistic predictions of former colonial rulers of their former territories were proved wrong. He rejoiced in every iota of success achieved in the global south. The greater stabilization of the East African countries, among others, must have given him great satisfaction, since he gave high priority to development efforts in that region.
The Aga Khan IV was very clear that Islam as his faith and his engagement with advancement in the world from development to science, were not matters that were antithetical to each other. They were for him the fulcrum of Islam. He embraced the secular perspective of co-existence with others. Only things that conflicted with the ethic of Islam, in his view, were beyond the pale. Science, he said, was a manifestation of Allah’s message and power, and this power was limitless. Modern science allowed humans to observe and admire God’s majesty, in his view, a perspective that most Muslims would subscribe to.
The Aga Khan IV deeply held to the virtue of diversity, which he believed was a strength, if it did not result in conflict. But he was also deeply concerned about a loss of cultural tradition, which he viewed as a human inheritance. No wonder that he invested a great deal in art and architecture, especially the preservation of ancient Islamic architecture around the world, especially in the cities of Egypt, India, Central Asia. Eastern Europe, Northern Areas of Pakistan and Zanzibar.
Cultural traditions are the bedrock of a way of life built over thousands of years. Human life and achievements bear testimony to that patrimony just as art and architecture does. To preserve art and architecture is to preserve tradition and history. But more importantly art and architecture are a human inheritance and serve as testimonials of unique and cherished forms of life produced by extraordinary souls. And what better way to remember a man who was dedicated to art, with the words of the legendary ninth century Arab poet, Abū Tammām, who wrote:
“How preposterous the thought [that he can be replaced!]
Time will not produce the likes of him,
Indeed, time is miserly with the likes of him.”
Ebrahim Moosa is Mirza Family Professor of Islamic Thought & Muslim Societies, Keough School of Global Affairs & Department of History, University of Notre Dame, USA
[Photo: His Highness Prince Karim al-Hussaini Aga Khan IV. Photographer Anya Campbell/AKDN]
