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07-02-2025
LISBON: Rahim al-Hussaini, 53, has been named the new Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of millions of Ismaili Muslims, after the death of his father, the Ismaili community has announced.
The Aga Khan V, the 50th hereditary imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims, was designated in his father’s will “in accordance with historical Shia Imami Ismaili Muslim tradition and practice”, the community said on its website.
His father, Prince Karim Al-Hussaini, the Aga Khan IV, known for his fabulous wealth and development work around the world, died on Tuesday in Lisbon at the age of 88.
The Aga Khan is considered by his followers to be a direct descendant of the prophet Muhammad and is treated as a head of state and accorded nearly divine status by the Ismaili community, whose website says it numbers 12 to 15 million people.
Born in October 1971, the new Aga Khan is the eldest son and the second of three children born to his father and Sarah Croker Poole, a British model. The couple divorced in 1995 and the Aga Khan IV later married Gabriele Thyssen, a German singer.
Prince Rahim grew up between Geneva and Paris, spent his winters in Saint-Moritz and summers in Sardinia, studied literature at Brown University in the US and business in Barcelona, and then joined the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN).
The AKDN, the Aga Khan’s main philanthropic organization, deals mainly with issues of healthcare, housing, education and rural economic development, working in more than 30 countries with an annual budget of about $1bn for nonprofit development.
Founded in 1967, the group of international development agencies employs 80,000 people and has helped to build schools and hospitals and provide electricity for millions of people in the poorest parts of Africa and Asia.
Prince Rahim serves on the boards of several of the network’s agencies, reportedly following particularly the work of the Institute of Ismaili Studies and the Ismaili community’s social governance institutions.
He married Kendra Spears, a model, in 2013, with whom he had two sons born in 2015 and 2017. The couple divorced in 2022. He inherits a fortune that is hard to measure, with some reports estimating his father’s personal wealth in the billions.
The Ismailis, a sect originally predominant in India but which expanded to large communities in east Africa, central and south Asia and the Middle East, consider it a duty to tithe up to 12.5% of their income to the Aga Khan.
Yesterday, the Aga Khan, who became the spiritual leader of the world’s millions of Ismaili Muslims at the age of 20 as a Harvard undergraduate, and who poured a material empire built on billions of dollars in tithes into building homes, hospitals and schools in developing countries, has died. He was 88.
His Aga Khan Foundation and the Ismaili religious community announced on their websites that His Highness Prince Karim al-Hussaini, the Aga Khan IV and 49th hereditary imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims, died on Tuesday in Portugal surrounded by his family.
They said an announcement on his successor would come later.
Considered by his followers to be a direct descendant of the prophet Muhammad, the Aga Khan was a student when his grandfather passed over his playboy father as his successor to lead the diaspora of Shia Ismaili Muslims, saying his followers should be led by a young man “who has been brought up in the midst of the new age”.
Over decades, the Aga Khan evolved into a business magnate and philanthropist. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
