Aga Khan, leader of Ismaili Muslims, dead at 88
Prince Karim Aga Khan IV, the spiritual leader of Ismaili Muslims around the world, has died at 88.
A statement said he died “peacefully” in Lisbon on Tuesday.
“Leaders and staff of the Aga Khan Development Network offer our condolences to the family of His Highness and to the Ismaili community worldwide,” it read.
The network said a designated successor will be announced later.
The death is significant for 15 million Ismailis around the world, who hold that the Aga Khan was directly descended from an unbroken line of imams going back to the Prophet Muhammad — through Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, Ali, the first imam, and his wife Fatima, Muhammad’s daughter.
Not since July 11, 1957, when Prince Shah Karim al-Husseini succeeded Aga Khan III at the age of 20, replacing his grandfather Sultan Muhammad Shah as the community’s spiritual leader, has the community experienced the death of an imam.
The title — derived from Turkish and Persian words to mean commanding chief — was originally granted in the 1830s by the emperor of Persia to Karim’s great-great-grandfather when the latter married the emperor’s daughter.
The 49th Hereditary Imam of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims speaks at a special joint session of Parliament
Beyond his spiritual leadership, the Aga Khan was a jet-setting millionaire — or billionaire — who enjoyed a lavish personal lifestyle and poured millions into helping people in some of the most impoverished parts of the world.
His connection to Canada was cemented when the nation, under then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau, took in thousands of Ismaili refugees who were abruptly expelled from Uganda in 1972.
The Trudeau family’s friendship with the Aga Khan created an expenses scandal for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau when he vacationed on the leader’s private island in the Caribbean over the holidays in 2016.
Ismailis make up the second-largest Shia community, living in some 35 countries across Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, North America and Australia.
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