Prince Karim Al-Husseini, Aga Khan IV, the spiritual leader of the Ismaili community and known for his development work worldwide, has died in Lisbon at the age of 88, according to the AGA Khan Development Network In X.
The announcement of his designated successor will continue, said the network.
The 49th hereditary magnet or spiritual leader of the 15 million Ismaili in the world, his name also became synonymous with success as owner of racing horses, with the Shergar of pure blood among his most famous.
The Jet Jet International, which had British, French, Switzerland and Portuguese citizens poured millions to help people in the poorest parts in the world.
“If you travel around the developing world, you see that poverty is the driver of tragic despair, and there is the possibility of taking any means,” he told the New York Times In a rare interview in 2007.
By helping the poor through business, he told the newspaper: “We are developing protection against extremism.”
Prince Shah Karim Al-Husseini was born on December 13, 1936 in Geneva and spent his early childhood in Nairobi, Kenya.
Later he returned to Switzerland, attending the exclusive Le Rosey school before going to the United States to study Islamic history in Harvard.
When his grandfather Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan died in 1957, he became the IMAM of the Ismailis at the age of 20.
As Aga Khan, derived from Turkish and Persian words to mean the dominant boss, was the fourth head of the title that was originally granted in the 1830s by the Emperor of Persia with Karim’s great -great grandfather when the latter married the daughter of the emperor.
The role included providing divine guidance for the Ismaili community, whose members live in Central Asia, the Middle East, South Asia, Sub -Saharan Africa, Europe and North America.
After his father died in May 1960, the AGA Khan initially reflected on whether to continue the long tradition of his racing family and pure blood breeding.
But after winning the French owner championship in his first season, he was hooked.
“I’ve loved him,” he said in a 2013 interview with Vanity Fair. “It is very exciting, a constant challenge. Every time you feel and reproduce, you are playing a chess game with nature. “
His stables and riders, with their emerald green silk libase, enjoyed great horses such as The Stars, which won the Epsom Derby and the 2,000 guineas; And Singar, who also won the Epsom derby, the Irish derby and the prix of L’Aromphe arc in the same year, 2000.
But perhaps his most famous horse was Shergar, who won the EPSOM derby, the Irish derby and King Jorge, before being kidnapped in February 1983 of the Ireland Sementals farm.
A rescue demand was made, with the mafia, the former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and the anger suggested as suspects. No money was paid, and the horse’s trace was never found.
The AGA Khan established the AGA Khan Development Network in 1967. The International Development Agencies Group employ 80,000 people who help build schools and hospitals and provide electricity to millions of people in the poorest parts of Africa and Asia.
He mixed his development work with private businesses, owner, for example, in Uganda, a pharmaceutical company, a bank and a network factory.
“Few people unite so many divisions, between the spiritual and the material; This and west; Muslim and Christian, as funny as he ” Vanity Fair He wrote in his 2013 article.
He married twice, first in 1969 with former British model Sarah Croker Poole, with whom he had a daughter and two children. The couple divorced in 1995.
In 1998 he married Gabriele Zu Leiningen, born in Germany, with whom he had a son. The couple divorced in 2014.
