His Highness Prince Karim Al-Husseini, Aga Khan IV, 49th hereditary Imam of the Ismaili Muslims, passed away peacefully in Lisbon, Portugal, on 4 February 2025 at the age of 88. Prince Karim was born in Switzerland on 13 December 1936, lived at length in France and had been based in Portugal in recent years. His development network and foundation are based in Switzerland. He will be buried in Lisbon. He is survived by three sons and a daughter and several grandchildren.
He spent his early childhood in Nairobi, Kenya, went to school in Switzerland to the prestigious Le Rosey school and for his college education enrolled in Harvard University in the USA, where he studied Islamic history. His grandfather Sir Sultan Mohammed Shah Aga Khan III, the first President of the All India Muslim League, died in 1957 and nominated Prince Karim as the imam. Sir Sultan Mohammed Shah bypassed his son Prince Ali Khan and Karim Aga Khan became Imam of the Ismaili Muslims at the young age of 20 years.
The demise of Prince Karim Aga Khan is a great loss to millions of people of the world. He was a great friend of Pakistan and his legacy will endure through his great and generous contributions in education and health care and infrastructure development. Karim Aga Khan was the founder and chairman of the Aga Khan Development Network. He established the Aga Khan University in Karachi in 1983 in order to improve the quality of life in the developing world and beyond through world class teaching, research and healthcare delivery. Driven by His Highness’ expansive vision, constant guidance and generosity, AKU has grown to be recognised as one of the finest universities in the world and a beacon of hope for the communities whom it serves. This medical university is a very generous gift of the Aga Khan to the people of Pakistan and today it imparts world class education to Pakistani students with numerous generous scholarships for needy students.
The Aga Khan will always be remembered as a great benefactor for Pakistan. His vision led to remarkable achievements in education, healthcare, and poverty alleviation. We cherish His Highness Prince Karim Aga Khan's special attachment with Pakistan and recall his unforgettable role for the development of its people. The family of Prince Karim Aga Khan rendered a yeoman’s service in the freedom movement. In 1906, when the Muslim League was founded in Dhaka, Sultan Mohammed Shah Aga Khan III was a founding member and the first president of the League, and played a major role for the establishment of Pakistan.
On 13 December 2022, the Prime Minister of Pakistan thanked Prince Karim Aga Khan: “Congratulations to His Highness Prince Karim Aga Khan IV on his birthday,” he said in a tweet. “We acknowledge, appreciate, and remain grateful for his wonderful contributions to the cause of education and socio-economic development in Pakistan and around the world.”
Prince Karim Aga Khan was a carefree student interested in football and other extra-curricular activities in Harvard, and had the makings of a great scholar on the way to a PhD in Islamic history, but was suddenly forced to take on the role of a religious leader after the death of his grandfather in 1957. In rising to the challenge suddenly thrust before him, he created a template for the next 60 years of his reign, and Aga Khan IV stood as one of the most highly admired yet elusive spiritual leaders of the modern age.
As the Imam of the Ismaili Muslims, he had been given the titular role of His Highness the Aga Khan, and had been thrust into by his grandfather while still a student at Harvard, aged 20. He described himself as “an undergraduate who knew what his work for the rest of his life was going to be.” By the time he returned to his studies after an eight-month break, his classmates were calling him “Jesus” and in his own words “it was a big joke on campus.”
Today, the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) is one of the world’s largest development agencies, spending $625 million every year on economic, cultural and social projects - even in countries with no Ismaili population. The AKDN is not a fundraising body. Thanks to the donations made by the Aga Khan’s followers, the AKDN does not need to raise funds for projects. Instead the opposite is the case, with national governments and funding institutions like the World Bank and IMF asking the AKDN to help them to facilitate their projects. Today, through the 156 schools of the Aga Khan Education Services (AKES) and through the teacher training and school improvement programmes of the AKU and the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF), it has reached tens of thousands of teachers and millions of students. It has provided the nation with thousands of doctors, nurses and midwives.
The AKDN operates many medical facilities in Pakistan that provide healthcare facilities to 1.8 million people a year throughout Pakistan. They have also planted over 39 million trees for fuel, fodder and construction. They have built smoke-free stoves that reduce respiratory ailments and simultaneously cut wood consumption by 50%. They provides electricity to about 40,000 households through 333 micro hydroelectric projects. AKDN has prepared communities for disasters through 172 community emergency response teams and 36,000 trained volunteers. It has created safe, prize-winning drinking water and sanitation facilities for over 500,000 people. It provides financial services for millions of Pakistanis. At the same time, it has worked on revitalising Pakistan’s rich heritage by restoring over 170 historic settlements, forts, monuments, buildings and spaces, ranging from the Lahore Fort in Lahore to the Khaplu Village and Palace in Baltistan.
In all of its endeavours, the AKDN has tried to create a critical mass of integrated development activities that offer people in a given area not only a rise in income, but also a broad, sustained improvement in the overall quality of life. It encourages self-reliance and a long-term view of development. In fact, many areas that received AKDN support in the past have well-educated communities that are now masters of their own development, building their own schools and health centres and taking other measures to care for themselves and those less fortunate. With a keen eye for architecture and design, Prince Karim Aga Khan founded a prestigious architectural prize and established programs for Islamic Architecture at MIT and Harvard. His dedication to cultural preservation led to restoring historic Islamic structures worldwide.
The Aga Khan's human sympathy and humanitarian activity have been broadly rewarded. Since the early l960s, he has received numerous orders of merit (Mauritania, Portugal, Iran, Pakistan, Italy, Senegal, France, Spain), and more recently his contributions to architecture have been widely recognised by the University of Virginia, 1984; Morocco, 1986; Great Britain, 1991; the United States, 1992. Prince Karim Aga Khan has received national honours from many countries including Pakistan and India, during his life time he enjoyed the citizenship of the UK, France, Switzerland, Portugal and Canada.