A Family Tribute
A remembrance of the hereditary Imamat and the lives that carried it.
For more than a thousand years the Shia Ismaili Muslims have been led by a living, hereditary Imam — today a community of some twelve to fifteen million people across more than thirty-five countries. The honorific Aga Khan has passed down this family's line since the nineteenth century.
46th Imam
Hasan Ali Shah (1804–1881)
Born in Persia to the 45th Imam and raised amid the Qajar court, he succeeded as Imam as a youth. The Persian monarch Fath Ali Shah gave him a daughter in marriage and conferred the honorific “Aga Khan” — the first time the title entered the family. Governor of Kerman before a falling-out with the Qajar throne, he left Persia and settled in Bombay, becoming the first Imam to make his home in India.
47th Imam
Aqa Ali Shah (1830–1885)
Schooled in Najaf and Karbala, where he studied Arabic, Persian, and Ismaili thought and became a respected authority on Persian and Arabic literature and religious philosophy. Appointed to the Bombay Legislative Council and elected president of the Muhammadan National Association, he opened schools for the community and worked to widen education for Indian Muslims. A keen sportsman, he led the community for only four years before his death in 1885.
48th Imam
Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah (1877–1957)
Educated at home by private tutors before going on to Eton College and the University of Cambridge. He succeeded as Imam at the age of seven and led the community for seventy-two years — the longest Imamat in Ismaili history. A founder and first president of the All-India Muslim League and President of the League of Nations in 1937, he is remembered as a champion of modern education and a founding father of Pakistan.
Son of Aga Khan III
(1911–1960)
Schooled by private tutors in India and France and later trained for the law in England. A celebrated racehorse breeder, decorated war hero, and the third husband of Rita Hayworth, he was passed over in the succession and instead served as Pakistan's Ambassador to the United Nations, where he was elected a Vice-President of the General Assembly.
49th Imam
Prince Karim al-Husseini (1936–2025)
Raised in Nairobi and educated at the Institut Le Rosey in Switzerland, then at Harvard University, where he earned a degree in history. He became the 49th Imam in 1957 at the age of twenty, while still a student, and led for nearly sixty-eight years. He founded the Aga Khan Development Network and the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, building a worldwide legacy in education, health, and culture.
50th Imam
Prince Rahim al-Husseini (b. 1971)
Educated at Phillips Academy Andover and Brown University, where he took a degree in comparative literature, with further graduate study in management at IESE Business School in Barcelona. Named successor in his late father's will, he became the 50th Imam in February 2025, and has long guided the Network's work on the environment and climate change.
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