The China Mail - Aga Khan: racehorse billionaire and Islamic spiritual leader

Prince Karim al-Husseini was regarded as a direct descendent of the Prophet Mohammed, given nearly divine-status as the 49th hereditary imam of the Ismaili sect of Shia Islam.

The Swiss-born philanthropist was bequeathed the title of Aga Khan aged 20 by his grandfather, who skipped the line of succession for the first time since the seventh century to appoint a "young man" of the "new age".

He was the son of a British socialite and a playboy ambassador for Pakistan, who became known for having a string of high-profile lovers that landed him in the diary columns of glossy magazines.

The Aga Khan went on to have a jetset lifestyle himself marked by private planes, yachts, skiing in the Winter Olympics, and a marriage to a British model, with whom he had three children.

They later divorced and he married German singer Gabriele Thyssen, with whom he had a son.

During the divorce case, French judges had difficulty estimating the Aga Khan's wealth, because of a rare fiscal privilege that allows him to pay taxes in Switzerland, despite living in France.

- Leave a 'better world' -

Fuelled by his enormous wealth, he launched an apolitical secular development foundation in 1967 credited with raising literacy levels in 18 countries across South and Central Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Its work in Pakistan earned the Aga Khan the wrath of Sunni Taliban militants who accused the foundation's schools of "brainwashing" men and women to stay away from Islam.

In his youth he had dreamed of becoming an architect, before graduating instead from Harvard University with a degree in Islamic history.

He has also pursued a goal of educating the world about the richness of Muslim culture.

"I was born with Islamic ethics in a Muslim family. There is nothing wrong with being well off as long as money has a social and ethical value and is not the object of one's own greed," he told AFP in 2008.

"One of the principles of Islam is that on his deathbed every person must try to leave behind a better world."

The Aga Khan has among other things helped finance the reconstruction of Bosnia's Ottoman-era Mostar bridge, which was destroyed during the Balkan Wars in the 1990s.

He boasts a enviable collection of over 1,000 years of Islamic art, one of the world's largest and most valuable, that he has put on display in his cultural centres in London, Lisbon, Vancouver and Dubai.

"We don't do enough to illustrate to the peoples of our world the greatness of Islamic civilisations," he told AFP in an interview in 2008 in Syria, after funding the restoration of Aleppo's majestic citadel.

- Racing empire -

Just three years after taking on his religious responsibilities, he acquired a racehorsing empire assiduously built up by his grandfather and his father.

"The idea of entering into an activity that was in no way central to the Ismaili Imamat, an activity in which no member of my family -- neither my brother nor my sister nor I -- had any understanding, in itself raised a major question mark," he said in a book published in 2011 celebrating 50 years in the racehorse business.

He will be, in the public's eye, forever best remembered for the ill-fated Shergar, who clinched a mind-bogglingly easy win at the 1981 Epson Derby.

John Matthias, the jockey of the second horse Glint of Gold, actually believed he had won the race because he couldn't see the winner.

Shergar was kidnapped two years later from the Aga Khan's Ballymany Stud in Ireland.

In March 2016, the Ismaili spiritual leader, then aged 79, fell for an audacious scammer who tricked rich targets out of millions of euros by impersonating one of France's top politicians.

His Aga Khan Development Network made bank transfers totalling 20 million euros to accounts in France, Poland and China. Some of the transfers were later blocked, but eight million euros disappeared without trace.

R.Lin--ThChM