His Highness the Prince Shah Karim al-Husseini, Aga Khan IV, whose real name is Karim al-Husseini, was born in Geneva on December 13, 1936; He is the son of Prince Ali Khan and Princess Juana Ali Khan.
He spent his youth in Nairobi (Kenya) to later move to Switzerland, where he attended the Le Rosey Institute, one of the most prestigious educational boarding schools, for nine years. In 1959 he graduated with honors in Islamic History from Harvard University.
The Aga Khan became Imam of the Ismaili Muslims on July 11, 1957, at the age of twenty, succeeding his grandfather, Sir Sultan Aga Khan III.
He is the forty-ninth hereditary Imam of Nizariti (the assassin sect) Khoja, who consider him to be a direct descendant of Muhammad through his cousin and son-in-law ʿ Alī b. Abi Talib, first Imam of the Shiites and his wife Fatima, daughter of the Prophet.
In his personal life, the Aga Khan married Begun Salimah in 1969, who was born in New Delhi to British parents and raised in India. The couple had three children: Princess Zahra, born in 1970, Prince Rahim, who was born in 1971, and Prince Hussein, born in 1974.
In 1995 he divorced Salimah and, three years later, he married the German princess Gabriele Thyssen who, after converting to the Muslim religion and getting married, took the name Begum Inaara Aga Khan. The result of this marriage is Prince Ali Muhammad Aga Khan, born in 2000. In October 2004 the divorce of the Aga Khan and the Begum was announced.
Among the objectives of the Aga Khan is her work in favor of the elimination of world poverty, the promotion and exercise of secular pluralism, the advancement of the status of women and the revaluation of Islamic art and architecture. He is the founder and president of the Aga Khan Network for Development, one of the world’s largest private development networks.