GRANDSON SUCCEEDS AGA KHAN

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28329, 15 July 1957, Page 11

GRANDSON SUCCEEDS AGA KHAN

(N.Z. Press Association —Copyright) (Rec. 11 p.m.) GENEVA, July 13. At the request of his father, the/Aga Khan, who died two (lays ago, Prince Aly Khan has sacrificed the leadership of v 20 million Moslems of the Ismailu sect to manage the vast racing interests built up by his father. Prince Karim, the 19-year-old eldest son of Prince Aly, will succeed his grandfather as Imam (spiritual leader) of the sect.

Mrs Germaine Vuillier, who managed the Aga Khan’s vast racing interests, said the stables and the breeding farms with their stock, were worth "hundreds of thousands of pounds.” She»said: "The Aga Khan asked Prince Aly to keep them running. He told his son... no one man could do both.” Mrs Vuillier said in an interview with reporters: “Prince Aly’s horse-racing interests would not have permitted him to give full attention to his religious duties. "This was the only reason why, as the eldest son of the Aga Khan, he did not succeed him. “The Aga Khan decided that Prince Aly and Prince Karim should therefore share responsibility for the family duties.” Mrs Vuillier took over management of Prince Aly’s five Jrish and four French stud farms, containing about 300 horses, a few years ago from her husband, Colonel Jean Vuillier, after his death. About 75 of the horses are at present in training. She said: “Prince Aly is the world’s greatest expert on .horses. He himself is the reason why the stables are flourishing sp brilliantly. Nobody else could have achieved this result.” Prince Karim Proclaimed Prince Karim, the successor to the Aga today proclaimed the spiritual leader of the

Ismaili Moslems at a simple ceremony in his grandfather’s villa at Versoix, near Geneva. The slender, brown-haired university student received 50 leaders of the sect with their wives, who wore brilliantly coloured silk saris, in the villa garden on the shore of Lake Geneva. Prince Karim read them the announcement, made public last night, that the 79-year-old Aga Khan, had designated him to succeed as the 49th Imam. The Aga Khan’s widow, the Begum, watched the ceremony in the garden from behind a curtain at the window of her room where the embalmed body lay under a shroud. The body will be flown next week to Egypt for burial at Aswan, on the banks of the Nile. Aga Khan’s Wish Ths Aga Khan nominated Prince Karim to succeed him in. his will. He said: “In view of the fundamentally altered conditions in the world in very recent years, due to the great changes which have taken place, including the discoveries of atomic science, I am convinced that it is in the best interests of the Shiah Moslem Ismaili community that I should be succeeded by a young man who has been brought up and developed during the recent years and in the midst of the new age and who brings a new outlook oh life to his high office as Imam.” Prince Karim was educated at Le Rosey—known as “the school for kings,” on Lake Geneva. The Shah of Persia was a pupil there. Lately Prince Karim has been studying Oriental history at Harvard. He said he did not know whether he would return to Harvard, but he added: “I would like to spend one more year there as a senior, with my room-mate, John Fell." John Fell is the son of Mr Adlai Stevenson. In London, Princess Joan AlyKhan, mother of Prince Karim,

would not comment on the naming of her son as successor to the Aga Khan. The princess, aged 47, whose marriage to Prince Aly was dissolved in 1949, Avas born the Hon. Joan Yarde-Buler, daughter of the third Lord Churston. In 1936, her marriage to Mr Noel Guiness was dissolved and she married Prince Aly in the same year. She agreed to both Prince Karim and his younger brother Prince Amyn being brought up in the Moslem faith. Egyptian Claim In Cairo today, an Egyptian newspaper claimed that Britain twice offered to make the Aga Khan king of Egypt in succession to the deposed Khedive Abbas Hilmy in 1914. The newspaper, “Akhbar El Yom,” which said it was quoting what the Aga Khan told friends at a Cairo club in 1954, said he refused because he knew there had been two attempts on the life o.f Sultan Hussein Kamel for accepting the throne from the British. It said the Egyptian Treasury expected to receive several million pounds in death duty on the Egyptian estates of the Aga Khan. The estates were valued at about £10,250,000.