Aga Khan III

Sultan Muhammad Shah, known as Aga Khan III (2 November 1877 – 11 July 1957), was the 48th Imam of the Nizari Ismailis. He succeeded his father in 1885 at the age of seven, and his imamate lasted 72 years. ^{1 2} He was at the same time a political leader of India's Muslims: a founder and the first permanent president of the All-India Muslim League, and president of the Assembly of the League of Nations in 1937. ²

He was born in Karachi, in British India, on 2 November 1877, the only son of Aga Khan II by his third wife, Nawab A'lia Shams ol-Moluk, a granddaughter of Fath-Ali Shah Qajar. ^{1 2} Under his mother's care he was given an education that was Islamic and Oriental as well as Western, and after Eton College he studied at the University of Cambridge. ² He succeeded his father as imam in 1885, aged seven. ¹

In addition to attending to the affairs of his own community, he rapidly acquired a leading position among India's Muslims as a whole. ¹ In 1906 he headed the Muslim deputation to the Viceroy, Lord Minto, to promote the interests of the Muslim minority, and the Morley-Minto reforms of 1909 consequently provided for separate Muslim electorates. ¹ He served as president of the All-India Muslim League during its early years and initiated the fund for raising the Muslim college at Aligarh to university status, which was effected in 1920; he was the first Pro-Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University, serving until 1930. ^{1 2} Even after he resigned as president of the League in 1912, he still exerted a major influence on its policies, and he played an important part in the Round Table Conferences on Indian constitutional reform in London (1930–32). ² Queen Victoria conferred the Knight Commander of the Indian Empire on him in 1897, and he received recognition for his public services from the German Emperor, the Sultan of Turkey, the Shah of Iran and other potentates. ¹

When the First World War broke out he supported the Allied cause, but at the subsequent peace conference he urged that the Ottoman Empire and its successor Turkey should be leniently treated. ¹ He represented India at the World Disarmament Conference in Geneva in 1932 and at the League of Nations Assembly in 1932 and from 1934 to 1937, and was appointed president of the League in 1937. ¹ During the Second World War he lived in Switzerland and withdrew from political activity. ¹

The first half of the twentieth century was a period of significant development for the Ismaili community, with institutions for social and economic development established in the Indian subcontinent and East Africa. ² Shah implemented organisational reforms so that Ismaili communities could administer their own affairs through formal structures: in 1905 he created the first Ismaili Constitution for the social governance of the community in East Africa, organising councils at local, national and regional levels and setting out rules for marriage, divorce and inheritance and for mutual cooperation, and similar constitutions were promulgated in India and periodically revised. ² His community celebrated his Golden (1937), Diamond (1946) and Platinum (1954) Jubilees, weighing him in gold, diamonds and, symbolically, platinum, the proceeds going to social welfare and development institutions in Asia and Africa. ²

Shah was deeply influenced by Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan and became a supporter of the institution that became Aligarh Muslim University; the article describes him as an Islamic modernist of the Aligarh movement who saw no contradiction between religion and modernity, criticised the traditional religious establishment's formalism, legalism and literalism, and advocated renewed ijtihad and a modernist understanding of ijma, with a return to the original sources. ² He opposed sectarianism and called for a rapprochement between Sunnism and Shi'ism, while continuing to instruct his Ismaili followers to remain dedicated to their own teachings. ² On women's rights he was more progressive than many modernists of his time: he endorsed the spiritual equality of men and women, called for full political equality including the vote and for compulsory primary education for girls, banned purdah and the face veil for his followers, restricted polygamy, banned child marriage and encouraged the marriage of widows. ² These positions are reported here as the sources give them: they are his views, not the museum's.

He was also well known as a successful owner and breeder of Thoroughbred racehorses, including five winners of the Derby and a total of sixteen winners of British Classic Races, and was British flat racing Champion Owner thirteen times. ^{1 2}

He authored India in Transition (1918), which proposed a South Asiatic federation of autonomous states, and his autobiography, The Memoirs of Aga Khan: World Enough and Time (1954). ² He died at Versoix, near Geneva in Switzerland, on 11 July 1957, and is buried in the Mausoleum of Aga Khan at Aswan in Egypt, on the Nile. ^{1 2} He was succeeded by his grandson Karim, Aga Khan IV, having bypassed his son Aly Khan. ²

Britannica records that he succeeded his father as imam of the Nizari Ismaili sect, and the English article that he was the 48th imam of the Nizari Ismaili branch of Shia Islam; the entity data therefore records his faith as documented shia-ismaili on those two independent sources. ^{1 2}

• The defined sources cited above, registered in data/source/.