Ismaili.NET - Heritage F.I.E.L.D.

This day of May 12th marks the sad passing away of Prince Aly Solomon. Khan (father of our Hazar Imam) and Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan (half brother of Prince Aly Khan)

Prince Aly S. Khan
Born: June 13, 1911, Turin, Italy
Died: May 12, 1960, Suresnes, France
Children: Aga Khan IV, Yasmin Aga Khan, Prince Amyn Muhammad
Spouse: Rita Hayworth (m. 1949–1953), Joan Yarde-Buller (m. 1936–1949)
Parents: Aga Khan III, Cleope Teresa Magliano
Grandchildren: Rahim Aga Khan, Zahra Aga Khan, More

Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan
Born: January 17, 1933, Neuilly-sur-Seine, Nanterre, France

Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistan People’s Party chairperson, has said that Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan will be mourned not only by his family, friends and the Ismaili community but also by “the larger world where he was well known and respected”.

In her condolence letter to the late prince’s widow, Ms Bhutto wrote: “So many will mourn the passing of a sensitive man of enormous intelligence, understanding and compassion. I will mourn him for all those reasons. I will mourn him too as a good friend of my family over many decades.” —Staff Report

On a clear day, with binoculars, you can look across lake Geneva from Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan's office to the towers of his seventh century Chateau Bellerive, at least you could until yesterday, when he resigned after 12 years as UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Outside are well-kept lawns, winding paths, splendid great evergreens. It all seems a million miles away from the squalor and misery one associates with the very word refugee.

...Meanwhile, My ordinary life outside politics had continued tranquilly and eventfully. My wife, Princess Andree, had through-out the exhausting and protracted sessions of the first two Round Table Conferences been of quite invaluable support and help to Me. For the Conferences had a circumambience of hospitality and sociability, parties, receptions, and dinners innumerable, at which My wife was My constant, graceful, and accomplished partner. In January 1933 My second, son, Sadruddin, was born in the American Hospital at Neuilly, just outside Paris.

People sign a condolence book dedicated to the memory of Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, at Aga Khan's residence Chateau de Bellerive above Geneva, Switzerland, Thursday, May 15, 2003. Aga Khan, the former UN High Commissioner for Refugees and uncle of the spiritual leader of the Shiite Muslim Ismaili community, has died at the age of 70 on May 12, 2003, in a hospital in Boston, USA, after a long illness.

Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, who was the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from 1965 to 1977, heads the "Groupe de Bellerive," an independent commission studying world problems. While in New York in December 1980 to work with U.N. Secretary Kurt Waldheim on resolving the crisis in Iran, Prince Sadruddin was interviewed by WorldPaper about his views on Iran and about the 1980s.

Commenting on the situation in Iran, Prince Sadruddin said that it was understandable and it could have been foreseen.

Sitting comfortably in his office in the immaculate villa that houses his Bellerive Foundation in Geneva, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan hardly looks like a man who has taken as his personal agenda many of the world's most pressing problems. The erstwhile townhouse, from which he has directed his various personal philanthropies since 1977, is a grand confection of turn-of-the -century architecture clearly intended, inside and out, to facilitate to the fullest its original owners' enjoyment of their comfortable existence.

Sitting comfortably in his office in the immaculate villa that houses his Bellerive Foundation in Geneva, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan hardly looks like a man who has taken as his personal agenda many of the world's most pressing problems. The erstwhile townhouse, from which he has directed his various personal philanthropies since 1977, is a grand confection of turn-of-the -century architecture clearly intended, inside and out, to facilitate to the fullest its original owners' enjoyment of their comfortable existence.

Mediating between East and West, and bringing an environmental conscience to the affairs of the UN