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

From the finest racehorses to the devotion of 15 million followers, he is used to every privilege and defers to nobody. But it's not necessarily a recipe for contentment and, when his plans are thwarted, there is always a price to pay
Nobody likes to be rejected, but when you are a billionaire spiritual leader unused to having people stand in your way, the consequences tend to be dramatic. Such is the case with the Aga Khan, who for the second time in 13 years has reacted to a perceived slight by turning his back on Britain and looking elsewhere for a welcome.

Photo: The Court of Gayumars, a 16th-century watercolour, gold and ink painting depicting Shah Gayumars of Persia being revered by his subjects, has often been described as a Persian version of Eden.; Photo: The Toronto museum will also house this famous 16th-century Ottoman Turkish portrait of Sultan Selim II (Selim the Sot).; Photo: Ladies on a Terrace with Sparklers is part of the collection being donated by the Aga Khan's uncle, Prince Sadruddin.There's the liquor-loving sultan nicknamed Selim the Sot, the incredibly sexy gals called Ladies on a Terrace with Sparklers, and the 'painting of

A real-estate dispute in England resulted in the decision this week to make Toronto, not London, the site of the largest collection of Islamic art in the English-speaking world.On Tuesday, Aga Khan IV, spiritual leader of the world's 15-million Ismaili Muslims, announced he was abandoning plans to build his planned palatial museum of Islamic art in the British capital. It would have occupied a landmark site on the Thames right beside the official residence of the head of the Church of England, across from the Houses of Parliament.

IN WHAT IS SOMETHING of a major coup, Toronto has landed an exciting cultural and intellectual investment ? what has been called an educational and cultural complex 'of international pre-eminence' in the Western world.

This is the plan by the Aga Khan Development Network to build a concentration of resources in humanities and human development, incorporating education and medicine, in Toronto, on a 7-hectare site adjacent to the proposed Ismaili Centre, which is to be the largest such centre in the English-speaking world.

The Aga Khan, billionaire spiritual leader to the world's 15 million Ismaili Muslims, has chosen suburban Toronto as future home for the largest collection of Islamic art in the English-speaking world.
Don Mills, an area northeast of downtown full of strip malls and faceless glass buildings, will be home to a complex designed by a renowned Indian architect and filled with ancient and modern Islamic treasures, it was announced yesterday.