As a result, the accident was kept secret for more than two months and hospital staff were under instructions not to disclose the identity of their famous patient. Rahim has some of those tendencies.
There are a few nervous conversations going on. If he succeeds his father, then I think that he would make a great modernizing Aga Khan. Born in , Prince Rahim is the second child of the Aga Khan and his first wife. When K, as the Aga Khan is known, proposed to Sally Croker-Poole in , the former model and debutante was warned about his infidelities. But Sally, whose first marriage to Lord James Crichton-Stuart had been a disaster, was ready to settle down.
She had had a series of boyfriends β financier Sir James Goldsmith, tipster Charles Benson and backgammon hustler Phillip Martyn β but all were gamblers and Sally wanted stability.
It is his ability to straddle both the religious and secular worlds that makes the Aga Khan so intriguing. He is not quite royal but, like the Dalai Lama, he has an iconic status with mysterious origins β legend has it that followers in Tanzania once bottled his bathwater.
He also retains a quasi- diplomatic status and has a role as an interlocutor between Islam and the West. The Aga Khan enjoys the pleasures of the West while promoting himself as a philanthropic citizen of the world. He hates publicity about his extravagant lifestyle but is keen to publicize his work in sponsoring education, religious tolerance and charities for the poor. He owns houses on five continents, numerous cars, a Gulfstream private jet and vast yachts. His fortune is based on donations from millions of Ismaili Muslims, the second largest Shia community in the world, who regard the Aga Khan as the 49th direct descendent of the Prophet Mohammed and pay him upwards of 12 per cent of their income.
