The Aga Khan, who weighed gold, was raised by two porters on his chair upon his arrival at Rome’s Ciampino airport from Nice to Cairo for a recovery period.
Muhammad Shah Agha Khan III (November 2, 1877 – July 11, 1957) is the forty-eighth imam of the Nizari Ismaili community, one of the founders and first president of the All India Muslim League, recipient of the Indian Star, the Order of Saint Michael and Saint Gerges, the Order of the Indian Empire and the Royal Victorian Medal and a member of the United Kingdom’s Special Counsel.
He assumed the imamate following his father’s death, Aga Khan II, eight years old. His mother, Mrs Bibi Khan, sponsored him and personally supervised the affairs of the Ismaili community. He was called Aga Khan III Muhammad al-Husayni Shah. In 1893 he became sixteen years old, so his mother left him dealing with affairs. Sect. The Imam turned to defend the affairs of Muslims in general and was using his authority and friendship with the English to achieve the interests of Islamic countries and peoples. He was described as a brilliant politician.
Aga Khan III assumed the position of imamate, as he celebrated his golden jubilee in 1937, his diamond jubilee in 1946, and his platinum jubilee in 1954. In those ceremonies, the imam was weighed with gold and diamonds and symbolically with platinum. In February 1955 AD, Aga Khan held a legendary ceremony marking 71 years of his imamate in the roof garden of The old Semiramis overlooking the Cairo Nile. This ceremony was the last before his death.
Aga Khan III came to Aswan with his wife and his entourage in 1954, suffering from rheumatism and severe pain in the bones and joints, on the advice of a friend, and he stayed at the “Old Cataract” Hotel and was unable to walk and was in a wheelchair.
He was presented to the Nuba Sheikhs in medicine and advised to bury half of his lower body in the sands of Aswan every day for 3 hours, and after a week, he returned to the hotel walking on his feet.
Al-Agha decided to visit Aswan and stay in it in the winter, and he bought a villa to stay in instead of staying in hotels. He died there 3 years after his first visit on July 11, 1957, at eighty years.
A mausoleum of his own was built two years later, and his remains were transferred to him. It was designed by the architect, “Farid Shafi’i,” in the Fatimid style. It was built of pink limestone, while the tomb was built of white Italian Carrara marble.
It is worth noting that his fourth and last wife, Begum, “Umm Habiba,” has always placed a red rose on her husband’s grave every day during her stay in Aswan, and the gardener of her villa is acting on her behalf in this matter when she is absent. She lived long after the death of Agha.
Begum, Miss France, died in 1930 in the year 2000 A.D. She is of French origin, and her original name before her conversion to Islam and her marriage to the Aga Khan is “Yvonne Blanche Labros”. She died in Lucanet, France, at 94, and her body was transferred to Aswan to be buried next to her husband.