"Every day has been so short, every hour so fleeting, every minute so filled with the life I love," wrote the Aga Khan in his autobiography three years ago, "that time for me has fled on too swift a wing." Last week swift-winged time came to an end for the legendary old Prince of Islam. In a quiet lakeside villa at Versoix, Switzerland, his huge bulk wasted to a mere 132 Ibs., His Highness Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah, the Aga Khan III and spiritual leader of some 20 million Ismaili Moslems throughout the East, the Middle East and Africa, died at 79.
The old man passed away in the midst of a motley family group that included his fourth wife, a former Miss France of 1932; an English model and a French model, each of whom hope to marry one of his sons; and the seven-year-old daughter of Miss Rita Hayworth of Hollywood. His passing was proclaimed in banner headlines in the tabloid press of the great cities of the West and acknowledged with prayers in the hushed mosques of the East.
Pounds into Platinum. For more than three generations of Sunday-supplement readers, the Aga Khan was a fabulous figure who managed to combine the affluence and honors of an Oriental potentate with the predilections of a European playboy. His bland face and portly (240-odd Ibs.) figure, resembling those of a large and benevolent turtle, were constantly caught by news cameras—at the Royal Enclosure at Ascot, on a fashionable beach at Cannes, at a lavish masquerade ball in Venice, or amidst panoplies of Oriental splendor as devoted followers balanced his weight in gifts of diamonds, gold or platinum on Moslem feast days. Readers of the sports page knew the Aga Khan as an ardent turfman whose stables had produced five Derby winners. (The day before his death, a thoroughbred named Damseesa, carrying his flashy red and green silks, romped home an easy 14 to 1 winner at Paris' Le Tremblay.) Gossipists eagerly followed his own progress through four marriages, and the gaudier romances of his son, Prince Aly.
Yet to millions of Moslems from the teeming cities of India to the jungle swamps of Tanganyika, the Aga Khan was a holy figure, held in unquestioning esteem. Born in Karachi of Persian parents on Nov. 2, 1877, of a line that claims direct descent from the Prophet's daughter Fatima, young Mahomed Shah became Imam of the Ismailis at the age of seven, when his father died.
A minority sect of Islam, whose origins lie deep in the feuds that rent the faithful after the death of the Prophet Mohammed, the Ismailis believe essentially that life is good and should be lived to the full. If at times their new Imam was seen in the public press to be sipping a glass of wine in contravention of the Prophet's orders, it could always be supposed that his divine powers turned the wine into water before it reached his lips, and "after all," as one of the faithful was supposed to have said, "why shouldn't a god go to Paris and race horses if he wants to?"
Throughout his life the Aga Khan's pastoral letters to his flocks were full of good, sound and fatherly advice. The ancient Moslem tradition of tossing a coin to the leprous beggar in the square was brought up to date by the Aga Khan in huge endowments to hospitals and schools.