From: The Journal of the American Oriental Society | Date: October 1, 1996| Author: | COPYRIGHT 1996 American Oriental Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

The Isma ilis, a major community of Shi i Muslims, number several millions, and an overwhelming majority of them, representing the Nizari branch of the community, currently acknowledge Prince Karim Aga Khan IV as their forty-ninth spiritual leader, or imam. Prince Karim succeeded to the hereditary leadership of the Nizari Isma ilis in 1957 on the death of his grandfather, Sultan Muhammad Shah Aga Khan III. It was the latter's grandfather, Hasan Ali Shah (d. 1881), the forty-sixth Nizari imam, who had originally received the honorific title of Aga Khan from the contemporary Qajar ...