When Pakistan’s Senate rose on Friday to honour the Aga Khan family, it was doing more than greeting Prince Rahim al-Hussaini Aga Khan V on his first official visit since becoming the spiritual leader of the Ismaili Muslim community. It was acknowledging a relationship that has lived through Pakistan’s politics, disasters and quiet acts of service.
The reception has been fittingly warm. The prime minister has spoken of expanding cooperation with the Aga Khan Development Network in climate-vulnerable northern Pakistan. The president has honoured the family’s contribution to healthcare, education, heritage conservation, climate resilience and community development. Politicians continue to pay tribute to decades of service rendered without discrimination of faith, ethnicity, colour or creed.
However, as tributes flow through the capital, I can’t help but think of thousands of living rooms and the lives quietly shaped by a family which never sought political power in Pakistan yet ended up building some of its most cherished institutions.
In climate-vulnerable mountain valleys where government services appear late, the network’s presence meant that roads were cleared, children were vaccinated, and families were not forced to choose between survival and debt.
The relationship is older than Pakistan itself. Sultan Muhammad Shah Aga Khan III, heir to an 800-year-old Ismaili Imamate, became the first permanent president of the All-India Muslim League in 1906 and argued for Muslim representation in a Hindu-dominated independence movement. At the 1906 Simla deputation, he pressed the British for separate electorates, setting the stage for later constitutional debates. His support for education at Aligarh transformed the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College into Aligarh Muslim University, producing many of the scholars who later led the Pakistan movement. At the Round Table conferences in London (1930-32), he chaired Muslim delegations and advocated constitutional safeguards alongside Mohammad Ali Jinnah.
His son, Prince Aly Khan, would serve as Pakistan’s permanent representative to the UN from 1958 to 1960, becoming vice-president of the General Assembly.
After partition, the connection moved from politics into development. The Aga Khan family acquired the port city of Gwadar from Oman and handed it to Pakistan in 1958. It also donated properties abroad to help establish Pakistan’s first embassies. Under Prince Karim Aga Khan IV, the Imamat’s relationship with Pakistan blossomed into one of the world’s most ambitious private development partnerships. The Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) launched programmes in education, health, rural development, microfinance, culture, agriculture and disaster resilience across the country. It opened the Aga Khan University in Karachi in 1983, now a benchmark for medical education and research, which operates more than 450 health facilities and treats over two million patients a year. The Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP) mobilised village organisations and women’s savings groups, doubling the incomes of small producers and empowering communities in Gilgit-Baltistan and Chitral. When the 2005 Kashmir earthquake flattened towns and buried villages under landslides, AKDN announced a three-year commitment of US$50 million to support rehabilitation and earthquake preparedness. The pledge covered training in seismic-resistant construction, community mobilisation, education for health and planning professionals, and improved helicopter access to remote mountain zones. Focus Humanitarian Assistance, an AKDN affiliate, was among the first agencies to deploy search-and-rescue teams. It delivered food to more than 70,000 people, distributed over 1,100 tents and 14,000 blankets, and evacuated more than 900 casualties. The Aga Khan University’s doctors, nurses and medical students provided trauma surgery and mass vaccinations, while the Aga Khan Planning and Building Service set up water systems and temporary housing. Four AKDN helicopters flew more than 650 sorties carrying 500 metric tonnes of relief cargo and over 3,500 passengers.
During the floods of 2022 and 2025, the prince announced a US$10 million donation on behalf of the Ismaili Imamat. AKDN agencies evacuated thousands of people, distributed food and tents, and operated emergency health camps. The Aga Khan Agency for Habitat trained 36,000 volunteers, organised 170 community emergency response teams and evacuated over 3,000 people during the summer 2025 floods in Gilgit-Baltistan and Chitral. Rural Support Programme staff repaired pipes and water schemes, and health teams provided treatment and counselling. In climate-vulnerable mountain valleys where government services appear late, the network’s presence meant that roads were cleared, children were vaccinated, and families were not forced to choose between survival and debt.
The network’s impact is also cultural and social. The Aga Khan Trust for Culture restored Baltit, Altit, Shigar and Khaplu forts, preserved historic mosques and khanqahs, and revived traditional crafts-projects that linked heritage preservation with tourism and local incomes. Thousands of children attend Diamond Jubilee schools across the northern areas; the first girls’ academy opened in Hunza in 1983, and female enrollment increased by 56 per cent within a few years. The Water and Sanitation Extension Programme provided clean drinking water and reduced waterborne diseases by 60 per cent. The network’s approach emphasises women’s leadership, local decision-making and community ownership. There is another, quieter contribution that Pakistan must recognise. The Aga Khan family has given this country a language of Muslim public life that does not depend on anger. In a region where faith is too often dragged into shouting matches, sectarian suspicion and political theatre, the Ismaili ethic of service has offered something far more persuasive: schools, hospitals, museums, restored heritage, women’s education, pluralism and calm civic discipline. It is a deeply Muslim vocabulary, but one expressed through care rather than coercion.
That matters in Pakistan. It matters even more after the horrors this country has seen. The 2015 attack on an Ismaili bus in Karachi was one of those days when the nation’s heart should have stopped. Forty-three peaceful citizens were killed on their way to work. The community mourned with dignity. Its leaders spoke of harmony, not revenge. Its institutions supported survivors. At a time when sectarian violence has repeatedly tried to fracture Pakistan’s soul, the Ismaili community’s answer has been steadiness. They have continued to build.
The message of pluralism extends beyond Pakistan’s borders. In 2014, the Aga Khan opened North America’s first museum dedicated to Islamic art in Toronto. The museum houses more than 1,000 artefacts spanning ten centuries, including the earliest known copy of Avicenna’s Canon of Medicine, and features a Persian garden that a visiting artist described as “a real bringing together of the worldly and the spiritual”. The museum’s mission is to fill the “enormous knowledge gap” around Islamic art and civilisation and to bridge the stereotypes faced by Muslim immigrants. “It’s an exquisite gift to the city of Toronto,” Pakistani-Canadian artist Farhee Chundrigar noted, “phenomenally help[ing] to bridge the gap between our roots and the stereotypes we suffer as Muslims in today’s world”.
Perhaps the most powerful testimonies are personal. In a farewell column, Yasir Abbas, a lawyer from Gilgit pursuing a PhD in Manchester, wrote that he owed his education to Diamond Jubilee schools in Yasin and the Aga Khan Higher Secondary School in Gilgit. “The Aga Khan’s life is an epic story of impact-driven leadership,” Abbas wrote, noting how AKDN introduced resilience, adaptability and sustainability to development indicators. His story is one of thousands. To honour the Aga Khan family only as benefactors would be too easy. To learn from them would be harder. The Aga Khan repeatedly emphasised that sustainable development depends on both bottom-up and top-down systems.
Around 80,000 Ismailis gathered in the village of Passu, Hunza, on Thursday to see their spiritual leader. His message to followers emphasised unity, education, respect for institutions and service to humanity. He did not dwell on the family’s own service. He focused on the values that underpin it. Those values are, ultimately, the heart of this story. In a region often defined by sectarian strife, the Ismaili community has modelled pluralism not through slogans but through schools, clinics, cultural projects and quiet resilience.
The writer is OpEd Editor (Daily Times) and can be reached at durenayab786 @gmail.com. Shetweets@DureAkram.