His Highness the Aga Khan with Mr. Michael Curtis (1920 – 2004) of the Nation Media Group. Photo: Azhar Chaudhry. Sultan Jessa Collection.

The Aga Khan’s wisdom and judgement at age 20

AN ANECDOTE BY LATE MICHAEL CURTIS
(Position held: Oversaw the Aga Khan’s worldwide activities for over 40 years)

(Adapted from a piece written for a special souvenir published by Kenya’s Daily Nation on the occasion of His Highness the Aga Khan’s wedding to Princess Salimah Aga Khan in 1969).

It was twelve years ago in Dar-es-Salaam in October 1957. Prince Karim, His Highness the Aga Khan, was to be installed as successor to his grandfather in the first of a series of elaborate ceremonies to be held that year throughout Africa and Asia.

As personal aide to His Highness, I had gone ahead as part of an advance party and was greeted by the local leaders who told me that a serious problem had arisen. The only other such ceremony in living memory had taken place 72 years before in Bombay, when Aga Khan III had succeeded to the Imamate.

Not surprisingly, there was some doubt about the form the service would take and it seemed that an acute difference of opinion had arisen as to which verses of the Koran should be included. There was clearly nothing to be done but to await a ruling from the Aga Khan himself.

It was an unforgettable scene and took place in one of the state rooms of Government House where the Aga Khan was guest of the Colonial Governor at that time, the late Lord Twining. The Ismaili leaders were seated, as is their custom, cross-legged in a semi-circle around their young Imam and the two factions elaborated their different points of view.

To a non-Muslim the arguments were difficult to follow, but it was clear to me that a strong difference of opinion existed and that the Aga Khan would be called upon to resolve a ticklish point of theological doctrine.

This was the first occasion on which he had been called to exercise the responsibilities bequeathed to him by his grandfather. Still an undergraduate at Harvard, he looked very young, a trifle pale and tense as he listened to the rival claimants. There was a pause as they finished. Then the Aga Khan asked a question which obviously puzzled his followers. “Who,” he asked, “will recite the verses you wish me to decide upon?”

A chorus of voices assured him that a young man from Zanzibar had been procured for the recitation and that his fame as a psalmodist of the Koran was acclaimed far and wide.

“If that is so,” said His Highness, “let this young man suggest those verses in which his ability is most outstanding and thereafter I shall decide which particular chapters and verses will be selected.”

It was a solution that delighted everyone. The opposing factions accepted it gladly, for neither had lost face. The choirboy for certain would sing as he had never sung before — which in truth he did the following afternoon. It was a decision which reflected the instinctive simplicity of true wisdom and first revealed to me that I was serving no ordinary man.

I have related this tale before, and if I repeat it today it is because I know of no other anecdote which more aptly illustrates his wisdom and judgement.

Date posted: April 05, 2017.

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Mr. Michael Howard Curtis, shown at right with His Highness the Aga Khan, was a British Fleet Street editor and executive and  went on to serve the Aga Khan for several decades as his media executive in Kenya as well at his headquarters in France. He was born in Cambridge, England, in 1920 and was introduced to His Highness the Aga Khan just as he had been proclaimed the 49th Ismaili Imam. His recruitment as a staff of the new Imam was intended as a short term assignment as a speech writer and publicity organizer during a series of public appearances related to the Aga Khan’s installation as Imam in East Africa and South Asia. This brief assignment, however, grew into an engagement with the Aga Khan that spanned several decades. Noted by the British Guardian news paper as “50 years ahead of his time” the visionary Fleet street editor and executive, Michael Curtis, was asked to establish the Nation Media Group, which started publishing the Sunday Nation and subsequently the Daily Nation in Kenya, competing successfully with the existing colonial newspapers, the Tanganyika Standard and the East African Standard. At the culmination of the process of Africanising the Nation Group, Michael Curtis stepped down in 1977, after pioneering the introduction of the first web-offset presses installed outside the United States as well as increasing the Nation’s circulation to 165,000 and a readership reputed to touch three million. He then moved to the Aga Khan’s Headquarters in Aiglemont, France, where he oversaw the Ismaili Imamat’s rapidly expanding non-denominational health and educational activities throughout South Asia and East Africa, until his retirement in 1994. He died from cancer in 2004 at the age 84.

(Profile of Mr. Michael Curtis compiled from Wikipedia, and UK’s Guardian and Daily Telegraph newspapers. For specific links to his obituaries please see the references cited at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Curtis_(journalist).