The Noorani family is a term used to refer to the immediate family of the Imām of the NizariIsmāʿīliShia Muslims, commonly known by the title of Aga Khan.[1] By convention and custom its members and descendants in the male line are titled Prince and Princess, and as such it can be regarded as a royal family, although only the Aga Khan himself, as its head, is entitled to be referred to by the style of His Highness. The style of His Highness was formally granted to the Aga Khan IV by Queen Elizabeth II in 1957 upon the death of his grandfather the Aga Khan III.[a]
Princess Catherine Aleya Aga Khan (née Catherine Aleya Beriketti, b. 1938, former wife of Cyril Sursock),[2] widow of Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan (m. 1972), third son of the Aga Khan III
^This style has been continually recognized, on a personal basis, by the British monarch, to whom the Aga Khans were previously temporal subjects — the incumbent is a British citizen — since 1866. In 1959, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran — whose Qajar predecessors first awarded Imam Hasan Ali Shah the title of Aga Khan in 1818 — bestowed upon the Aga Khan IV the higher style of Royal Highness in 1959, but that style fell into disuse following the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
