Aga Khan gets award for historic preservation

Prince Karim Aga Khan IV received the fifth Vincent Scully Prize in recognition of his decades of work to re-energize design in the Islamic world and to preserve historic sites.

The Vincent Scully Prize, named for an architect professor at Yale University, was established in 1999 to recognize exemplary practice scholarship or criticism in architecture, historic preservation and urban design.

World Bank President James Wolfensohn was among those in the audience Tuesday night paying tribute to the Aga Khan at a black-tie gala in Washington, D.C.

The Aga Khan is the 49th hereditary Imam, a spiritual leader of 20 million Ismaili Muslims in Asia and Africa, who traces his lineage directly from the Prophet Muhammad.