Akbar (1556-1605)

Part oneThe boy emperor

Jalal al-Din Muhammad Akbar was thirteen when his father died in 1556. A Hindu general named Hemu seized Delhi almost at once. At the second battle of Panipat that year Akbar's regent, Bairam Khan, defeated him. For a few years others ruled in the young emperor's name. Then Akbar took power himself.

Akbar never learned to read, possibly because of a learning difficulty, but he had books read aloud to him every day and remembered them well. He was curious about everything, from religion to elephants.

Part twoBuilding a state

Akbar's first great step was with the Rajputs, the warrior clans of Rajasthan. Raja Bharmal of the Kachwaha clan offered him an alliance and a daughter in marriage, and other clans followed. Rajput chiefs kept their own lands and became generals, governors and ministers of the empire. Bharmal's grandson Man Singh became one of Akbar's leading commanders. The Sisodiyas of Mewar refused, and their fortress of Chittor fell in 1568 after a long siege.

To run the empire Akbar built the mansabdari system. Every officer held a rank, a mansab, from 10 to 10,000, which set how many horsemen he had to supply. In return he received the right to collect the revenue of certain lands, a jagir. The grant could not be inherited, and officers were moved often so that none could build a local power base. Ability, not birth, decided promotion. With his finance minister, Raja Todar Mal, Akbar had the land surveyed and set taxes by the average yield of the soil over ten years, so that peasants knew what they owed.

His armies took Gujarat, Bengal, Kashmir, Sindh and parts of the Deccan. In 1571 he built a new capital at Fatehpur Sikri, near the home of the Sufi Shaykh Salim Chishti, who had prayed for him to have a son. The son, born in 1569, was named Salim after him. Akbar walked barefoot each year to the shrine of the Sufi saint Mu'in al-Din Chishti at Ajmer.

Part threeAkbar and religion

Akbar ruled a land where most people were not Muslim, and he wanted all of them to see him as their ruler. In 1563 he ended the tax on Hindu pilgrims, and in 1564 the jizya. He had Hindu works such as the Mahabharata translated into Persian.

In the late 1570s he built a House of Worship at Fatehpur Sikri, where Muslim scholars, Hindus, Jains, Zoroastrians and Jesuit priests debated before him. Over time he moved away from the views of the ulama. In 1579 he declared himself the final authority on religious questions in his empire. Around his court a circle of disciples formed, later called the Din-i Ilahi, which treated the emperor as a spiritual guide. Many Muslim scholars saw this as a serious departure from Islam, and the Naqshbandi scholar Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi became the best-known voice calling the court back to the Sunnah. The movement did not outlive Akbar, and later emperors returned to orthodox practice.

Akbar died in 1605. He left behind a strong state, with institutions that would carry the empire through the next century, and a debate about his religious views that has never ended.

From the Quran

يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلنَّاسُ إِنَّا خَلَقْنَـٰكُم مِّن ذَكَرٍ وَأُنثَىٰ وَجَعَلْنَـٰكُمْ شُعُوبًا وَقَبَآئِلَ لِتَعَارَفُوٓا۟ ۚ إِنَّ أَكْرَمَكُمْ عِندَ ٱللَّهِ أَتْقَىٰكُمْ ۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ عَلِيمٌ خَبِيرٌ ۝١٣

O humanity! Indeed, We created you from a male and a female, and made you into peoples and tribes so that you may ˹get to˺ know one another. Surely the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous among you. Allah is truly All-Knowing, All-Aware.

He could not read, but he had books read to him every day and built one of the best-run states of his age.

WatchThe lecture for this chapter

Lecture Al MuqaddimahAkbar, the Greatest Mughal (opens on YouTube)

The mapWhere it happened

• Delhi
• Agra
• Fatehpur Sikri
• Ajmer
• Chittor
• Lahore
• Kashmir
• Gujarat
• Bengal
• Kabul

This map is a simple sketch to help you picture where events took place. Positions, distances and borders are approximate, so please use it for reference only, not as an accurate map.

SourcesSources for this chapter