Akbar “The Great”

1542 - 1605 A.D.

Most powerful Mughal Ruler of India
Jalal ud-Din Muhammad Akbar

3rd Mughal Emperor of India

27 January 1556 – 27 October 1605
Reign
(49 years, 273 days)
Coronation 15 February 1556, near Kalanaur, Gurdaspur
Predecessor Humayun
Successor Jahangir
Regent Bairam Khan (1556–1561)
Spouse 36 wives including Mariam-uz-Zamani
Issue
Jahangir, Murad, Danyal, 6 daughters others
Full name
Abu'l-Fath Jalal ud-din Muhammad Akbar I
House Timurid
Father Humayun
Mother Hamida Banu Begum
14 October 1542
Born
Umerkot, Sind
27 October 1605 (aged 63)
Died
Fatehpur Sikri, Agra
Burial Sikandra, Agra
Religion Islam[2] (Sufism); later Din-i-Ilahi
Akbar “The Great” was the most powerful Mughal Caliph to ever rule India. He
achieved a widespread level of prosperity and peace in India that was never
seen to that extent again. His court housed many famous philosophers, Persian
poets, Muslim and Hindu scholars and thousands of wives.
Akbar unified India and created a well-organized bureaucracy. Besides this he
constructed many great buildings including the Red Fort in Agra. Akbar’s reign
was a Golden Age in Indian history that came at a bloody price.

Akbar came from a line of distinguished warriors and rulers. Akbar’s

grandfather, Babar, was related to both Genghis Khan and Timur the Turkish
conqueror. Babar defeated the Sultan of Delhi and took over much of northern
India. His son, Humayun, ruled the empire until it was invaded by an Afghan
named Sher Shah. Thus Akbar’s childhood was filled with fighting and he was
raised to be a warrior. By the time he was 13, his father had died and he was the
successor to the Mughal throne. For a time he was advised by Bairam Khan, the
man who helped his father regain certain territories lost to Sher Shah. With his
help, Akbar successfully destroyed the Afghan threat and ushered in a period of
peace and prosperity.

This destruction that Akbar brought as a Muslim ruler over his reluctant Hindu
populace included the massacre of over 30,000 captive Hindus after taking the
Chitod in 1568. Like the ancient Assyrians, Akbar was found of making a tower
of severed heads as a reminder to his conquered subjects. As his heart was
turned from Islam by his hundreds of non-muslim wives, he either became less
violent or there was less violence available to him.

One of the great accomplishments Akbar made was the formation of a

centralized bureaucracy and well-organized government. As the padshah ("ruler
of the empire"), he appointed mansabars (“military governors”) to be put in
charge of provinces in his empire. These governors were responsible for their
region and were severely punished and killed if they misused their power to hurt
the peasants. Besides this, Akbar imposed a tax on land which applied to
everyone equally. This was an important innovation because the wealthy
landowners were usually not taxed before. Akbar also dropped the tax on non-
Muslims and appointed several Hindus to high positions in his court. He
married a Hindu princess in order to cement his relationships with the
neighboring Hindu kingdoms. Akbar’s kingdom was the only kingdom to allow
Hindus to live under their own laws and form their own courts instead of having
Muslim laws imposed on them. He believed that all religions should be
tolerated and that the ruler should treat all beliefs equally. Because of Akbar’s
lenience towards non-Muslims, the Mughal Empire enjoyed a time of opulence
and relative harmony.

Akbar’s court consisted of scholars, poets, philosophers and great thinkers as

well as wives. Because he was raised a warrior, he was illiterate and never
learned how to read. This disability did not stop him from learning from
manuscripts, however, for he had them read out loud to him. In this way, he was
able to learn from written material and kept him as knowledgeable as most
scholars. Akbar and his successors all contributed to Indian music and had many
talented musicians. In attendance at his court, were famous Persian poets who
made many advances in Persian literature. Indeed, during this time, Persian
literature experienced a renaissance. Akbar married thousands of women, most
for political reasons. However, his favorite wife was a Hindu, and it was
through her that he had his first son.

Akbar embraced tolerance of all beliefs and formed his own universal religion
called Din-i Ilahi ("The Religion of God"). He consulted followers of Islam,
Christianity, Hinduism, Jainism and Zoroastrianism and his religion represented
a mixture of all these beliefs. The most important part of his religion was the
fact that “God is one thing and is singular and unified.” He also infused the idea
of “Imam”, the belief that God has created a “Divine Light” and passed it
through the generations of people, into his religion, and claimed that he was the
Imamate (the one who had Imam). With this “Mandate of Heaven”-like belief,
he was considered to be the Perfect Man and free from all sin.

Akbar constructed many beautiful and huge buildings. Thankful for the birth of
his first son, Jahangir, he constructed the city of Fatehpur Sikri in 1578. It was
built on a ridge nearby Agra in honor of Allah and the Sufi mystic Shayk Salim
Chishti who prophesied his son’s birth. In this city, he constructed a beautiful
palace complete with gardens and worship hall for followers of Din-i Ilahi. This
city was built with red sandstone and many masons and artisans were employed
to build it. On the summit of the ridge, Akbar constructed the world’s second
largest mosque called Jami Masjid. All of these buildings were built in an
architectural design which has been called Akbari.
Akbar died on October 7, 1605 due to slow poisoning. His last years were spent
crushing a rebellion started by one of his sons. He was buried in a tomb near
Agra, in a place called Sikandra.

Queen Elizabeth I was so impressed by the reported splendor and culture that
Akbar had achieved that she sent Sir Thomas Roe, her ambassador, to meet him.
From a Christian perpective, Akbar seemed to be a seeker who desired to know
God. His desire for learning propelled him to gather great philosophers and
writers together in his court. Yet he ended up rejecting the God presented by the
Roman Catholic Jesuit priests and formed his own religion. Desiring to be free
from sin, he embraced the lie that he was the Imamate and therefore sinless. In
the area of human affairs, discounting spiritual realities, one can say that Akbar
was India’s most powerful Mughal ruler.