South Asian Studies

ISSN: 0266-6030 (Print) 2153-2699 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rsas20

The Impact of Akhlaq-i Nasiri on the Forms and

Spaces of Akbar’s Fatehpur Sikri

Santhi Kavuri-Bauer

To cite this article: Santhi Kavuri-Bauer (2019) The Impact of Akhlaq-i�Nasiri on the
Forms and Spaces of Akbar’s Fatehpur Sikri, South Asian Studies, 35:1, 43-62, DOI:
10.1080/02666030.2019.1605574

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02666030.2019.1605574

Published online: 12 Aug 2019.

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South Asian Studies, 2019
Vol. 35, No. 1, 43–62, https://doi.org/10.1080/02666030.2019.1605574

The Impact of Akhlaq-i Nasiri on the Forms and Spaces of

Akbar’s Fatehpur Sikri
Santhi Kavuri-Bauer*
School of Art, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, USA

In this article, I examine the structures and spatial dynamics of Fatehpur Sikri to show how the overall design of the
Mughal capital city was informed by Islamic philosophy and ethical texts known as akhlaq. Both discourses used the
concept of the city to theorize how the ideals of justice could be materialized. After creating an interpretative
framework based on these texts, I focus on four spaces of interaction at Fatehpur Sikri, the Jami Masjid, Diwan-i
Aam, Ibadat Khana, and markets, to show how the phenomenology of Peripatetic Islamic philosophy, later translated
for Mongol kings by Nasir al-Din Tusi (1201–74), influenced the meaning of the city. Through this investigation, I
argue that Fatehpur Sikri was a means of bringing the ethical concepts of Persianate philosophy to life in sixteenth-
century Mughal India and introducing a new set of social and religious norms to the people.
Keywords: Akbar; Fatehpur Sikri; akhlaq; Mughal; architecture; Tusi

In 1560, when Akbar, the third Mughal emperor,
assumed direct rule at the age of eighteen, he inherited
an empire fragmented by ethnicity, faith, and language.
What happened next has been the focus of a great
number of historical investigations that focus on the
build-up to and consequences of Akbar’s successful
integration of his empire. The prolific research of his
social, political, and cultural policies and actions has
fabricated a picture of Akbar as the principal architect
of the Mughal empire, whose singular intellect and
accomplishments would structure his descendants’ rule
for another century. What is often ignored in this his-
tory is the crucial role of his planned city of Fatehpur
Sikri, which offered Akbar unimaginable freedom to
experiment with and establish a new world order.
This neglect is due to the fact that most scholarly
inquiry into Akbar’s art and architecture utilizes secular
methodologies, which rely heavily on positivism and
assume an attitude of suspicion of non-empirical evi-
dence such as belief.1 Consequently, the interpretation
of Akbar’s empire-building efforts has been limited to
the imperatives of political control and legitimation.
Furthermore, in the study of Akbar’s built environ-
ments, we are left with an awkward aporia revealed in
the disjunction between the hollowed-out and disen-
chanted spaces of scholarly inquiry and the awe-inspir-
ing and world-altering experiences of the people who
encountered his spaces. A good starting point for a
resolution of this incongruity is with Kevin Lynch’s
description of a planned city, where: ‘We have the
opportunity of forming our new city world into an
imageable landscape: visible, coherent, and clear. It
will require a new attitude on the part of the city
dweller, and a physical reshaping of his domain into
forms which entrance the eye, which organize them-
selves from level to level in time and space, which can
stand as symbols for urban life.’2 Framed in this man-
ner, we can start investigating how planned cities like
Fatehpur Sikri were more than whimsical imperial
capitals, but also techniques of rule, i.e. places where,
as Lynch further explains:
The common hopes and pleasures, the sense of com-
munity may be made flesh. Above all, if the environ-
ment is visibly organized and sharply identified, then
the citizen can inform it with his own meanings and
connections. Then it will become a true place, remark-
able and unmistakable. 3
Since their inception, planned cities were created to
materialize values and meaning through embodied
knowledge acquired through looking, feeling, orienting,
interacting, and making associations between concepts
and forms. They have had the capacity to inform, and
reform, the habitus, the social field in which dispositions,
practices, and cultural codes are generated.4 In the
Islamic world, the second Abbasid caliph, al-Mansur (r.
754–75 CE), started the practice of using unique urban
forms and spaces to instil new cultural norms and reorder
society. Inspired by pre-Islamic Persian statecraft, he
constructed in Baghdad Madinat as-Salam, or the City

*Email: santhi@sfsu.edu

© 2019 The British Association for South Asian Studies

44 S. Kavuri-Bauer
of Peace, the first round city completed in 766 CE. The
palace stood at the centre of the city, signalling a change
in the caliph’s power from protector of the faithful to the
Sasanian notion of the king as the ‘pivot of the universe’.5
Fatehpur Sikri follows in this tradition of planned cities
as a space to materialize beliefs, orient culture, and
inform new subjectivities and social relationships. To
examine this affective quality of a planned city means
moving beyond political interpretation that sees it as a
construct of power, to asking how material encounters
with the forms and spaces of the city mediated the hopes,
desires, and beliefs of rulers and their subjects.
In the historical study of Islamic architecture and
cities, some scholars have started working to connect
these spaces back to the spiritual and philosophical
beliefs of their builders and their endeavours to perfect
themselves and their citizenry. Samer Akkach is among
some of the first scholars to investigate the relationship of
built environments to Islamic philosophy and belief. In
his reconceptualization of Islamic architecture, he frames
built environments as sites where ‘a complex conjunction
of metaphysics, cosmology, and mysticism is constructed
and brought to bear on tectonic expressions’.6 Consonant
with this scholarly turn to belief and inspired by the
theories of new materialism, with its emphasis on the
constitutive nature of material forces on everyday life,
and social production over social construction, this paper
investigates how Islamic philosophy, received through
Persian sources, influenced the design and experience of
the built spaces of Fatehpur Sikri.7 To do this, I focus on
spaces where there is an intersection of: the ideals out-
lined in the conception of the ‘Virtuous City’ in Islamic
philosophy; where the desired effects of virtue can be
seen in their spatial dynamics and practices; and where
the memory of the city materializing these ideals and
desires through social interactions and reorientations
were recorded in court histories and visitor accounts. I
begin this study by outlining the conceptualization of the
city in Islamic philosophy, which was reinterpreted, dis-
seminated, and discussed in royal courts in the Persianate
world. I then describe how Akbar learned the theoretical
lessons of these philosophies that would have shaped the
design and spatial practices of Fatehpur Sikri. I conclude
by considering how Akbar’s belief in the intentionality of
the sensorial world of forms organized and oriented ethi-
cal thought and behaviour in several distinct public
spaces in Fatehpur Sikri.
Islamic philosophy and the intentionality of built
environments
The city in Islamic philosophy is considered the most
excellent context for actuating ethical thought and
behaviour. This idea was adopted from Plato’s Republic
and its underlying premises that a just city is better than
an unjust city, that unity among its citizens is the founda-
tion of a just city, and that a ruler must strive to discover
and promote this unity. The city is here imagined not as
prescriptive, but as a technique of effective rule, where
the Philosopher-King, ‘is responsible for directing activ-
ities in the city in such a way that they serve the common
well-being’.8 Islamic philosophers adapted this core idea
– that the city provides object lessons in good thought and
behaviour – to meet the needs of prophetic belief. In his
reworking of Plato’s ideal city-state, the Islamic
Peripatetic philosopher, Alfarabi (d. 950), reimagined
the city as more than a political technique to produce a
better citizen in this world, but also as a place where the
ruler is concerned with the perfection of the soul. In
Islamic philosophy, the city is a place where, because of
its culture of virtue, the soul can connect with the
Absolute Intellect (God) in its immanent form and use
knowledge gained from that connection to orient itself
toward the transcendent realm. In the Islamic virtuous
city, the ruler, who is the Perfect Man with prophetic
intimacy with this God, helps his subjects improve them-
selves through spiritual exercises, where they act justly
by perceiving the underlying unity in the multiplicity of
the material world. As Muhammed Azadpur explains, in
Alfarabi’s Islamic view, the virtuous city (al-madina al-
fadila) is not only one that brings the citizens as close as
they can be to the condition of ethical excellence, it also
focuses attention on ‘bringing to light and motivating the
achievement of a just (virtuous, fadil) soul’.9 This union
with the Absolute Intellect was further theorized by the
other famous Peripatetic Islamic philosopher, Avicenna
(d. 1037), as something that happens through ‘an engage-
ment with sensible intermediaries’such as nature, people,
wonders, and spaces.10 The virtuous city, as theorized by
these early Islamic philosophers, thus places both reason
and virtue in the practical and experiential world of
material forms. As Annemarie Schimmel describes this
phenomenological principle: ‘The world is, as it were, an
immense book in which those who have eyes to see and
ears to hear can recognize God’s sign and thus be guided
by their contemplation to the Creator Himself.’11 Later
philosophers in the Persianate world would refine and
redefine the concepts of the virtuous city and its phenom-
enological formulation in their ethical writings or akhlaq,
taught to princes in the major empires.
Indeed, in the late medieval period, the philosophi-
cal discourses of Alfarabi and Avicenna continued to
have influence in Iran on thinkers like Shihab al-Din al-
Suhrawardi (1154–91) and the Shi’i philosopher Nasir
al-Din Tusi (1201–74), who combined the phenomen-
ological concepts of the material world and Absolute
Intellect with pre-Islamic Iranian gnosis and the

theories of illumination and mysticism.12 It was parti-
cularly through the akhlaq of Tusi that Islamic phe-
nomenology spread to Timurid Central Asia and
entered into India and the Mughal court. Written in
the thirteenth century for the Mongol court of the
Ilkhanids (1256–1353), Tusi’s Akhlaq-i Nasiri helped
redefine kingship as being more than the enforcing of
Islamic laws and orthodox practices. Through refined
and just actions, Tusi’s king should also be committed
to the social contract and the task of helping all of his
subjects reach felicity. Adapting key concepts of akhlaq
(like ‘aql, human reason, and ‘adl, justice or moral
perfection) to kingship enabled newly arrived rulers
to the Persianate world such as the Ilkhanids to reframe
their power from one that was based on Mongol codes
of authority to one based in the Islamic philosophical
tradition. These ethical texts later gained favour in the
Timurid (1370–1507) courts of Iran and Central Asia
and, as Muzaffar Alam has shown, the Mughals too
turned to the akhlaq to help guide them in their
statecraft.13 Babur (1483–1530), the founder of the
Mughal dynasty, for example, consulted a recension
of the Akhlaq-i Nasiri called the Akhlaq-i Humayuni,
written by Ikhtiyar al-Husaini and given to him person-
ally by the author, to help govern and educate Mughal
princes. Akbar, however, turned to the original Akhlaq-i
Nasiri for guidance in his rule in India.
Before introducing the architectural impact of
Tusi’s akhlaq on the city of Fatehpur Sikri, it is impor-
tant to indicate how I intend to use this text. First, it is
not as a prescriptive manual where correspondences
will be directly found between theory and architectural
forms. Instead, akhlaq must be understood as imparting
a vision of virtuous rule, the critical part of which is a
well-governed and just city run by a rational ruler, a
Philosopher-Prophet-King. In the period following the
Mongol conquests of the thirteenth century, akhlaq
were read with other texts like geography, science,
and poetry as part of a larger category of adab writings
that helped instil etiquette, morals, and ethical beha-
viour in the elite. Adab thus defined the world-view of
Islamic princes and their conception of human beha-
viour as something that can be refined and guided to
just actions through ‘disciplining and sublimation’.14
Because philosophical teachings and debates were the
privilege of learned elites and their princely pupils, it is
important to consider how the theoretical ideals of
akhlaq were then translated into policy and statecraft
for the rest of the society living and working outside of
the court. In India, for example, non-elite members of
society, low-level courtiers, Hindus, traders, and crafts-
men would have had to first encounter these new ideas
in a safe space and to accept the normative codes of
behaviour outlined in akhlaq through repeated
South Asian Studies 45
interactions. As a space of ‘engagement with sensible
intermediaries’, a planned city, especially one that was
built with innovative urban designs and spatial prac-
tices, would have enabled rulers like Akbar and the
Safavid Shah Abbas I (r. 1588–1629) to produce mate-
rial conditions that allowed new values, beliefs, and
behaviours to be encountered and accepted.15 A city
that had such a purpose would have been designed for
its intentionality, where new spatial engagements with
forms and people would enable an embodied under-
standing of the new social and cultural codes. Two
material encounters that were particularly crucial for
a just city to grow were the sight of leadership of a
Philosopher-Prophet-King, one who could see past the
everyday diversity of things to their underlying unity,
and spaces for the population to embody ‘cooperation
and mutual assistance’.16 Thus to reconsider the mean-
ing of Fatehpur Sikri by using a framework drawn from
new materialism, principles of Islamic philosophy, and
Persian akhlaq means asking how the engaging forms
and spatial dynamics found within the city produced
new subjectivities, orientations, and relationships both
in the physical world and with the metaphysical realm.
Tusi’s Akhlaq-i Nasiri and Fatehpur Sikri’s
intentionality
Two paintings from a Mughal copy of Nasir al-Din
Tusi’s akhlaq now in the Aga Khan Museum in
Toronto, Canada depict Akbar’s workshop producing
the text and princes studying similar texts with their
teacher (Figures 1 and 2). The illustrations were not
intended as historical records of court life, but may
have helped convey the disposition of respect for the
text and to situate the central importance of the Akhlaq-
i Nasiri at Akbar’s court.
Indeed, the paintings demonstrate how the practices
surrounding the text, its production by a diverse group
of artists and craftsmen, as well as the school where it
was studied, were perceived to be as significant as the
writing itself. Muzaffar Alam further explains the akh-
laq’s central significance at Akbar’s court: ‘Tusi’s book
was not simply among the five most important books
that Abu al-Fazl wanted to be read before the Emperor
Akbar regularly: it was among the most favorite read-
ings of the Mughal political elites. The emperor issued
instruction to his officials to read Tusi and Rumi in
particular.’17 The aural and prescriptive readings at
court were initiated by Abu’l Fazl (1551–1602),
Akbar’s historian and advisor, who started his service
in 1574, two years after the construction of Fatehpur
Sikri began. Abu’l Fazl was the son of Shaikh Mubarak
(1505–93), a philosopher who studied Avicenna’s
46 S. Kavuri-Bauer

1. School courtyard, folio from the manuscript of Akhlaq-i Nasiri (Ethics of Nasir) by Nasir al-Din Tusi (d. 1274), Lahore,
Pakistan, 1590–95, opaque watercolour, ink, and gold on paper, 23.9×14.2 cm. The Aga Khan Museum, AKM288.8.
 South Asian Studies 47

2. A court workshop, folio from the manuscript of Akhlaq-i Nasiri (Ethics of Nasir) by Nasir al-Din Tusi (d. 1274), Lahore,
Pakistan, 1590–95, opaque watercolour, ink, and gold on paper, 23.9×14.2 cm. The Aga Khan Museum, AKM288.12.
48 S. Kavuri-Bauer
theories of unified knowledge found in the Kitab al-
Shifa (1027). Shaikh Mubarak was also a follower of
the mystical Mahdavi movement and persecuted by the
Muslim orthodoxy. He came under the protection of
Akbar and set up a school in Agra in 1570. Abu’l Fazl
was educated by his father, from whom, he writes, ‘I
acquired many of the secrets of the Illuminationists, the
mysteries of the Sufis, and the marvelous observations
of the Peripatetics’.18 Earning the respect of Akbar for
his knowledge in matters of governance, Abu’l Fazl
would direct innovative activities for the emperor, like
having Tusi’s akhlaq read at court, and perhaps design-
ing the spatial practices in Fatehpur Sikri to help rea-
lign Mughal rule with the ideals and norms of these
ethics. His official history, the Akbarnama, which was
written between eight and sixteen years after the city
was abandoned, would contain first-hand descriptions
of Fatehpur Sikri, compiled not only from his own
memory, but those of other courtiers he interviewed.
The transformation of Fatehpur Sikri from a small
Sufi hamlet into a metropolis and capital of Akbar’s
empire is described by Abu’l Fazl in the Akbarnama.
The main qualities of a virtuous city as outlined in
Tusi’s akhlaq, where diversity and cooperation were
supported by a Prophet-King and his power of reason,
can be detected in this description:
The emperor, the architect of the physical and spiritual
world, continually scales the ranks of individual human
beings, reinforces the foundations of justice, and
rewards the worthy just as he strives to increase the
flourishing of the land by improving every place in
proportion to its worth. Ever since his regal sons had
been born in Sikri through the attraction of Shaikh
Salim’s gnostic soul, the emperor had desired to give
special honor to that place. At this point, when the
imperial banners were stopped there, he turned his
attention to this desire and ordered that imperial work-
ers construct lofty buildings and delightful pavilions
for the emperor’s own use, and amirs of all ranks and
all classes of people would build quarters themselves.
[…] Within a short time a large city, wonderful palaces
and delightful chambers were constructed, charitable
intuitions like khanaqahs, schools, and baths were
built, and a large market made of stone, enchanting
gardens were made around the city, and such a magni-
ficent place came into being that it was the object of
jealousy of all.19
After describing the city’s founding, Abu’l Fazl then
introduces the ethos and rationality of the city as one
governed by virtue and led by a just and prophetic
emperor: ‘Indeed, all the classes of people in the
world – noble and common alike – have realized their
full potential and pray for the continuance of the daily-
increasing fortune of the state. The self-aware monarch,
with his vast innate ability and knowledge, conducts
himself at every level appropriately to each person and
combines physical rule with spiritual sainthood.’20 This
statement of course is an idealized portrayal of the
inclusive culture Akbar wanted to promote at
Fatehpur Sikri, written after the city was abandoned.
However, by looking at the practices introduced in the
spaces of the city, the connection between the knowl-
edge and virtue of Akbar’s rulership and the sensorial
or phenomenological experiences within the spaces of
Fatehpur Sikri becomes more apparent.
Built between the years 1571 and 1573, the palace
and imperial buildings of Fatehpur Sikri are situated on
a high ridge that overlooks a major thoroughfare con-
necting Agra, the erstwhile Mughal capital, to Ajmer,
the pilgrimage town where the founder of the Sufi
Chishti order, Shaikh Moinuddin Chishti (1142–
1236), was buried. The city is further distinguished
by a prominent gateway, the Buland Darwaza, added
in 1601 after Akbar’s military victory in Gujarat and
after the city was abandoned. The portal leads to the
congregational mosque and the tomb of the Sufi Shaikh
Salim Chishti (d. 1572). The design and forms of the
mosque and tomb were influenced by Islamic, Hindu,
and Jain architecture. The spaces of Fatehpur Sikri are
divided into three principal zones, public, semi-private,
and private, all of which are arranged in a grid and
aligned to the qibla or direction of prayer. Attilio
Petruccioli discovered that this grid system was based
on a modular unit of measure that unified the distinct
spaces of the city and extended them beyond the city to
the whole of the empire.21 The precise ratios and align-
ment of the city suggest that the planning of Fatehpur
Sikri was centralized, and lends support to the idea that
Akbar already had a well-drawn-out design for the
shape and meaning of the city before construction
commenced. While the singular forms and configura-
tions of Fatehpur Sikri have been meticulously studied,
this is not the case where the spatial dynamics and
material encounters as integral features of the city’s
meaning and reason are concerned.22
Although little is known of how Akbar worked with
the architects and engineers of Fatehpur Sikri, the court
chronicles suggest that he had direct knowledge of its
construction. An illustration from the Akbarnama in
the Victoria and Albert Museum in London shows
him overseeing the city’s construction (Figures 3).
The image mirrors Abu’l Fazl’s textual representation
of Akbar in the mould of Tusi’s Prophet-King, ‘by
whose existence the ordering of civilized life is
effected’.23 Furthermore, in light of the famous reli-
gious innovations and new forms of governance he
introduced, Akbar was what Tusi would call the
Possessor of the Law. Unlike rulers who merely pro-
mote the law, the Possessor of the Law is one who can
 South Asian Studies 49

3. Painting, Akbarnama, Akbar supervises the building of Fatehpur Sikri, outline by Tulsi the Elder, painting by Bandi, portraits
by Madhav the Elder, opaque watercolour and gold on paper, Mughal, c. 1590–95, 32.7×19.5 cm painting. © Victoria & Albert
Museum, London.
50 S. Kavuri-Bauer
innovate, experiment, and invent novel ways to govern.
Only such a king can perfect mankind and bring them
to order because, as Tusi states, he is ‘a person distin-
guished from others by divine inspiration’.24 Designed
to ingrain his ethos through everyday material experi-
ences, the city also would have enabled Akbar to trans-
form himself before the public from a world-
conquering emperor to a Possessor of the Law. The
city could thus be seen as a radically open space to
perform for his subjects the conditions of a virtuous
city. Using Tusi’s conceptualization of the just city as a
framework, we can now examine the key spaces within
Fatehpur Sikri where Akbar orchestrated sensorial per-
formances and encounters between himself, his diverse
public, and architectural forms. These are the public
spaces of the Jami Masjid, Diwan-i Aam, the Ibadat
Khana, and the bazaar or market.25
The Jami Masjid and the Diwan-i Aam
Cooperation was an important prerequisite for a virtu-
ous city. First postulated by Plato, reformulated by
Alfarabi, and reiterated by Tusi, it can be an effect of
simple fellowship or the greater connection formed
through the incorruptible bonds of (platonic) love. In
discussing the mosque of a virtuous city, Tusi writes
that in this structure, where men are to come together
five times a day, there is a possibility ‘they will pro-
gress from the degree of fellowship to that of Love’.26
The mosque of a virtuous city was thought of as an
essential space where friendships could be established
that lead to cooperation in other areas of life. As Tusi
explains, there ‘they are able to see each other and
renew the bond of fellowship, and their motivation to
love and familiarity towards each other is thereby
increased’.27 Interestingly, the mosque was the only
Islamic architectural space discussed in Tusi’s akhlaq.
The iwan-style congregational mosque of Fatehpur
Sikri was one of the first spaces constructed in the city,
and was the largest mosque in India at the time of its
building. The Timurid pishtaq or vaulted central door
to the prayer sanctuary, used throughout Iran and
Central Asia, when combined with the corbeled keel
arches and domes used in local Islamic architecture,
would have lent a hybrid and inclusive quality to the
space of the mosque. Enhancing the familiar and hos-
pitable space of the mosque are panels situated above
the central door leading into the prayer hall. Written in
Persian, they likened Akbar’s mosque to the Ka’ba’s
sanctuary in Mecca. Above these panels is a continuous
Arabic frieze with the sayings of the Prophet, or
Hadith: ‘The Prophet said, “when anyone from
amongst you enter into the mosque, he should say, ‘O
Lord, open for me the doors of your kindness, mercy,
and compassion’; and when they come out say ‘O
Lord, I beg you of your kindness, benevolence and
munificence’”.’ The recognizable forms and inscrip-
tions placed the mosque in the orbit of other Islamic
sacred spaces. However, in the same space, Akbar
introduced local regional forms, such as of the decora-
tive chhatris or open pavilions, which were only seen in
Hindu forts and Islamic tombs, but never in such a
quantity and with such prominence as in the Jami
Masjid of Fatehpur Sikri (Figures 4). Two small side
domes and the large central dome of the sanctuary
were topped with finials that may have been drawn
from Hindu sources, according to architectural histor-
ian R. Nath, who likens them to the amalaka or crown
of temple towers (Figures 5). The sloping chhajjas or
awnings that surround the cloisters and the interlocking
brackets used throughout the mosque were also bor-
rowed from local building practices (Figures 6).28
Indian and non-Indian elements were combined in
the Jami Masjid, bringing into unity a variety of styles
of architecture, thereby creating a spatial metaphor for
Akbar’s ethical ambition of uncovering the unity in the
multiplicity of the sensorial world. The combination of
forms produced a space conducive to cooperation and
fellowship, as everyone would recognize their culture
represented therein as they practised their religious
obligation of prayer. Hindus also entered the mosque
on their way to venerate the Sufi shrine of Sheikh Salim
Chishti. Recognizing the formal and decorative ele-
ments of the mosque, they too would have felt at
home in a space that was otherwise oriented toward
Islamic practice. The message of inclusivity of the
hybrid style of the mosque would later be amplified
by Akbar himself. His active participation in the space
of the mosque came at a pivotal moment in his rule,
and can be interpreted as demonstrating another condi-
tion of the virtuous city: the rule of a Prophet-King.
A critical year for the congregation of Fatehpur
Sikri’s Jami Masjid was 1579, when the inhabitants of
the city gathered to not only pray but also to see Akbar
sweep the floors of the mosque, deliver the khutba, and
pray with the congregation. He used the mosque as a
space to present himself not only as their protector, but
also as a divine ruler of great intellect, or Tusi’s
Possessor of the Law. As his critical biographer
Bada’uni wrote of the intentions behind Akbar’s curious
actions:
In this year the Emperor was anxious to unite in his
person the spiritual as well as the secular headships, for
he held it to be an insufferable burden to subordinate to
any one, as he had heard that the Prophet (God be
gracious to him, and give him peace!), and his lawful
successors, and some of the most powerful kings, as
Amir Timur Cahibqiran, and Mirza Ulugh Beg-i

4. Chhatris atop entrance, Jami Masjid, Fatehpur Sikri. Courtesy of David Castor.
Gurgan and several others had themselves read the
khutbah, he resolved to do the same, apparently in
order to imitate their example, but in reality to appear
in public as the Mujtahid [or infallible authority of the
law] of the age.29
The mosque would also provide Akbar with a space
to reorganize the heterogeneous Muslim community
and bring them under one benevolent and loving
authority. It was in the same year of 1579 that the
‘Infallibility Decree’ was written for Akbar by Shaikh
Mubarak, giving the emperor power to adjudicate all
religious conflicts. As the Shaikh wrote:
We declare that the King of Islam, Amir of the Faithful,
Shadow of God in the world, Abu’l Fath Jalal-ud-din
Muhammad Akbar Padshah Ghazi (whose kingdom
God perpetuate), is a most just, most wise, and a
most God-fearing king. Should, therefore, in the future,
a religious question come up, regarding which the
opinions of the mujtahids are at variance, and His
Majesty, in his penetrating understanding and clear
wisdom, be inclined to adopt, for the benefit of the
nation, and as a political expedient, any of the conflict-
ing opinions, which exist on that point, and issue a
South Asian Studies 51
decree to that effect, we do hereby agree that such a
decree shall be binding on us and on the whole
nation. 30
The decree sets Akbar apart and above the law,
enabling him to rule independently of orthodox sheikhs
like Makhdum-ul-Mulk, whose reading of the sharia
tended to alienate Akbar from the Hindus as well as
from liberal Muslim sects. His radical acts of speaking,
praying, and even sweeping in the Jami Masjid can be
seen as Akbar’s attempts to align his rulership with the
philosophical theories of a virtuous city and thereby cut
off the influence of his religious detractors. There he
presented himself as an enlightened ruler, not just a
sultan of India, but a latter-day prophet and millennial
sovereign, like the Prophet Muhammad and Timur. 31
As Akbar was bestowing on himself the title of Sultan-
i-Adil or ‘The Just Sultan’, he was also preparing his
congregation at the mosque for the new religious order
he was setting up, based on loving cooperation predi-
cated on his absolute, divinely guided authority.32
While Akbar’s new authority as the Sultan-i-Adil was
introduced in the mosque, his authority in the practical
52 S. Kavuri-Bauer
5. Entrance into the sanctuary of the Jami Masjid, Fatehpur Sikri. Courtesy of Hector Garcia.
matters of governance and justice would have been seen
enacted on a daily basis in the Diwan-i Aam or public
audience hall (Figures 7). It was during the communal
durbars that another cornerstone of the ethical state was
performed, that of ‘Justice’, which Tusi states is based on
equivalence and unicity. The just ruler ‘is an arbitrator in
equality, removing and nullifying mischiefs [theft,
debauchery, pandering, desertion of slaves, giving false
witness, torture in bonds and fetters, and the like]; like-
wise, in preserving equivalence, he is the vice-regent of
the Divine Law’.33 Based on his knowledge of Tusi’s
theory, Akbar would have equated Divine Law to the
justice he dispensed in the Diwan-i Aam and shown
himself to be, in Tusi’s description, ‘a king with discrimi-
nation and superiority in knowledge, a person distin-
guished from others by divine inspiration, in order that
they should follow him’. Abu’l Fazl’s description of
Akbar’s acts of judgement in the jharokha of the Diwan-
i Aam aligns with that of Tusi’s king:
He also frequently appears at [a window] balcony,
which opens into the State Hall, for the transaction of
business; or he dispenses there justice calmly and ser-
enely, or examines into the dispensation of justice, or
the merit of officers, without being influenced in his
judgment by any predilections or anything impure and
contrary to the will of God. 34
This judgement was performed daily in front of a
diverse crowd. A typical scene of Akbar’s durbar is
illustrated in the Akbarnama (Figures 8). It depicts
the emperor greeting Rajput rulers and other nobles
at court in 1577. This image, painted two decades
after the event, is not meant to be taken as a histor-
ical document, but as a means of showing us that
along with the judgements he dispensed, Akbar used
the practised space of the durbar to generate coop-
eration among diverse individuals and to assure them
of the equity of his protection. Abu’l Fazl describes
the spatial experience of the durbar:

6. Chhajja of the cloisters surrounding the courtyard of the Jami Masjid, Fatehpur Sikri. Courtesy of Hans A. Rosbach.
Whenever His Majesty holds court they beat a large
drum, the sounds of which are accompanied by Divine
praise. In this manner, people of all classes receive
notice. His Majesty’s sons and grandchildren, the
grandees of the Court, and all other men who have
admittance, attend to make the kornish [genuflection],
and remain standing in their proper places. Learned
men of renown and skillful mechanics pay their
respects; the Daroghas and Bitikchis (writers) set
forth their several wants; and the officers of justice
give in their reports. His Majesty, with his usual
insight, gives orders, and settles everything in a satis-
factory manner. During the whole time, skillful gladia-
tors and wrestlers from all countries hold themselves in
readiness, and singers, male and female, are in waiting.
Clever jugglers and funny tumblers also are anxious to
exhibit their dexterity and agility.35
In Tusi’s estimation, the experience and sight of
cooperation among the diverse members of the ruler’s
court was important to the virtuous city: ‘The first
condition for justice is that he keep the different
classes of mankind correspondent with each other
[…].’ These classes are divided into four: Men of
the Pen, Men of the Sword, Men of Negotiation (mer-
chants, craftsmen), and Men of Husbandry. Akbar’s
public durbars brought these disparate classes into
touch with each other on a daily basis at the Diwan-i
South Asian Studies 53
Aam. However, according to Tusi, the Just King not
only assembled the city’s inhabitants, but also consid-
ered their ‘states and acts’, ‘determining the rank of
each one in the measure of merit and aptitude’. Abu’l
Fazl echoes this characterization when he writes of
Akbar during the durbar that ‘his intelligence per-
vades the whole assembly, and multifarious matters
are easily and satisfactorily settled by his truly divine
power’. 36 The public durbars in the space of the
Diwan-i Aam were also used to reorder Akbar’s
assembly along the lines of merit and aptitude. This
tiered system of ordering was adopted and utilized
even more strictly in the courts of Jahangir and
Shah Jahan. 37
The Ibadat Khana and the market as spaces of
exchange
Another structure that certainly would have functioned
to reorder Akbar’s empire as an ethical state ruled by a
Philosopher-Prophet-King was the Ibadat Khana or
house of worship (Figures 9). It would have particularly
helped Akbar produce a new identity for himself as a
Prophet-King, whose judgements were based on logical
reasoning guided by divine inspiration. Arif Qandahari,
54 S. Kavuri-Bauer
7. Diwan-i Aam of Fatehpur Sikri. Courtesy of Hans A. Rosbach.
in his sympathetic history, ‘Tarikh-i-Akbari’ of 1580,
describes the Ibadat Khana:
He (Akbar) is the place of refuge of excellence who
after finishing with the affairs of the world and matters
of the State on Friday evenings used to spend the night
at the Ibadat Khana, and having arranged a private
assembly, used to sit on the chahar suffa (the four
benches or platforms) that tells of the purity of his
auspicious mind. It was adorned with lords, nobles
and learned men from all quarters, the ulama and
pious of all persuasions, and he blessed and favoured
each one of them with a gift […]. Lectures on religious
tenets of the sharia and intellectual rules were ordered.
In the subtleties of that situation most famous ques-
tions were summoned for discussion. Accounts of nar-
ration and tales and signs of his comprehensive mind
having become eternally familiar with the men of
science and wisdom he used to greatly honour and
revere the wise. 38
Tusi, in his Third Discourse, describes a similar
kind of exchange that the ‘Imam of Truth and the Just
King’ should promote. He states that the hours of play
and comfort of a Just King should be reduced and ‘his
hours of labour and exertion, reflections and
administration, should be increased’. Since justice
depends on keeping ‘the different classes of mankind
correspondent with each other […]’,39 the king should
be interested in creating opportunities for these con-
nections to occur. Tusi continues that this correspon-
dence helps to subdue adversaries and enemies and
that, rather than resorting to war, ‘the utmost efforts
should be made to win over enemies and to seek agree-
ment with them, and matters should be ordered (as far
as possible) that the need for fighting and warfare does
not arise’.40 The mode of discourse at the Ibadat Khana
was indeed reasoned debate, as advocated by Tusi and
other Persian rationalists.41 Akbar, the Imam of Truth
and Just King, made sure that no one acted out of turn
or used their emotions to turn the debate away from
reason.
Construction of the Ibadat Khana, according to
Bada’uni, was completed in 1575. By 1578, the meet-
ings there became regular and inclusive of all religions.
A majlis or assembly of this order was unprecedented
in India. Akbar encouraged religious discussions in the
space of the Ibadat Khana in order to distil the truth
and as a social measure to bring the different sects of
his society into conversation and close proximity. The
 South Asian Studies 55

8. Painting, Akbarnama, ambassadors of Mirza Shah Rukh pay homage to Akbar, outline by Miskin, painting by Sarwan,
portraits by Madhu, opaque watercolour and gold on paper, Mughal, c. 1590–95, 32.7×19.5 cm painting. © Victoria & Albert
Museum, London.

conversations were also meant to bring equal acknowl- meetings: ‘Into the delightful atmosphere of that build-
edgment to the participants and display Akbar’s unique ing came thousands upon thousands of the talented
intellect. Abu’l Fazl first describes the space of the from the seven climes with pleasing manners to await
56 S. Kavuri-Bauer

9. Akbar presiding over discussions in the Ibadat Khana, from the Akbarnama, c. 1600–03, opaque watercolour, ink, and gold on
paper, 43.5×26.8 cm. Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library.

10. © Google Maps (2018), Bazar-i Buzurg-i Sangin or Stone Market of Fatehpur Sikri. Retrieved from <https://bit.ly/
2rKWsq1>.
the entrance of the emperor.’42 After mentioning the
assigned positions where the distinct groups of partici-
pants were seated within the Ibadat Khana, he then
moves on to a description of the discussions them-
selves: ‘All groups of equitable learned men acknowl-
edged his [Akbar’s] talent for starting points and
premises. The difficulties of all classes of men were
solved adequately, and the mirror of knowledge of the
talented of the age was polished. He spent the entire
night in such a manner, which pleased the elite and
common alike […]. With imperial attention the true
was separated from the false, and the evil of purveyors
of false knowledge was unmasked.’43 While the loca-
tion of the Ibadat Khana may never be fully known, it
is certain that it was a structure with four iwans, three
platforms, and four sides that stood in the daulatkhana
or imperial palace zone. Having regular weekly meet-
ings, and requiring that everyone be allowed to partici-
pate in a cooperative manner in the endeavour to find
the truth, Akbar was instilling through the space an
encounter with ethical behaviour, felicity, and equity
among his citizenry. Here, too, his identity as Tusi’s
Prophet-King would be proven through his moderation
and Divine Wisdom, the steady fulcrum around which
the thoughts of others would be balanced.
Another vital space in Fatehpur Sikri that helped
Akbar materialize akhlaq was the marketplace with its
diversity of goods. A functional market was read as a
sign of a good society ruled by a just ruler. It symbo-
lized not only the wealth and diversity of the subjects,
but cooperation, the observation of law, fair exchange
South Asian Studies 57
values, and quality of craftmanship. As Tusi explains,
the cultural meaning of a functional marketplace is to
be a daily expression of fellowship and of justice that
needs to be managed by the Possessor of the Law, the
Absolute King: ‘Now, since the work of Man pivots on
mutual aid, while cooperation is realized by men
undertaking each other’s important tasks and equally,
it follows that the diversity of crafts, which proceeds
from the diversity of purposes, demands (a measure of)
organization.’44 Accordingly, a thriving market was a
space that contributed to the virtuous city through daily
encounters governed by ethical business practices. It
functioned to signify ‘civilized life’ with its ordered
society divided into a multiplicity of crafts, where cor-
rect prices are charged due to the watchful eye of the
Just King. The market thus served as a microcosm of
the ethical city, built on cooperation and trust, where
goods are exchanged for money, and where the prices
of these goods are rationally set so that equilibrium and
unicity are reached on a daily basis. As Tusi explains
the connection between justice and price-setting: ‘The
just man is the one who gives proportion and equiva-
lence to disproportionate and inequivalent things.’45
This act is done rationally with money being ‘a just
mediator between men’. The mediation does not
always happen on its own, which is why it requires ‘a
rationally just being, who assists money so that order
and adjustment in fact come about’.46 Finally, borrow-
ing a concept from Aristotle, Tusi states that money
itself represents a ‘just law’. At Fatehpur Sikri, the
daily exchange of money in the city’s marketplace
58 S. Kavuri-Bauer
was another means for Akbar to materialize the princi-
ples of fellowship and justice. ‘Money, which is the
equalizer of diversities’, Tusi sums up this relationship,
adding that the ‘just ruler is an arbitrator in equality,
removing and nullifying [marketplace mischiefs]; like-
wise, in preserving equivalence, he is the vice-regent of
the Divine Law’.47 To ensure that these practices were
performed on a daily basis, Akbar’s Fatehpur Sikri had
several marketplaces built around the palace.
One of these was called the Bazar-i Buzurg-i
Sangin or Grand Bazaar of Stone, suggesting the mar-
ket stalls were permanent constructions and built to
conform with the material of red Sikri sandstone seen
in other important spaces of the city. The monumental-
ity of the market made an impression on visitors and
locals alike. A description of the Bazar-i Buzurg-i
Sangin is provided by ‘Arif Qandahari:
In the months of the year AH 984 (1576–77), a com-
pulsory decree was issued that fine shops (dakakin) of
red stone, mortar, and lime should be constructed from
the royal court (darbar-i padshai) to the gate (darvaza)
which faces towards the dar al-khalifat of Agra, and
close to the court (darbar) a market place (chahar suq)
comprised of well-decorated shops (dukkanha) was
built. Three lofty arches (taq) of red stone have been
built towards the market (bazar) in such a way that the
imagination is bewildered and the arch (taq) of the
muqarnas vault (falak-i muqarnas, i.e. the sky)
becomes jealous […].48
11. Naubat Khana or Drum House. Courtesy of Diana Bradshaw.
Father Monserrate, a Jesuit priest residing in
Fatehpur Sikri, provides another description of the
market and conveys a sense of the daily activity and
trade: ‘the bazaar, which is more than half a mile long,
and is filled with an astonishing quantity of every
description of merchandise, and with countless people,
who are always standing there in dense crowds’.49 The
design of this particular stone market is worth noting. It
was placed on what was then the arterial road connect-
ing Fatehpur Sikri to Agra and Ajmer, the Sufi pilgrim-
age centre for the Chishti sect. Between the Agra Gate
and the mint and workshops, a distance of half a mile,
there were 470 shops situated on either side of the road
(Figure 10). On the approach to the palace complex
from the Agra Gate, visitors passed through the monu-
mental Drum House or Naubat Khana (Figures 11). It
was one of the most prominent of the four entry points
to the chowk, a squared-off area in the line of shops. On
the top storey of the Naubat Khana, there was an
orchestra seated and ready to play music announcing
the arrival of Akbar to Fatehpur Sikri. It also played to
mark the opening of the market and at other fixed
hours. A painting in the Victoria and Albert Museum
from the Akbarnama depicts Akbar’s progress into the
city’s market (Figure 12) and approximates what would
have been the sensorial impact of the sights and sounds
of the marketplace.

12. Detail of painting, Akbarnama, attempt to assassinate Akbar at Delhi, outline by Jagan, painting by Bhawani the Elder,
portraits by Madhav, opaque watercolour and gold on paper, Mughal, c. 1590–95, 32.7×19.5 cm. © Victoria & Albert Museum,
London.
Each shop along the market road of the Bazar-i
Buzurg-i Sangin was set up on stone rubble platforms
and had verandas between 1.6 and 1.8 metres in width.
The permanent stalls and monumental arched gateways
made of red and buff sandstone added visual prominence
to the market and established a clear association between
its great stone spaces and Akbar’s just rule. Here would
have also been an instance of experiencing the unity of
laws and pricing in the diversity of goods sold.
Excavations have revealed that four other markets
were set up around Fatehpur Sikri catering to the nobility,
artisans, soldiers, and other members of the population of
the city. Another prominent market was the Chaharsuq
located south of the ridge and north of the Rajasthan state
highway. Its form was of two intersecting roads also lined
with shops. The centre, where the roads intersected, had a
chowk or open square. Each arm of the four-quartered
South Asian Studies 59
market had sixty-six shops. Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi, a
historian who has studied the excavations of Fatehpur
Sikri, states that the Chaharsuq’s plan was derived from
Iranian and Central Asian four-quartered markets. He
also calls attention to their placement between the palace
complex of Fatehpur Sikri and the rest of the residences
of the civic population, an arrangement based on Timurid
precedent. The market’s location within the fortified walls
and in close proximity to the royal complex suggests to
Rezavi ‘a close symbiosis of imperial and commercial
interests during the Mughal period’.50 Considering the
importance of trade, markets, and money exchange for
building trust, dispensing justice, and reflecting the ethi-
cal nature of the city, the architectural patronage and
prominent placement of the marketplaces of Fatehpur
Sikri reveal their significance as another critical space
of Akbar’s virtuous city and his identity as a Philosopher-
60 S. Kavuri-Bauer
Prophet-King in the tradition of Islamic philosophy and
Tusi’s akhlaq.
Conclusion
In this examination of four of Fatehpur Sikri’s public
spaces through a new materialist framework informed
by akhlaq and the concepts of Islamic philosophy, I
have attempted to fill a gap in understanding of how
pre-planned cities in the Persianate world were actually
used as lived spaces to mediate between the worlds of
forms and ethical ideals. Beyond being political mar-
kers of power and victory, cities like Fatehpur Sikri
were carefully designed responses to both practical
and metaphysical needs of the citizenry and the ruler’s
desire to found a stable and peaceful society. Akbar and
other rulers like Shah Abbas I of Safavid Iran were
inheritors of ethical and philosophical writings con-
cerned with the conditions of a virtuous city.
Introducing the Peripatetic philosophers, Alfarabi and
Avicenna, and their conceptualization of such a city
helped show that in the Islamic world, urbanism was
considered a technique of rule. In these structured
spaces, a just king designed the best material or phe-
nomenological conditions to help all of his subjects
encounter truth and live happily while pursuing spiri-
tual perfection. Persian interpreters of the philosophy
of the virtuous city, like Nasir al-Din Tusi, added a
gnostic dimension to the characterization of the just
king whose mystical knowledge illuminates the world
and is directly connected to the Absolute Intellect. As
God’s shadow on earth, this Perfect Man is charged
with bringing peace to this world and uncovering the
unicity in the multiplicity of the material world of
forms.
Since the court chronicles record the central impor-
tance of Tusi’s akhlaq in Akbar’s court, the question
poses itself: if and how this particular text and its
theories of a good city were used to design and order
the spaces of a pre-planned city like Fatehpur Sikri.
Looking at the Jami Masjid, Diwan-i Aam, the Ibadat
Khana, and the market as materializing the conditions
of a just city described in ethical Persian texts, the
architectural spaces of Fatehpur Sikri seemed to corre-
late to the ideals of a virtuous city: a city that was ruled
by a Philosopher-Prophet-King and populated by a
cooperative and diverse community. This association
of Fatehpur Sikri with the widely read akhlaq text of
Nasir al-Din Tusi also raises the question of whether it
shares similar organizing principles with other Persian
and Central Asian cities like Isfahan and Shah Rukh’s
Timurid city of Herat designed in the early fifteenth
century. Moreover, in the long history of Islamic phe-
nomenological thought, the Mughal empire and
Akbar’s pursuit of building a just and peaceful empire
no longer seem unique to his rule. Rather, he and his
city can be situated within a wider constellation of
Islamic cities. As Lisa Balabanlilar noted with regard
to the study of the Mughal empire as a whole,
‘Contemporary studies of India’s Mughal dynasty, how-
ever, long dominated by nationality, sectarian and ideo-
logical agendas, typically present the Mughals as a
singularly Indian phenomenon, politically and cultu-
rally isolated on the subcontinent.’51 In seeing
Fatehpur Sikri as a materialization of the Persian akh-
laq discourses on ethics, this paper aligns with
Balabanlilar’s project in that it seeks to reposition
Mughal rule within the larger context of Islamic gov-
ernance. The Persian Akhlaq-i Nasiri, which added a
Shi’i gloss to Islamic Peripatetic philosophy, may have
given Akbar the inspiration to build a virtuous city. If
this was the case, the spaces of Fatehpur Sikri would
have helped him translate the ethical concepts found in
these texts into material encounters between forms and
people, and it would have also allowed him to assume
the identity of God’s Perfect Man. Through the daily
and weekly performances of prayer, judgement,
debates, and spending money in these spaces, Akbar’s
subjects would have been invited to discover the uni-
city underpinning the diversity of their backgrounds in
a great project aiming for the construction of an endur-
ing empire held together by a just and prophetic king,
whose rule engendered communal felicity and spiritual
perfection.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
NOTES
1. Oleg Grabar sums up this attitude in this com-
ment written after Mohammed Arkoun’s essay,
‘Spirituality and Architecture’: ‘I am not con-
vinced that spirituality is a meaningful concept
in architecture, because it cannot be an attribute
of built forms as such. Spirituality can be applied
to human behavior in architecture, but cannot be
imposed by architecture.’ Attilo Petruccioli and
Khalil K. Pirani, Understanding Islamic
Architecture (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 7.
2. Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1960), p. 91.
3. Ibid.
4. Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Habitus’, reprinted in Habitus:
A Sense of Space, ed. by Jean Hillier and Emma
Rooksby, 2nd ed. (Burlington, VT: Ashgate,
2005), pp. 43-49.

5. Amira Bennison, The Great Caliphs: The Golden
Age of the ‘Abbasid Empire (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2014), p. 70.
6. Samer Akkach, Cosmology and Architecture in
Premodern Islam: An Architectural Reading of
Mystical Ideas (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 2005), xvii. Also, in line with this
direction of inquiry, see A. A. Muhammad-
Oumar, ‘Jigo: The Essence of the Non-Tangible
Architecture of the Hausa Traditional Religion’,
in Sacred Precinct: The Religious Architecture of
Non-Muslim Communities across the Islamic
World, ed. by Mohammad Gharipour (Leiden:
Brill, 2015), pp. 43–56.
7. N. J. Fox and P. Alldred, ‘New Materialism’, in
The Sage Encyclopedia of Research Methods, ed.
by P. A. Atkinson, S. Delamont, M. A. Hardy,
and M. Williams (London: Sage, 2018). https://
www.researchgate.net/publication/320016117_
New_Materialism [accessed 5 May 2019].
8. Jean-François Pradeau, Plato and the City: A New
Introduction to Plato’s Political Thought (Liverpool:
Liverpool University Press, 2014), pp. 74–75.
9. M. Azadpur, Reason Unbound: On Spiritual
Practice in Islamic Peripatetic Philosophy
(Albany: State University of New York Press,
2011), pp. 52–53.
10. As Azadpur describes this connection of theory to
the material, ‘In the Islamic Peripatetic accounts of
the soul’s intellectual activity, however, intellection
is dependent on the practical and experiential con-
text of human cultivation and the resulting involve-
ments with the world, including the materially
embedded intelligibles and intelligences. In other
words, intellection presupposes effort and training.’
Azadpur, Reason Unbound, pp. 54–55.
11. Annemarie Schimmel, Deciphering the Signs of
God: A Phenomenological Approach to Islam
(Albany: State University of New York Press,
1994), p. xii.
12. Henry Corbin, History of Islamic Philosophy
(London: Kegan Paul International, 1993), p. 174.
13. Muzaffar Alam, ‘Akhlaqi Norms and Mughal
Governance’, in The Making of Indo-Persian
Culture, ed. by Muzaffar Alam, Françoise
‘Nalini’ Delvoye, and Marc Gaborieau (New
Delhi: Manohar, 2000), pp. 67–98.
14. Muzaffar Alam, ‘A Muslim State in a Non-
Muslim Context: The Mughal Case’, in Mirror
for the Muslim Prince: Islam and the Theory of
Statecraft, ed. by Mehrzad Boroujerdi (Syracuse,
NY: Syracuse University Press, 2013), p. 172.
15. Sussan Babaie describes Isfahan as the materi-
alization of virtue and just rule for its city
South Asian Studies 61
dwellers: ‘As the new capital city of a polity
that was, moreover, constitutive of the promised
justice embedded in the order of a Twelver Shi’i
kingship, Isfahan of the Safavids made use of
tangible allusion to paradise by deploying the
metanarrative of a charah-bagh garden on its
master plan.’ Sussan Babaie, Isfahan and Its
Palaces: Statecraft, Shi’ism and the Architecture
of Conviviality in Early Modern Iran
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008),
p. 103.
16. Alam, A Muslim State in a Non-Muslim Context,
p. 173.
17. Ibid., p. 175.
18. Abu al-Fazl ibn Mubarak and Wheeler
Thackston, The History of Akbar (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), iv, p. 565.
19. Ibid., p. 493.
20. Ibid., p. 495.
21. Attilio Petruccioli, ‘The Geometry of Power: The
City’s Planning’, in Fatehpur-Sikri, ed. by
Michael Brand and Glenn D. Lowry (Bombay:
Marg, 1987), pp. 50–64.
22. Michael Brand and Glenn Lowry and others
looked at the palatine city from multiple per-
spectives and shed some further light on the
spaces and uses of the city. See Michael Brand
and Glenn D. Lowry, Akbar’s India: Art from the
Mughal City of Victory (New York: Asia Society,
1986); Fatehpur Sikri, ed. by Michael Brand and
Glenn D. Lowry (Bombay: Marg, 1987); Marg:
A Magazine of the Arts, 1986, Vol. 37; Fatehpur-
Sikri: A Source Book (Cambridge, MA: Aga
Khan Program for Islamic Architecture,
Harvard University & MIT, 1985); Syed Ali
Nadeem Rezavi, Fatehpur Sikri Revisited (New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013); Lucy
Peck, Fatehpur Sikri: Revisiting Akbar’s
Masterpiece (New Delhi: Roli, 2015).
23. Nasir al-Din Tusi, The Nasirean Ethics, trans. by
G.M. Wickens (London: George Allen & Unwin
LTD, 1964), p. 191.
24. Ibid.
25. D. V. Sharma has convincingly argued the Ibadat
Khana to be located in the open court adjacent to
the so-called Diwan-i Khas or Ekastambha
Prasada. D. V. Sharma, Archaeology of Fatehpur
Sikri: New Discoveries (New Delhi: Aryan Books
International, 2008), pp. 102–38.
26. Tusi, p. 200.
27. Ibid.
28. R. Nath, Fatehpur Sikri and Its Monuments (Agra:
The Historical Research Documentation
Programme, 2000), p. 30.
62 S. Kavuri-Bauer

29. Cited in Fatehpur-Sikri: A Sourcebook, ed. by 39. Tusi, p. 234.

Brand and Lowry, p. 58. 40. Ibid., p. 235.
30. Abdul Qadir Baudauni, Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh, 41. Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi, ‘Religious
trans. by G. S. A. Ranking, W. H. Lowe, and Sir Disputations and Imperial Ideology: The
Wolseley Haig (Calcutta, 1884–1925), iii, pp. Purpose and Location of Akbar’s Ibadatkhana’,
279–80. Studies in History, 24 (2008), 199.
31. A. Azfar Moin, The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred 42. Wheeler Thackston and Abu’l Fazl, The History
Kingship and Sainthood in Islam (New York: of Akbar (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2018), v, p.
Columbia University Press, 2012), pp. 133–34. 335.
32. Antony Black, The History of Islamic Political 43. Ibid., p. 337.
Thought: From the Prophet to the Present 44. Tusi, p. 189.
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 45. Ibid., p. 97.
p. 245. 46. Ibid.
33. Tusi, p. 99. 47. Ibid., pp. 98–99.
34. Abu’l Fazl, Ain’i Akbari, trans. by H. Blochmann 48. Cited in Fatehpur-Sikri: A Sourcebook, ed. by
(Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1873), i, p. Brand and Lowry, p. 82.
157. 49. Monserrate, The Commentary of Father
35. Ibid. Monserrate, S. J. on His Journey to the Court of
36. Ibid. Akbar, trans. by J. S. Hoyland (New Delhi: Asian
37. Ebba Koch, ‘The Mughal Audience Hall: A Educational Services), p. 31.
Solomonic Revival of Persepolis in the Form of 50. Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi, Fatehpur Sikri
a Mosque’, Royal Courts in Dynastic States and Revisited (New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
Empires, ed. by Jeroen Duindam, Tülay Artan, 2013), p. 125.
and Metin Kunt (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 313–38. 51. Lisa Balabanlilar, Imperial Identity in the Mughal
38. Arif Qandahari, Tarikh-i Akbari, trans. by Tah Empire: Memory and Dynastic Politics in Early
(Rampur: Hindustan Printing Works, 1962), pp. Modern Central Asia (London: I. B. Tauris,
40–41. 2012), p. 1.