Akbar
AKBAR (1542–1605), emperor of India in the Timurid, or Mughal, dynasty. He was born on October 15, 1542, in Umarkot, Sind, where his father, Humayun, had fled after being driven from Delhi, his capital, by his Afghan rivals. Akbar was proclaimed emperor in 1556 under the tutelage of his father's military commander, Bairam Khan, but by 1560 had succeeded in asserting his own power. His reign is one of the most memorable periods of Indian history not only because of his creation of a powerful empire but also because of his apotheosis as the ideal Indian ruler. This image of Akbar owes much to the literary genius of Abū al-Faẓl ʿAllami, his trusted friend, administrator, and biographer, as well as to the admiration of the nineteenth-century British rulers, who viewed him as their own precursor as the unifier of India. Later, Indian nationalists saw him as the great exemplar of social and religious toleration, which they believed necessary for a democratic, independent India.
Akbar was a ruler of intelligence, ambition, and restless curiosity, who exhibited great skill in selecting and controlling his officials. Very early he seems to have determined to build a strong, centralized administration, while pursuing an aggressive policy of territorial expansion. His famous definition of a king, as "a light emanating from God, a ray from the world-illuminating sun," indicates his conception of his role.
Throughout his reign, Akbar was engaged in warfare with neighboring kingdoms. As soon as the central territories around Delhi and Agra were secured, he moved south and east. In 1568, he captured Chitor, a famous stronghold of the Rajput chiefs, champions of Hinduism in North India. In subsequent battles other Rajput princes submitted to him. After defeating the Rajputs, Akbar took them into his service as generals and administrators and took many of their daughters into his royal harem. His marriage alliances with these Hindu princesses have often been interpreted as signs of his religious toleration, but they were more likely acknowledgments of the submission of the Rajputs.
After the Rajput conquest, Akbar defeated the wealthy Muslim kingdom of Gujarat in 1573, and in 1575 the Muslim ruler of Bengal submitted. In all areas, frequent uprisings by military leaders against Akbar were a reminder that Mughal power was dependent on continued assertion of central authority.
It was this need for centralized control that led Akbar to reorganize the bureaucratic structure of his empire and to reform the revenue system. He built upon the work of his predecessors, particularly Sher Shah (r. 1538–1545), in carrying out new land assessments and in bringing as much territory as possible under the direct control of imperial authority.
Akbar's religious policies have been the subject of much controversy, leading to his being regarded as an apostate to Islam, a near convert to Christianity, the inventor of a new religion, and a liberal exponent of toleration. The truth seems to be that in his genuine curiosity about religion he encouraged all varieties of religious practitioners, including Hindu yogins and Muslim fakīrs as well as European Jesuits who visited his court. On the other hand, it was probably a concern for the unity of his empire that led him to abolish jizyah, the discriminatory tax on non-Muslims. Badāʿūnī, a contemporary historian, while he denounced Akbar as an apostate, says that he spent whole nights in praise of God and would be found "many a morning alone in prayer and meditation in a lonely spot."
Discussions of Akbar's attitude toward orthodox Islam have centered mainly on two incidents. One was his acceptance, in 1579, of a declaration by some major Islamic theologians stating that he, as a just ruler, could, in the case of disputes between mujtāhids (interpreters of Islamic law), decide which was the correct interpretation. Although orthodox Islamic theologians denounced his action, it was not a denial of Islamic practice, but rather an assertion of his sovereignty and his near equality with the caliph of the Ottoman empire.
The other incident was Akbar's promulgation in 1582 of the Dīn-i-ilāhī (The divine faith), a syncretic statement that owed much to the Ṣūfī tradition of Islam as well as to Hinduism and Zoroastrianism. Emphasizing the union of the soul with the divine, it insisted on such ethical precepts as almsgiving, chastity, vegetarianism, and kindness to all. Elsewhere, Akbar indicated that he believed in the transmigration of souls.
For orthodox Muslims, the Dīn-i-ilāhī made clear that Akbar intended to replace Islam with his own heresy, but in fact there is no evidence that it had any followers outside his immediate entourage. It is possible, however, that he dreamed of the "divine faith" becoming the possession of all men, thus ending "the diversity of sects and creeds" that, he once complained, was the source of strife in his kingdom.
Akbar died at Agra on October 3, 1605. His court, one of the most magnificent in the world, was a center of culture and the arts. The great Mughal achievements in painting and architecture had their beginning in his time, and music, poetry, and calligraphy were encouraged. The measure of his importance in Indian history is that the cultural achievements of his age along with his administrative structures continued to characterize the Mughal dynasty for over two centuries, even in its long period of decline in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and remained a model for later rulers.
Bibliography
The most important sources of information on Akbar's reign are the writings of Abū al-Faẓl ʿAllami, especially his Akbar-nama and his Ᾱʿī n-i-Akbarī. The former has been translated by Henry Beveridge in three volumes (1907–1939; reprint, Delhi, 1977); the latter, an account of Akbar's administrative system, was translated by H. Blochmann and H. S. Jarrett in three volumes (1873–1894) and has since been revised by D. C. Phillott and Jadu Nath Sarkar (Calcutta, 1939–1949). S. R. Sharma's The Religious Policy of the Mughal Emperors (New York, 1972) has a good section on Akbar, and Vincent A. Smith's Akbar, the Great Mogul, 1542–1605 (1919; 2d ed., Delhi, 1966) is, although dated, still useful for biographical details.
Three volumes in The New Cambridge History of India are important for an understanding of Akbar's cultural and religious influence: John F. Richards, The Mughal Empire (Cambridge, UK, 1993), Catherine B. Asher, Architecture of Mughal India (Cambridge, 1992), and Milo Beach, Mughal and Rajput Painting (Cambridge, 1992). Douglas E. Streusand's The Formation of the Mughal Empire (Delhi, 1999) has interesting material on the relation of Akbar's religion to the state.
This is the complete article, containing 1,070 words
(approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page).
