A Mohammedan, a Mongol, a descendant of the monster Timur, the son of a weak incapable father, born in exile, called when but a lad to the government of a disintegrated and almost annihilated realm in the India of the sixteenth century,—­which means in an age of perfidy, treachery, avarice, and self-seeking,—­Akbar appears before us as a noble man, susceptible to all grand and beautiful impressions, conscientious, unprejudiced, and energetic, who knew how to bring peace and order out of the confusion of the times, who throughout his reign desired the furtherance of his subjects’ and not of his own interest, who while increasing the privileges of the Mohammedans, not only also declared equality of rights for the Hindus but even actualized that equality, who in every conceivable way sought to conciliate his subjects so widely at variance with each other in race, customs, and religion, and who finally when the narrow dogmas of his religion no longer satisfied him, attained to a purified faith in God, which was independent of all formulated religions.

A closer observation, however, shows that the contrast is not quite so harsh between what according to our hypotheses Akbar should have been as a result of the forces which build up man, and what he actually became.  His predilection for science and art Akbar had inherited from his grandfather Baber and his father Humayun.  His youth, which was passed among dangers and privations, in flight and in prison, was certainly not without a beneficial influence upon Akbar’s development into a man of unusual power and energy.  And of significance for his spiritual development was the circumstance that after his accession to the throne his guardian put him in the charge of a most excellent tutor, the enlightened and liberal minded Persian Mir Abdullatif, who laid the foundation for Akbar’s later religious and ethical views.  Still, however high we may value the influence of this teacher, the main point lay in Akbar’s own endowments, his susceptibility for such teaching as never before had struck root with any Mohammedan prince.  Akbar had not his equal in the history of Islam.  “He is the only prince grown up in the Mohammedan creed whose endeavor it was to ennoble the limitation of this most separatistic of all religions into a true religion of humanity."[4]

  [Footnote 4:  A. Mueller, II, 416.]

Even the external appearance of Akbar appeals to us sympathetically.  We sometimes find reproduced a miniature from Delhi which pictures Akbar as seated; in this the characteristic features of the Mongolian race appear softened and refined to a remarkable degree.[B] The shape of the head is rather round, the outlines are softened, the black eyes large, thoughtful, almost dreamy, and only very slightly slanting, the brows full and bushy, the lips somewhat prominent and the nose a tiny bit hooked.  The face is beardless except for the rather thin closely cut moustache which falls down over the curve of the month in soft waves.