Titans of History

AKBAR THE GREAT

1542–1605

As in the wide expanse of the Divine compassion there is room for all classes and the followers of all creeds, so in his dominions, there was room for the professors of opposite religions, and for beliefs good and bad, and the road to altercation was closed. Sunnis and Shias met in one mosque, and Franks and Jews in one church, and observed their own forms of worship.

Jahangir

Babur’s grandson inherited a tottering throne when his good-natured but inept father Humayun died after falling off a ladder in his library. The family had lost many of Babur’s Indian territories, but the boy-emperor was fortunate that his Turkoman minister-general managed at the Battle of Paniput to reconquer Delhi and Agra.

When he started to rule in his own right in 1560, Akbar soon emerged as a remarkably gifted and original emperor, soldier and visionary. He continued to conquer new provinces throughout his long reign, leaving an empire that included much but not all of modern India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, from Kashmir to Ahmedabad, Kabul to Dacca.

Finding himself ruling a multi-faith, multinational, polyglot realm, he brilliantly adapted Islam to create a faith for all, consulting Muslims, Christians, Jews, Parsis and Hindus. The result borrowed from all these faiths and built around Akbar’s authority, recognized by Islam jurists as “infallible.” His creed was centered on the formula: “There is One God and his Caliph is Akbar.”

He promoted talented men of all religions, banned slavery, abolished the Islamic tax on infidels, prohibited early marriage and allowed Hindu widows to refuse suttee and remarry.

This eccentric, tolerant and eclectic policy was made possible by Akbar’s political-military success. This contemporary of Queen Elizabeth of England and the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent was probably the greatest ruler India has ever known; his prestige helped establish his Mughal Empire for the next two and a half centuries, its glories symbolized by his father’s tomb and his descendant Shah Jahan’s monumental Taj Mahal.

Tragically his successors failed to pursue his admirable tolerance, worsening the ethnic relations of India to this day. His dynasty ended less with a roar than a whimper with the deposition by the British of the tragic last Mughal in 1857.