Akbar

Akbar was one of the world’s greatest conquerors and an even greater ruler in Indian history. He was born on October 15, 1942 and died October 27, 1605. In 1556, at the young age of 13, Akbar was forced to become ruler when his father, Humayun, died. He learned from mentors and began seizing land. By the time of his death, his empire was almost all of northern India. He was the greatest of the Moguls, the Muslim dynasty that dominated India between the early 15th and 18th centuries. Akbar had many contributions and had a major influence during his time.

Akbar controlled a lot of territory rather quickly and needed to create a system in order to govern it. He developed a bureaucracy, which was among the most efficient in the world. He had put military governors in charge of each region. He had personally picked all of these governors because he didn’t want anyone to mistreat the people. If he found out that the governors abused their power or mistreated the poor, he would severely punish them or put them to death.

The most important part of the bureaucracy was tax collection. Akbar made several improvements. His tax, like all other states, was a land tax that amounted to one-third of the value of the crops produced on it each year. However, the tax was supposed to be collected by everyone, but the nobles rarely paid. He changed that by making sure he collected from every person and there were no exceptions. He also eliminated the tax assessed on non-Muslims. From the beginning of the Islamic expansion, non-believers were charged with a special tax called the jizya, and was bitterly resented all during the history of Muslim rule in India. In addition, Muslim rulers in India charged a

pilgrimage tax on unbelievers traveling to various Hindu pilgrimage sites. Akbar eliminated this tax in 1564.

A large part of Akbar's administrative efforts were winning over Hindu populations. The Rajput kingdoms had never fully accepted Islamic rule, but that started to change when he eliminated some taxes. Akbar also included a large number of Hindus in the official bureaucracy. By his death, almost one-third of the imperial bureaucracy was Hindu. He became on good terms with the several kingdoms and guaranteed to keep it like that by marrying the daughters of the kings. By the end of this process he had over five thousand wives. Most of the women he married were just for political reasons. His favorite wife, however, was a Hindu, and she gave birth to his successor, Jahangir.

His most successful accomplishment, however, was allowing Hindu territories to be almost fully independent. In all other Muslim kingdoms, non-Muslims came under the same law, the Shari'a, as all Muslims. Akbar, however, allowed the Hindus to remain under their own law, called the Dharmashastra, and to maintain their own courts. This style of government, in which territories were under the control of the Emperor but still largely independent, became the model that the British would copy as they slowly begin to build their own government in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

At the time of Akbar's rule, the Mughal Empire included both Hindus and Muslims. Profound differences separate the Islamic and Hindu faith. When Akbar began to rule, a majority of the subjects in the Mughal Empire were Hindus. However, the rulers of the empire were almost exclusively Muslim. In this highly separated

society, Akbar enforced tolerance for all religions. He not only appointed Hindus to high posts, but also

tried to remove all distinctions between the Muslims and non-Muslims. He abolished the pilgrim tax in the eighth year and the jizya in the ninth year of his reign, and introduced a policy of universal toleration. He also enjoyed a good relationship with the Catholic Church, who routinely sent Jesuit priests to debate, and at least three of his Grandsons were baptized as Catholics, though they did become Muslim later in life.

Akbar created a building called Ibadat Khana,which is also known as the House of Worship. This is where he encouraged religious debate. Originally, this debating house was open only to Sunnis. However, a series of arguments go out of control. Akbar then encouraged Hindus, Catholics and even atheists to participate. He tried to reconcile the differences of both religions by creating a new faith called the Din-i-Ilahi, which means Faith of the Divine. This new religion incorporated both Islam and Hinduism, and even some elements of Christianity and Jainism. This faith, however, did not appeal to the public. In fact, the only people that converted to this new religion were the upper nobility of Akbar's court. Historians have so far been able to identify only 18 members of this new religion.

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