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| The great Mogul Emperor Akbar was born October 14, 1542, and died 1605. At 13 he succeeded his father Humayun; at 18 he himself assumed the sole charge of government. He subdued and ruled over fifteen large provinces; his empire included all India north of the Vindhya Mountains — in the south of India he was not so successful. His tolerance of religions and his abhorrence of religious persecution put our Tudors to shame. He invented a new eclectic religion by which he hoped to unite all creeds, castes and peoples: and his legislation was remarkable for vigour, justice and humanity. |
| 'Thy glory baffles wisdom.' The Emperor quotes from a hymn to the Deity by Faizi, brother of Abul Fazl, Akbar's chief friend and minister, who wrote the Ain i Akbari (Annals of Akbar). His influence on his age was immense. It may be that he and his brother Faizi led Akbar's mind away from Islam and the Prophet — this charge is brought against him by every Muhammadan writer; but Abul Fazl also led his sovereign to a true appreciation of his duties, and from the moment that he entered Court, the problem of successfully ruling over mixed races, which Islam in few other countries had to solve, was carefully considered, and the policy of toleration was the result (Blochmann xxix.) |
| Abul Fazl thus
gives an account of himself. 'The advice of my Father with difficulty kept
me back from acts of folly; my mind had no rest and my heart felt itself
drawn to the sages of Mongolia or to the hermits on Lebanon. I longed for
interviews with the Llamas of Tibet or with the padres of Portugal, and
I would gladly sit with the priests of the Parsis and the learned of the
Zendavesta. I was sick of the learned of my own land.'
He became the intimate friend and adviser of Akbar, and helped him in his tolerant system of government. Professor Blochmann writes 'Impressed with a favourable idea of the value of his Hindu subjects, he (Akbar) had resolved when pensively sitting ill the evenings on the solitary stone at Futehpur-Sikri to rule with an even hand all men in his dominions; but as the extreme views of the learned and the lawyers continually urged him to persecute instead of to heal, he instituted discussions, because, believing himself to be in error, he thought it his duty as ruler to inquire.' 'These discussions took place every Thursday night in the Ibadat-khana a building at Futehpur-Sikri, erected for the purpose' (Malleson). In these discussions Abul Fazl became a great power, and he induced the chief of the disputants to draw up a document defining the 'divine Faith' as it was called, and assigning to Akbar the rank of a Mujahid, or supreme khalifah, the vicegerent of the one true God. Abul Fazl was finally murdered at the instigation of Akbar's son Salim, who in his Memoirs declares that it was Abul Fazl who had perverted his father's mind so that he denied the divine mission of Mahomet, and turned away his love from his son. |
| Faizi. When Akbar conquered the North-West Provinces of India, Faizi, then 20, began his life as a poet, and earned his living as a physician. He is reported to have been very generous and to have treated the poor for nothing. His fame reached Akbar's ears who commanded him to come to the camp at Chitor. Akbar was delighted with his varied knowledge and scholarship and made the poet teacher to his sons. Faizi at 33 was appointed Chief Poet (1588). He collected a fine library of 4300 M.SS. and died at the age of 40 (1595) when Akbar incorporated his collection of rare books in the Imperial Library. |
| The Warring World of Hindostan. Akbar's rapid conquests and the good government of his fifteen provinces with their complete military, civil and political systems make him conspicuous among the great kings of history. |
| The Goan Padre.Abul Fazl relates that 'one night the Ibadat-khana was heightened by the presence of Padre Rodolpho, who for intelligence and wisdom was unrivalled among Christian doctors. Several carping and bigoted men attacked him and this afforded an opportunity for the display of the calm judgment and justice of the assembly. These men brought forward the old received assertions, and did not attempt to arrive at truth by reasoning. Their statements were torn to pieces, and they were nearly put to shame, when they began to attack the contradictions of the Gospel, but they could not prove their assertions. With perfect calmness, and earnest conviction of the truth, he replied to their arguments.' |
| Abu Sa'id. 'Love is the net of Truth, Love is the noose of God' is a quotation from the great Sufee poet Abu Sa'id — born A.D. 968, died at the age of 83. He is a mystical poet, and some of his expressions have been compared to our George Herbert. Of Shaikh Abu Sa'id it is recorded that he said, 'when my affairs had reacht a certain pitch I buried under the dust my books and opened a shop on my own account (i.e. began to teach with authority), and verily men represented me as that which I was not, until it came to this, that they went to the Qadhi and testified against me of unbelieverhood; and women got upon the roofs and cast unclean things upon me.' (Vide reprint from article in National Review, March, 1891, by C. J. Pickering.) |
| Aziz. I
am not aware that there is any record of such intrusion upon the king's
privacy, but the expressions in the text occur in a letter sent by Akbar's
foster-brother Aziz, who refused to come to court when summoned and threw
up his government, and 'after writing an insolent and reproachful letter
to Akbar in which he asked him if he had received a book from heaven, or
if he could work miracles like Mahomet that he presumed to introduce a
new religion, warned him that he was on the way to eternal perdition, and
concluded with a prayer to God to bring him back into the path of salvation'
(Elphinstone).
'The Koran, the Old and New Testament, and the Psalms of David are called books by way of excellence, and their followers "people of the Book"' (Elphinstone). |
| Akbar according to Abdel Kadir had his son Murad instructed in the Gospel, and used to make him begin his lessons 'In the name of Christ' instead of in the usual way 'In the name of God.' |
| To drive / A people from their ancient path of Truth, etc. MalIeson says 'This must have happened because Akbar states it, but of the forced conversions I have found no record. This must have taken place whilst he was stilI a minor, and whilst the chief authority Was wielded by Bairam.' |
| 'I reap no revenue from the field of unbelief.' The Hindus are fond of pilgrimages, and Akbar removed a remunerative tax raised by his predecessors on pilgrimages. He also abolished the jezza or capitation tax on those who differed from the Mahomedan faith. He discouraged all excessive prayers, fasts and pilgrimages. |
| Sati. Akbar decreed that every widow who showed the least desire not to be burnt on her husband's funeral pyre, should be let go free and unharmed. |
| Baby-wife. He forbade marriage hefore the age of puberty. |
| Indian widow. Akbar ordained that remarriage was lawful. |
| Music. 'About a watch before daybreak,' says Abul Fazl, the musicians played to the king in the palace. 'His Majesty had such a knowledge of the science of music as trained musicians do not possess.' |
| 'The Divine Faith.'The Divine Faith slowly passed away under the immediate successors of Akbar. An idea of what the Divine Faith was may be gathered from the inscription at the head of the poem. The document referred to, Abul Fazl says, 'brought about excellent results: (1) the Court became a gathering place of the sages and learned of all creeds; the good doctrines of all religious systems were recognized, and their defects were not allowed to obscure their good features; (2) perfect toleration or peace with all was established; and (3) the perverse and evil-minded were covered with shame on seeing the disinterested motives of His Majesty, and these stood in the pillory of disgrace.' Dated September 1579 — Ragab 987 (Blochmann xiv.) |
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Text source for both poem and notes: The Death of Oenone, Akbar's Dream, and Other Poems, by Alfred Lord Tennyson (New York: Macmillan and Co., 1892), pp. 25-46. Scanned by FWP, Apr. 2006. |
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