Akbar

Andre Wink

• Publisher: Oneworld Academic
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781780742090
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology

The greatest of the Mughal emperors, Jalal ad-Din Akbar (1542-1603) was a formidable military tactician and popular demagogue. Ascending to the throne at the age of thirteen, he ruled for half a century, expanded the Mughal empire, and left behind a legacy to rival his infamous ancestors Chinggis Khan and Timur. Renowned for his attempts to integrate the diverse religious heritage of India, he was a true polymath who although illiterate was widely active in a number of intellectual pursuits. In this fascinating biography, Andre Wink provides glimpses into Akbar's daily life and highlights his contribution to new methods of imperial control, surveillance and record-keeping. Contrasting his reign with those of his nomadic Mongol ancestors, this lucid study is an essential read for anyone interested in the history of India and South Asia.

DIVINE NURSLING OF THE GARDEN OF SOVEREIGNTY

Commensurate with its importance, Akbar’s very long reign is well-documented in historical chronicles and other accounts, as well as in memoirs and letters composed by contemporaries from almost all over the world. Among the most important sources of information are Abu-l-Fazl’s lengthy works, the Akbarnama and Ain-i-Akbari, which are invariably sympathetic to him; Badauni’s Muntakhab at-Tawarikh, which is highly critical of Akbar’s religious policies; and the letters sent home from Akbar’s court by Jesuit missionaries. Together with the other materials, these sources provide us with a picture of Akbar which is, in Muslim India, without question unprecedented in its historical and biographical detail, even though the introspective depth and frankness of autobiographical writings like that of his grandfather Babur are lacking, and Akbar never wrote anything of his own.

Nevertheless, we know relatively little about Akbar’s early life before he came to the throne in 1556, because the chronicles treat it as a subordinate part of Humayun’s reign. Of Akbar they say little. As accounts of Humayun’s reign from its early stages, the Indo-Muslim chronicles focus their attention on the opposition and “traitorous” conduct of Akbar’s three uncles, the Mirzas (“Princes”) Kamran, Askari, and Hindal, which contributed so much to Humayun’s defeat and ousting by the Afghans. They explain how Kamran was allowed to retain possession of Kabul (a special princely concession because of its association with Babur) and of the Panjab, with its capital of Lahore, and how in 1539 there was an attempt to set Humayun aside for his brother Hindal which almost led to his abdication. They conclude with an account of the two crushing defeats inflicted on Humayun by Sher Shah and the Afghans, at Chausa on June 27, 1539, and at Kanauj on May 17, 1540.

The subsequent flight of Humayun to Sind, and his onward journey to Persia, are generally described by Abu-l-Fazl in euphemistic terms as “the coming of Sher Khan [not ‘Sher Shah’],” “the departure [rihla],” “that unavoidable event,” or “that time [when] the imperial army marched to subdue the country of Tatta [Sind]” (AN, I, 55; Ain, 347, note 1). This brings the narrative to Akbar’s birth.

AKBAR’S BIRTH

Accompanied by his half-brother Hindal, Humayun moved down the Indus in the hope of collecting an army in Sind and returning to Hindustan via Gujarat, while his two other brothers, Kamran and Askari, withdrew to Kabul together. He allegedly spent two and a half years, from early 1541 to mid-1543, in Sind and Rajasthan, in an unsuccessful attempt to turn his fortune around. It was during this otherwise fruitless interval, when the fugitive Mughal emperor was more than once reduced to destitution, that Akbar was born.

Humayun met the future mother of Akbar, Mariam Makani Hamida Banu Begam, at a party in his brother Mirza Hindal’s camp. “Hamida” was a Persian Shi’a Muslim, the daughter of Hindal’s tutor Shaykh Ali Akbar. She is said to have been fourteen years of age when, on August 21, 1541, she married (after understandable hesitation) the thirty-three-year-old Humayun. She accompanied Humayun when he left Sind in May 1542 for Rajasthan. At that time Humayun was proposing an alliance with the powerful Raja of Marwar (present-day Jodhpur), Maldeo (Malla Deva), in an attempt to recover Hindustan from Sher Shah, by way of Jaisalmer. Receiving threats and diplomatic overtures from Sher Shah, the Raja changed his mind about the proposed alliance with Humayun. With Hamida now nearly eight months pregnant, Humayun and his small following had to make their way back across two hundred miles of loose sand desert during the hottest time of the year. This was the historic moment when the prospects of Humayun, and the Mughal dynasty as such, reached an all-time low. Horses and camels were dying, the remainder of the royal retinue was melting away, and the emperor had to borrow desperately needed cash from one of his nobles at an exorbitant rate. To make things even worse, the Raja of Jaisalmer ordered the wells to be filled with sand in retaliation for Humayun’s men having killed some cows in the region. The party, nonetheless, made its way to the relatively safe surroundings of Umarkot, a village in Sind which the sources describe as a beautiful place with tanks, and the site of a fortress. Humayun left his family and dependants here while he himself joined the local ruler in a campaign against Bhakkar in return for an offer of seven thousand horsemen recruited from the local tribes.

Akbar was born at Umarkot three days after Humayun’s departure for Bhakkar, on October 11, 1542, at an astrologically propitious hour. “The unique pearl of the vice-regency of God came forth in his glory,” wrote Abu-l-Fazl, “and at his birth at the first opening of his eyes on the visible world, rejoiced the hearts of the wise with a sweet smile” (AN, I, 57, 132). Another contemporary historian, al-Qandahari, has it that the future emperor at the time of his birth “kept his eyes on the stars,” as wise men do (TAK, 24). The news of Akbar’s auspicious birth was rapidly conveyed to Humayun at his camp in a place called Jun, on the Indus river. Akbar was carried over there in a litter with his mother, together with the entire Umarkot entourage, when he was six months old.

SEPARATED FROM HIS PARENTS

In 1543, Humayun, suffering massive defections at his camp at Jun, tried to make his way to Qandahar. He crossed the Indus on July 11, but found the road cut off by his brothers Kamran and Askari. He was then persuaded by one of his remaining amirs, Bairam Khan, who had ancestral ties to the Persian royal family, to move on to Iran.

For Humayun this was the beginning of another long period of insecurity and hardship. The struggle between Humayun and his brothers would not be decided until ten years later, when it cleared the way for the final Mughal re-conquest of Hindustan. Hindal eventually died in 1551, fighting on Humayun’s side. Askari spent a long time in chains before he was sent off to Mecca and died on the road near Damascus. Kamran was blinded after an attempt to ally himself with the Afghan ruler Islam Shah, son of Sher Shah, in 1552, and then sent off to Mecca as well. He died in Arabia in 1557.

When Humayun and Hamida Banu Begam made their way through Sistan, Khurasan, and Fars, ostensibly to travel to the Hijaz and perform the hajj, but more immediately to solicit support from the Persian emperor in a planned attempt to regain Hindustan, Akbar was one year and three months old and about to be separated from his parents for two years. The royal couple hurried off “through a desert and waterless waste” in extremely hot weather, leaving Akbar in the care and tutelage of his uncle Askari. By all accounts the separation from his parents and the subsequent period of custody was an unhappy time for Akbar, although Abu-l-Fazl points out that he did not make his misery manifest – already then showing great restraint. Little Akbar was placed in a camel litter and delivered into the care of Askari’s wife, Sultan Begam, in Qandahar on December 16, 1543. He later claimed to be able to recall everything that happened to him in this period of his life with perfect accuracy. He remembered how he began to walk, for example, and how his guardian Askari struck him with his turban in order to make him fall, according to Turkish custom. He also claimed to remember that it was taken as good luck for him to have his head shaved at the shrine of Baba Hasan Abdal, in the western outskirts of Qandahar.

In 1544 Humayun returned to lay siege to Qandahar with Persian auxiliary troops (under the nominal command of the six-month-old Persian prince Murad), and Askari decided to have Akbar, together with his half-sister, conveyed to Kabul in the depth of winter. The plan was that they would travel incognito – Akbar was called “Mirak” on this journey and his half-sister “Bija” – but such were the marks of Akbar’s future greatness, we are assured, that the “nursling of light” was always immediately recognized by the people they encountered on the way. When Qandahar fell to Humayun’s Persian troops, Akbar was arriving in Kabul and about to be handed over to Khanazada Begam, a sister of the late emperor Babur. She is described as having been extremely fond of him, not least because he closely resembled Babur. But Akbar’s time in the harem was drawing to a close. In an age when people saw omens everywhere, it was considered a bad omen for Kamran that, in a publicly staged wrestling match, Akbar should fling down his cousin Mirza Ibrahim, the slightly older son of Kamran. Abu-l-Fazl would later proclaim this to be “the beginning of the beating of the drum of victory and conquest of His Majesty” (AN, I, 456). But the result was that Akbar was removed from the harem, and kept under guard outside. Soon afterwards, in 1545, when Humayun captured Kabul without a fight, he was re-united with his parents. His circumcision was celebrated in the same audience hall garden where the ladies of the harem had rejoiced over Babur’s victory at Panipat in 1526.

But for Akbar things were to get worse before they would get better. This was due to the still stubborn resistance of at least two of Humayun’s brothers, which was now aggravated by the distractions caused by another remaining Timurid, Mirza Sulayman, whose kingdom of Badakhshan (the mountainous region of northeast Afghanistan today) had been restored to him by Babur in 1530 and who was to remain a threat to Kabul long after Akbar had come to the throne. For about half a decade Humayun was sidetracked by campaigns in Badakhshan, letting Kabul slip out of his hands and having to recover it by force at least twice. The chronicles describe with horror how on one of these occasions Akbar, effectively a hostage in enemy hands, was used as a human shield, held up in front of the guns, arrows, and lances of his own father.

AKBAR’S EDUCATION

Around 1551, at long last Humayun’s position among his Timurid rivals was solidifying. At the same time, Akbar was being groomed for the succession and what would be his own – at that time still unforeseen – meteoric rise to power. He was about nine years old when he was given the government of the village of Carkh, in the tuman or “district” of Lahugar. His uncle Hindal died when he was ten years old, and he was given charge of Hindal’s servants and retinue, together with all the latter’s revenue assignments (jagirs). Akbar’s destiny was now becoming manifest, for these assignments included the town of Ghazna, the former capital of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna and the so-called “Ghaznavid” dynasty which in the late tenth and eleventh centuries had acquired unrivaled fame as the first Muslim conquerors of Hindustan. The more practical aim of this administrative promotion was that “by the practice of rule, he [Akbar] might exhibit favor and severity in the management of men; and by administration of a part, he might become accustomed to administer the whole” (AN, I, 596). Akbar spent six months in Ghazna, from the end of November 1551 to the end of May 1552, “in order that his greatness might be tested . . . [and] that all might know his abilities, and also that he might have practice in the art of rule” (AN, I, 596).

In November 1554, when Humayun set out for the re-conquest of Hindustan, Akbar was twelve years and eight months old. It was a conquest that was to be regarded as both a temporal and a spiritual victory, and Humayun ordered that it be inscribed in Akbar’s name, indicating thereby that Akbar was nominally in command of the entire campaign. By now the Afghan empire in Hindustan was irretrievably fragmenting, with three different khutbas or “Friday prayers” being read at the same time in the names of three contesting sovereigns. Arriving at the town of Sirhind, in the Panjab, Akbar was given a tutor, Khwaja Ambar Nazir, an old servant of the family who was called from Kabul to explain to him “the manners and customs of India, and who brought Indians before the Unique of the Age” (AN, I, 629). Soon afterwards, when Humayun entered Delhi on July 24, 1555, and established himself on the imperial throne, Akbar was given an opportunity to gain first-hand experience of military command. The military training of Mughal princes – in archery, swordsmanship, horse-riding, and wrestling – began so early and was so intensive that it was not uncommon for them to undertake their first military commands while still in their teens. Babur was a military commander at the age of twelve. Humayun went on his first military campaign (to Badakhshan) when he was eleven. Akbar did so at the age of thirteen. On Humayun’s orders he was sent out to prepare a safe route which the royal harem was to take from Kabul through the Panjab and keep the remaining Afghans at bay in the northern hills. While in the Panjab, Akbar was instructed in artillery by the best available Ottoman tutor, Rumi Khan.

In addition to the thorough military training he received in his early youth, Akbar had drawing lessons with distinguished Persian painters. He also learned “every breathing and sound that appertains to the Hindi language” (Tuzuk, I, 150), in all probability (although we cannot be sure) before he ascended the throne; and he developed a strong interest in the composition of Hindi as well as Persian poetry early on. But he grew up illiterate. Early attempts to teach him to read and write failed from the very beginning. Instruction was scheduled to begin, again at an astrologically propitious hour, when he was four years, four months, and four days old (November 20, 1547), but the future emperor failed even to show up. His first private tutor merely succeeded in communicating to him a taste for pigeon flying. A second tutor proved equally ineffectual. Or so it was said, but there is evidence that Akbar may have been dyslectic and that his learning disabilities caused both tutors to be dismissed as incompetent. A third tutor discharged his duties as best he could for some years, then chose to retire to Mecca.

As a child, Akbar displayed far greater interest in outdoor sports, and in animals, particularly camels (because they were the largest animals in the region) and Arabian horses. He also liked, apart from pigeon flying, hunting with dogs. His father Humayun admonished him with kind words, and even sent some poetry of his own to motivate the boy to study. It was to no avail. A courtier sent after the wayward prince found him lying in the grass, looking serene, as if he were asleep, but in fact “contemplating his plans for world conquest.” For Abu-l-Fazl this episode demonstrated once again that “the lofty comprehension of this Lord of the Age was not learned or acquired, but was the gift of God in which human effort had no part” (AN, I, 589) – an assessment we may regard as a sixteenth-century form of spin.

Functional illiteracy in all likelihood stimulated Akbar to develop other skills, including the kind of practical skills that his great-grandson Aurangzeb – so much the opposite of Akbar in other ways – was also to value. For example, he was later to master the skills of craftsmen, including carpentry, and took great pride and pleasure in them. His illiteracy no doubt also forced him to develop his already outstanding memory.

When he was about fifteen or sixteen, and already in his third year as king, he was introduced to the mystical writings of Hafiz by a Persian tutor from Qazwin. The latter’s son appears to have been appointed to put Akbar through some sort of remedial educational program that included the refinement of manners, historical knowledge, all subjects of conversation, and poetry, but Akbar continued to show little scholastic aptitude throughout his youth. Father Monserrate, a Jesuit who attended Akbar’s court in the early 1580s, would comment that Akbar was “uneducated . . . [but] famous for his warlike skill and courage” (Monserrate, 34). According to the same writer, Akbar was “entirely unable to read or write” (Monserrate, 201). It is independently confirmed by others. Akbar was described as “illiterate” by his own son and successor Jahangir (Tuzuk, I, 33).

It was a condition, a “deficiency,” uncommon among Mughal princes, not to say unique. We know that in Mughal times the princes were normally taught to read and write in their own Turkic language when they reached the age of five, and that they were apprenticed in the liberal arts with the same strictness as they were in the military arts. By the time they left the palace, at the age of sixteen, they would have been taught all the typical virtues of ruling elites, such as equanimity and prudence, as well as the useful knowledge of legal argumentation and dispassionate and impartial judgment. Akbar is known to have taken his own sons through such an education (which comprised Koranic instruction as well), not allowing the fatigues of travel to interrupt it even for a single day. Mughal princesses also virtually always learned to read and write, and they received a genuine literary education before they were put through finishing school under specially appointed matrons.

But if Akbar remained illiterate and his learning disabilities initially did cause consternation, there was no lasting shame attached to this condition. Observing that the prophets – Muhammad included – had been illiterate, Akbar went so far as to recommend that believers retain one of their sons in that condition, thus making a virtue of his deficiency. Timur, his revered ancestor, he pointed out, had been illiterate too. And, needless to say, most people in Akbar’s time were illiterate. In the region of Kabul, where Akbar grew up, the local Afghans would merely be sent to a mulla for education in their infancy. From him they would learn the regular devotional and certain other prayers, as well as some passages from the Koran (sometimes in Arabic without understanding it), certain ceremonies, and their duties as Muslims. If we can go by late-eighteenth-century estimates, not more than a quarter of the Afghans could read and write their own language. Even the brahmans of India more often than not could not read or write. Of course, the education of a prince was a different matter. Nonetheless, Akbar managed well enough without these skills since, like the illiterate kings of medieval Europe, he was always assisted by hordes of clerks.

It should thus not be concluded, on the basis of the poor scholastic performance of the young Akbar, that he held literacy, or even clerical work, in disguised or undisguised contempt or was indifferent to it. To be sure, such an attitude of contempt was not unknown in his day. It was, in effect, widespread among the illiterate Rajput princes, as well as among such warlike tribes as the Yusufzai Afghans of the plains (who regarded the very activity of reading as unmanly). Akbar, when he grew into maturity, developed an extraordinary – extraordinary in a ruler – taste for philosophy, theology, and religion, and was eager to have history recounted for him. Not only did he take the literary education of his own children very seriously (none of them was left illiterate), but he became a great patron of higher learning, and apparently owned a library. Monserrate described Akbar as a man of excellent judgment and good memory who had attained a considerable erudition in many fields by listening to others, and who outshone his subjects not only in authority and dignity, as befitted a king, but often also in eloquence. Monserrate added that “no one who did not know that he is illiterate would suppose him to be anything but very learned and erudite” (Monserrate, 201). This particular quality of Akbar is also highlighted by his son Jahangir, who writes in his memoirs that: “My father always associated with the learned of every creed and religion, especially with Pandits and the learned of India, and although he was illiterate, so much became clear to him through constant intercourse with the learned and the wise, and in his conversations with them, that no one knew him to be illiterate, and he was so acquainted with the niceties of prose and verse composition that this deficiency was not thought of” (Tuzuk, I, 33).

AN OLD WORLD GREW YOUNG

When, on March 10, 1556, Akbar was raised to the Mughal throne in the town of Kalanaur, a suburb of the capital city of Lahore, at the age of fourteen, it was the beginning of a reign that would prove, in more than one way, to be unique, or at least highly uncommon, in Indo-Islamic history. He came to power at a very young age as an illiterate prince. He would rule for almost half a century (in this he was rivaled only by his great-grandson Aurangzeb). And he was, moreover, not critically challenged by sibling rivalry.

There is another reason why Akbar stood out among the Great Mughals. In the first seven years of his reign he was not his own master but, on account of his young age, subordinated to a regent. As a result of his extensive practical, above all military, training, Akbar was not wholly unprepared to succeed his father when the latter died unexpectedly...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Epigraph page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• INTRODUCTION
• 1 DIVINE NURSLING OF THE GARDEN OF SOVEREIGNTY
• 2 AN OLD WORLD GREW YOUNG
• 3 THE DAILY INCREASING DOMINION
• 4 CLOUDS AND ELEPHANTS AND MUD
• 5 TAMING THE MONGOL BEASTS
• 6 MAKER OF THE INDO-MUSLIM WORLD
• 7 SERENE CITY OF UNIVERSAL TOLERANCE
• 8 BEING AKBAR
• Endnotes
• Further Reading
• Bibliography
• Index