AKBAR. – Sultan of India, third of the Moghul dynasty. He was the son of Humājūn and grandson of Bāber, the founder of the dynasty. Born at Umarkot in Sind on 15 October 1542, he ascended the throne in 1556 and died at Agra, which he had chosen as his capital in place of Delhi, on 1 October 1605, leaving the throne to his son Selim (Giahānghir). A.’s personal name (which was no more than an honorific epithet, or regnal name) was Abū 'l-Fatḥ Galāl ad-dīn.
His father Humājūn had only just begun the reconquest of his states, from which the usurper Šer Šāh had stripped him, when he died: the young son, with the aid of able generals, succeeded in bringing the reconquest of his ancestral dominions to completion, so that his kingdom comprised, besides Hindustan properly so called, eastern Afghanistan, Bengal, Kašmīr, and a large part of the Deccan, thus reaching the most extensive borders the Moghul Empire had ever possessed. But A.’s policy, once his state had been restored, was directed not toward violent conquests but toward wise works of peace. His organization of the administration, and especially of the finances, with the abolition of the canonical tax imposed on non-Muslims (gizjah), and the equal treatment of all subjects, without distinction of caste or faith, in fiscal obligations, was merely one of the most conspicuous outward aspects of a policy of tolerance and breadth of outlook for which A.’s name is renowned. It was founded on the complete equalization of Hindus and Muslims (while the dynasty and ruling class of the state were Muslim), and culminated in A.’s attempt to fuse all revealed religions—specifically Islam, Hinduism, and Zoroastrianism, the three religions to which the majority of his subjects belonged—into a single vague and pure non-confessional monotheism (taẓhīd-i ilāhī).
According to this conception, the one God, whose concept was stripped of every dogmatic specification and all cultic ceremonial, was worshipped and served through purity and simplicity of life, inculcated as the supreme duties of man; and only as a concession to human weakness and its need for symbols were the sun and fire accepted as images of the divinity. This theism seems to have had no followers outside A.’s immediate circle, and never to have penetrated the broad masses of the people. At A.’s death, moreover, his son Giahānghir personally returned to Muslim orthodoxy; but the Moghul emperor’s noble syncretistic attempt remains one of the most singular phenomena in the history of Islam and of Eastern religiosity. Interest in this elevated and original figure of a sovereign, patron and promoter of culture, who lived in a court circle permeated by science and poetry (his first minister and court historiographer was the celebrated Persian man of letters Abū 'l-Faḍl 'Allāmī), is further stimulated by the curious fact that A. remained personally illiterate throughout his life.
As regards his attitude toward Christianity, it should be noted that he gave a favorable reception to the Catholic missions of Franciscans and Jesuits, just as in general he showed himself well disposed toward Europeans and inclined to establish regular relations with the Christian powers of the West.