Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam
60. Akbar, the Great Moghul - Part 3 of 5
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA
Akbar was the first Muslim emperor to extend to the Hindus the same status as that accorded to the Christians and the Jews from the beginning of the Islamic period. This was a bold move, one that met resistance from the more conservative ulema.
Akbar married a Rajput princess, and allowed her to practice her faith within his palace, just as earlier Turkish Sultans had married Byzantine Christian princesses and allowed them to practice Christianity within their quarters. Hindus were treated on par with the People of the Book, the jizya was abolished, and Hindus became generals and commanders in the army as well as governors and divans in the empire. By his personal example, the Emperor sought to build families with the Hindus, thus extending the reach of Islam to the Vedic civilization.
The fourth Great Moghul, Jehangir, was a product of Rajput-Moghul intermarriage. Akbar’s legacy stayed with the empire well into its years of decline. Some of the princes became scholars of Sanskrit as well as Persian and Arabic. Prince Dara Shikoh, eldest son of Shah Jehan, translated the Indian classic, Mahabharata, into Persian.
Akbar’s eclectic mind was always searching for spiritual answers. In the splendid city of Fatehpur Sikri, which he founded, he built a house of worship called Ibadat Khana. Here, he invited scholars and listened to their discourse on matters of religion and ethics. Initial sittings with Muslim scholars broke up in disputes and arguments. On one occasion, two of his most prominent courtiers, Shaykh Abdul Nabi and Shaykh Maqdum ul Mulk went after each other with such vehemence that the Emperor had to intervene. Disillusioned, Akbar opened up the discourse to men of other faiths. Hindu priests expounded the philosophy of karma, Jains presented the doctrine of ahimsa, Parsis joined in to discuss the tenets of their ancient faith.
In 1580, he sent word to the Portuguese governor of Goa that he would like to hear from Christian priests. The governor, sensing an historic opportunity to convert the Great Moghul, and win over Asia to his faith, promptly dispatched three Jesuit priests, Antony Monserrate, a Spaniard; Rudolf Aquaviva, an Italian; and Francis Enrique, a Persian. The three brought with them paintings of Jesus and Mary which the Emperor himself helped carry to the quarters of the priests. Akbar listened to the Christians, as he had listened to Muslims-Shi’a and Sunni alike-Hindus, Jains and Parsis, benefiting from the many insights offered by the learned men of all religions. But at no point during these years did the Emperor renounce his faith in Islam or embrace another faith. He remained a Muslim throughout his life and set an example of open-mindedness, which has seldom been matched among monarchs of any faith. The disappointed Jesuits returned to Goa in 1582.
The house of Timur, from which the Great Moghuls claimed their descent, was deeply spiritual. Timur himself, despite his cruel and destructive conquests, was a religious man who honored Sufi shaykhs, living and dead. Babur’s spiritual disposition showed up in the manner in which he died. Humayun himself made it a point to visit the tombs of Sufi shaykhs during his wanderings in Persia. This characteristic showed up in Akbar also.
The history of the Chishti order of Ajmer is closely interwoven with the history of the Delhi Sultanate. Emperor Alauddin (d. 1316) treated the Chishti shaykhs with respect and had prospered. Emperor Muhammed bin Tughlaq treated them harshly and had paid a heavy political price. Akbar was a devoted follower of Shaykh Moeenuddin Chishti (1142-1236) of Ajmer, whose tomb he visited on foot every year. When his wife Jodha Bai was pregnant with Jehangir, he sent her under a Rajput escort, to live in the zawiyah of Shaykh Salim Chishti, who was the living scion of the Chishtiya order. It was at the hermitage of the shaykh that Prince Jehangir was born, and the emperor named him Salim in honor of the shaykh. It was also in honor of the shaykh that Akbar raised the majestic city of Fatehpur Sikri near his hermitage. Both Akbar and Jehangir held the shaykh and his memory in the highest esteem and his name was taken in court circles with the greatest respect.
India belonged to the Sufis, and the emperor was no exception. Islam in the subcontinent of the 16th century was the Islam of the Sufis, and Akbar was its finest product. He did not claim divinity as had the Fatimid Caliph al Hakim (d.1021), nor did he claim Divine attributes as had Shah Ismail (d.1524), founder of the Safavid dynasty. Akbar did not even claim that he was a saint. But he was the king-emperor of Hindustan, an unlettered prince with the intellect of a giant, a deeply spiritual man with an unending search for transcendence in religion.
Akbar was the first, and perhaps the only Muslim Emperor to reach out as far as he did to embrace peoples of non-Semitic religions. Previous contacts with Christians and Jews were on the basis of co-existence. In the Abbasid as well as Ottoman realms, Christians and Jews were accepted as people of the Book and were given autonomy to govern their own internal affairs. Akbar went one step beyond co-existence; he tried co-union with the Hindus. This was the first and only such attempt by a Muslim monarch of any significance. This single fact accords Akbar a pre-eminent position among the great monarchs of the world.
Deen-e-Ilahi, a compendium of ethical standards, which Akbar had extracted from the religious discourses he attended, and based largely upon Nasiruddin al Tusi’s exposition of aqhlaqh, was misunderstood as a new religion. These standards are to be found in Ain-e-Akbari, a collection of court edicts compiled by Abul Fazal. Some of the misunderstandings arose as a result of poor translations from Persian, and some from a lack of understanding of tasawwuf and of the doctrinal basis of aqhlaqh. For instance, Akbar considered his relations with his followers as that of a pir-murid (Sufi shaykh and his disciple), not that of a prophet-follower. The emperor did not seek converts and there is every indication that he discouraged people from becoming his murids and tolerated open dissent with his practices. Even Raja Man Singh had dubious feelings about the emperor wearing a holy mantle. To those who did accept him as their pir, the emperor gave a medallion on which was inscribed “Allah u Akbar” (God is Greater). When a courtier reminded him that the emblem could be misunderstood to mean that Akbar had claimed divinity, the emperor replied that shirk (association of partners with God) had not even entered his thoughts. Indeed, the emperor continued to perform congregational prayers whenever he was on military campaigns.
On his return from Kabul in 1580, he is known to have performed Juma’a prayers in Peshawar. On occasions, he insisted on giving the khutba, a practice in keeping with the example of the early Companions of the Prophet, but long since taken over by professional kadis. While it is true that he patronized the construction of four large Chaitanya temples at Mathura (1573), it is also true that the emperor himself built great mosques. The magnificent mosque in the courtyard of Shaykh Salim Chishti (1572) in Fatehpur Sikri is a monument to Akbar’s dedication to Islam.
On the exoteric plane, Akbar’s experimentation with ethics comes across as religious innovation. But at the esoteric plane, his initiatives are in consonance with the spirituality of the age. By the 16th century, the Chishtiya Sufi order had found a welcome home on Indian soil. Vaishnava Hinduism of Mathura was attracting more devotees among Hindus. Guru Nanak (1468-1539) had just founded a new religion, Sikhism, to bring Islam and Hinduism closer together. Each group pushed its point of view aggressively. Akbar, as the Emperor, was aware of these movements. His discussions in the Ibadat Khana, with leading exponents of various religions, had given him an insight into each one.
(The author is Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, CA; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group)
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