Akbar

Akbar was born on 15 October 1542 in Umarkot in Sindh, while his exiled father Humayun was fleeing the Suri usurpers. He grew up in Kabul as a hostage of his uncles, never formally learned to read, but had attendants read to him every evening. When Humayun retook Delhi in 1555 and died a year later, Akbar succeeded at thirteen in February 1556.

With his regent Bairam Khan he won the Second Battle of Panipat in November 1556, breaking Hemu's army to retake Delhi. In 1560 his mother and the harem helped him push Bairam Khan aside; in 1562 he removed his foster-mother Maham Anaga's faction. He then ruled for forty years, conquering Malwa, Rajputana, Gujarat (1573), Bengal (1576), Kashmir (1586) and Sindh (1592) — almost all the subcontinent except the south.

His governing philosophy was sulh-i kul, peace with all. In 1564 he abolished jizya, making Hindus full subjects. He married Rajput princesses and integrated their fathers into the mansabdari system; by 1580 the nobility was 47 Persians, 48 Uzbeks and 43 Rajputs. From 1575 the Ibadat Khana at Fatehpur Sikri hosted Sunni, Shi'a, Hindu, Jain, Zoroastrian and Christian scholars for debate. In 1582 he founded Din-i Ilahi, an eclectic order that never had more than a few dozen adherents. Administratively he split the empire into fifteen provinces and based revenue on the zabt land survey.

The darker record is real. After Chittor fell in February 1568, Akbar massacred its 30,000 defenders and non-combatants; his Fathnama boasted that "with our blood-thirsty sword we have erased the signs of infidelity from their minds." His eldest son Salim rebelled in 1601 and had Akbar's confidant Abul Fazl assassinated.

Akbar died of dysentery on 27 October 1605 at sixty-three. His great-grandson Aurangzeb later restored jizya. Akbar remains, with Ashoka, one of two pre-modern rulers Indian historiography calls "the Great," and the foundational reference for the Indian secular-state ideal.