AKBAR THE GREAT MOGUL (original) (raw)
Related papers
"Akbar's History of the Timurids"
Iran 59.2 (2021), pp. 203-224, 2021
In around 1584, while based in his capital at Fatehpur-Sikri, Akbar commissioned a history of Timur and his successors, including his own reign up to that date. The result, the Tarikh-i Khandan-i Timuriyya, an impressively large and heavily illustrated manuscript, now preserved in Patna, with 132 full-page paintings on 332 folios, has not received the same level of attention as Akbar's other historical commissions from around the same period, notably the Tarikh-i Alfi and the Baburnama. In particular, little or no attention has been paid to the text. This paper seeks to put the manuscript both in its immediate historical and historiographical context and in its relationship with these other illustrated works, created to celebrate Akbar's political and spiritual authority and dynastic inheritance. It can be shown that the portion of the Tarikh-i Alfi that covers the same periodincluding the reigns of Babur, Humayun and Akbardraws almost verbatim on the Khandan-i Timuriyya. This suggests that the same author might have been responsible for both works and is consistent with other indications that the production of the manuscript might have been later than generally supposed.
In the midst of millenarian chaos, the charismatic presence of Akbarthe perfect ruler
Scroll, 2021
The Tarikh-i-Alfi is the first among the great historical manuscripts produced in the Mughal kitabkhana under Akbar. It was followed by the Tarikh-i-Khandan i Timurriya, the Chingiznama, the Baburnamas and the Akbarnamas among other fine illustrated manuscripts of both newly-written and classic historic texts. As the History of a Thousand Years (Alf) the Tarikh recounts the rulers and caliphs of the first millennium of Islam and was meant to be ready in time for 1000 AH. In this article, I discuss the unusual format of the illustrations by studying several surviving pages.
Narratives of Akbar's Sieges and the Construction of Mughal Universal Sovereignty
The World of the Siege: Representations of Early Modern Positional Warfare, eds. Anke Fischer-Kattner and Jamel Ostwald (Brill)), 2019
This chapter looks at Mughal sieges through the lens of literary representation. It focuses on five imperial sieges - ones that the third Mughal emperor Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar (r. 1556-1605) - led in person in course of his long rule spanning almost half a century. These are the sieges of Mankot (1557), Chitor (1567-68), Ranthambhor (1569), Surat (1572-73), and Patna (1574). The chapter analyses the politics of narrativisation of these sieges in three imperial chronicles - Muhammad Arif Qandahari's Tarikh-i Akbari, Khwaja Nizamuddin Ahmad's Tabaqat-i Akbari, and Abul Fazl's Akbarnama. It traces how exactly these chroniclers used their literary descriptions of these sieges as sites for the construction and memorialisation of the greatness of Akbar as a universal ruler.
Akbar and his religious thoughts
Abu'l-Fath Jalal ud-din Muhammad Akbar, popularly known as Akbar I literally "the great"; 15 October 1542]– 27 October 1605) and later Akbar the Great (Urdu: Akbar-e-Azam; literally "Great the Great") was Mughal Emperor from 1556 until his death. He was the third and one of the greatest rulers of the Mughal Dynasty in India. Akbar succeeded his father,Humayun, under a regent, Bairam Khan, who helped the young emperor expand and consolidate Mughal domains in India. A strong personality and a successful general, Akbar gradually enlarged the Mughal Empire to include nearly all of the IndianSubcontinentnorth of the Godavari river. His power and influence, however, extended over the entire country because of Mughal military, political, cultural, and economic dominance. To unify the vast Mughal state, Akbar established a centralised system of administration throughout his empire and adopted a policy of conciliating conquered rulers through marriage and diplomacy. In order to preserve peace and order in a religiously and culturally diverse empire, he adopted policies that won him the support of his non-Muslim subjects. Eschewing tribal bonds and Islamic state identity, Akbar strived to unite far-flung lands of his realm through loyalty, expressed through a Persianised culture, to himself as an emperor who had near-divine status.
Akbar the Great (1542–1605) and Christianity. Between religion and politics
Orientalia Christiana Cracoviensia, 2011
Akbar the Great (1542-1605) and Christianity. Between religion and politics The second half of the 16 th century, during the reign of India's third, and widely regarded as the greatest, ruler of the Mughal dynasty, Jalāl ud-Dīn Muḥammad Akbar, was also the time when the Europeans were becoming increasingly present on the Indian Subcontinent. Especially active among them were the Portuguese-both in the political and economic sense as well as in the cultural and the religious dimension. After reaching India with the expedition of Vasco da Gama in 1498, the Portuguese very quickly-already in 1505-started their expansion on the Western cost of the Subcontinent and throughout the next thirty years conquered the territories of Goa (where they established a powerful trading post and which also became the seat of the viceroy and council appointed by the Portuguese king in Lisbon), and Diu. From 1558 the Portuguese forces occupied also Daman, which was an important port on the Cambay Gulf, and thus created a great problem for the Mughals, especially after the annexation of the rich and prosperous province of Gujarat into the Mughal Empire in 1572. The Portuguese naval dominance over the Arabian Sea caused that no Indian ship could sail without the so-called cartaz or special pass for safe conducts. For Indian Muslims this situation was especially oppressive since the ports of the Western coast were the point of embarkation for pilgrims going to Mecca. 1 The conflicts (also the armed ones) between the Mughal authorities of the province and the Portuguese happened during the whole of the Akbar's reign.
The Jesuit Antoni de Montserrat, European Interpreter of Emperor Akbar
Foreword to: The Writings of Antoni de Montserrat at the Mughal Court, edited by João Vicente Melo, Translated by Lena Wahlgren-Smith , 2023
on Akbar, King of the Mughals (Relaçam do Equebar, rey dos Mogores) A Report on Akbar, King of the Mughals 71 Commentary on the Embassy to the Mughal Court Foreword: The Jesuit Antoni de Montserrat, European Interpreter of Emperor Akbar The Mughal emperor Jalal-ud-din Akbar (1542-1605), heir to the Timurid dynasty that conquered much of India in the sixteenth century and who reigned with remarkable energy and success for over fifty years, between 1556 and 1605, has traditionally been perceived as one the greatest Indian rulers. Not only did Akbar dramatically expand and consolidate the territories controlled by the dynasty beyond their core in northwest India, from Kabul and Kandahar (in modern Afghanistan) in the west to Bengal in the east, and from Kashmir in the north to Sind, Gujarat, and the northern Deccan in the south; he also created the imperial structures of a patrimonial-bureaucratic state that would serve his successors until the eighteenth century, with a particularly bold and successful policy of incorporating the defeated Rajputs, who as Hindu subjects were considered by more orthodox Muslims as mere idolaters, into the ruling military elite (he even married a Rajput princess who was the mother of his heir, Salim [1569-1627], future emperor Jahangir [r.1605-27]). Akbar was also a remarkable patron of the arts, distinguished for example by sponsoring a vast program of production of illuminated manuscripts in Persian that incorporated many classics of Iranian and Indian literature and history, including translations from the Sanskrit and Turkic languages (he was reputedly illiterate, but this was no obstacle to a passion for having books read to him).1 In this respect, under his direct patronage, poetry, painting, and architecture all evolved toward new forms that combined the rich Timurid traditions of Persianate courtly culture with local Indian artistic elements. Finally, Akbar was also original in the way he engaged with religion. In particular, he widened the scope of his Muslim religiosity, tinged with Sufi themes (as was already characteristic of the Timurids), by seeking to incorporate the various religious traditions-biblical or non-biblical-found in India into a syncretic
Columbia University Press, 2022
Any king who learns wisdom and persists in his consecration of the Light of Lights, as we said before, will be given the Great Royal Light (kiyān kharra) and the luminous light (farra). Divine light will bestow upon him the robe of Royal Authority and of majesty. He will become the natural ruler of the world. He will receive aid from the lofty realm of heavens. Whatever he says will be heard in the Heavens. His dream and his personal inspirations will reach perfection.