In 1591 Akbar had suspected his son of trying to poison him and in 1600 Salim had attempted an armed rebellion. Addicted to both alcohol and opium, Salim could not wait to step into his father’s shoes.

In his later years he became a vegetarian on the principle that a man ought not to make his stomach the grave of animals.Īkbar’s natural successor was his eldest son, Salim, now thirty-six. He loved to fly his pigeons, and wild deer would eat out of his hand.

He invited Jesuit missionaries to his court and showed such an interest in their teachings that they mistakenly thought him a potential convert. He loved to stage discussions between proponents of rival faiths and his Muslim theologians accepted his judgement on knotty points of Islamic law. He could not read or write – which he always claimed was a great advantage in life – but he delighted in art, poetry, music and philosophy, and he presided over a golden age of Indian art and architecture. Stocky and not more than 5ft 7in tall, with a lucky wart on the left side of his nose, Akbar was masterful, physically tough and energetic. No man, Akbar said, should be penalized for his religion or prevented from changing it if he chose. At the same time, he understood that to rule such a huge area required the support of all its people and though himself brought up as a Muslim, he did away with much of his predecessors’ discrimination against Hindus, Parsees and Christians, and recruited them to the service of his regime. A direct descendant of Tamerlane, he had a frightening temper and could be merciless. His ancestors were Mongol chieftains in Central Asia and his mother was Persian. His subjects acclaimed him ‘Lord of the Universe’.Īkbar was not an Indian. A ruler since his teens, Jalal-ud-Din Muhammad Akbar had brought two-thirds of the Indian sub-continent into an empire which included Afghanistan, Kashmir and all of present-day India and Pakistan. Ten days after his 63rd birthday, the greatest of the Great Moguls (or Mughals) died of dysentery in his capital of Agra.

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