Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar inherited the throne at thirteen and ruled for forty-nine years. Across his reign he expanded authority from Bengal to Afghanistan to Gujarat — most of the Indian subcontinent. Illiterate (perhaps by choice), he ran a court of unmatched intellectual openness: he convened debates among Hindus, Sunnis, Shi'as, Jains, Zoroastrians, Sikhs, and Jesuits at his Ibadat Khana ('House of Worship') in Fatehpur Sikri, and even attempted to synthesise their best teachings into a personal syncretic faith, the Din-i-Ilahi. He abolished the jizya tax on non-Muslims, married Rajput princesses, and put Hindu Rajputs in the highest offices of state. He systematised the imperial revenue system into the mansabdari ranking still studied as a model of pre-modern bureaucratic administration. He died in Agra in 1605, succeeded by his son Jahangir.
All Figures
Mughal Emperor
Akbar the Great
1,542 CE – 1,605 CE
The third Mughal emperor — illiterate, brilliant, conquering — who built one of the most religiously tolerant courts in pre-modern history and held an empire of 100 million subjects in one administrative system.
Lifetime
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