Akbar the Great
I was born on october 15 1542 in Umarkot. A city from the district of Sindhi in now days Pakistan. When I was born, no one have good expectation of me. My father was Hamayun and my grandfather was Babur, the first emperor of the Mughal dinasty. Before I was born my father was impoverished and in exile by Sher Shah Suri. My first days were without a father. Even though my father didn't give up, he wanted power so he managed to regain it in 1555. Unfortunately he just ruled for a few months and then he died. I was 14 when he left me his little kingdom, even if it was a collection of frail fiefs I was too young to rule it. Nevertheless, I had no choice, so Bairim Khan took care of me and taught me all he could. With his help I conquered some territories of nothern India and I led my army against the Hindu King Hemu at the Second Battle of Panipat. When I came in age I fired Bairim Khan (that means that I oredered his execution when he was traveling to Mecca), so I could get full control of the government.
With all the multiculturalism inside my head I decided to establish a new cult. In 1579 I was granted the power to interpret the religious law, so with that oportunity I established the Din-i-Ilahi (divine faith). This cult was a mix of elements of many religions: Islam, Hinduism, and Zoroastrianism. I was the center of this faith, I was the prophet called by God. Sadly this cult died with me in 1605, there were very few converts. I am dissapointed, because I believed in this faith, I converted from Islam to the Din.iIlahi, but no one followed me.My father and my grandfather were poets and diarists. Very illustrated people, different from them I am not proud to say that I was iIlliterate. However, I appreciated the arts, culture, and intellectual discourse. I scattered my fascination to all the empire. I made some contributions to the Mughal style of architecture, it has some Islamic, Persian and Hindu elemnts. I was interested in education so I used to sponsore the greatest minds of my empire: poets, musicians, artists, philosophers, and engineers.
I had many courtiers, but my favorites and well-known were my navaratna or my nine gems which served and entertained me: Abul Fazl, my biographer, who chronicled my reign in the three-volume book "Akbarnama"; Abul Faizi, a poet and scholar as well as Abul Fazl's brother; Miyan Tansen, a singer and musician; Raja Birbal, the court jester; Raja Todar Mal, my minister of finance; Raja Man Singh, a celebrated lieutenant; Abdul Rahim Khan-I-Khana, a poet; and Fagir Aziao-Din and Mullah Do Piaza, who were both my advisors.
(His death is uncertain there are two theories that he died because of an ill or he was poisoned... I am going to write about the poisoning).
I was a cunning general. My empire was so big that it occupied the territories of Afghanistan in the north, Sindh in the west, Bengal in the east, and the Godavari River in the south. The secret of the expansion of my empire was my ability to earn the loyalty of the conquered people. I created a central government with all my conquered territories. I integrated them to my administration. I rewarded talent, loyalty, and intellect, no matter the religion or ethnic origins. That helped me to gain people's respect. With this sytem my dynaty had stability.
I promoted tolerance and cooperation between the Rajput people. I din't force the population to convert to Islam, instead I abolished the poll tax on non-Muslims, I traslated Hindu literature and I also participated in Hindu festivals.
I got married with many Hindu princesses, those marriages might not mean nothing, because I saw them as alliances. I married with Jodha Bai, the eldest daughter of the house of Jaipur, as well princesses of Bikaner and Jaisalmer. I made his fathers and brothers part of my court.
I had a peculiar form of administration which made all the territories of my empire dependent to the central government. In 1574 I separated the revenue collection from military administration. The subahs which are the governators of each terrirtory mantained the order of its region. After a while I doled out fixed salaries to military and civilian personnel according to their rank.
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| Jahangir |
My death is a sad chapter of my life. It was so tragic that is hard to me to tell you about it. My death wasn't a terrible accident, it wasn't a terrible ill either, it was something much awful than that. I was poisoned, the worst thing isn't the murder, it was the fact that my own son Jahangir did it. You can't imagine the pain you feel knowing that your own son wanted you dead. He did this for ambicion and greed, he wanted the whole empire for him. The sad thing is that he made it, a few days after my death in 1605, he ascended forcefully as emperor
