Akbar: empire, tolerance, and administration

Akbar, who reigned from 1556 to 1605, transformed the Mughal Empire from a north Indian kingdom into a subcontinental empire. He came to the throne at thirteen under the regent Bairam Khan, and in 1556 his army defeated Hemu at the Second Battle of Panipat. Over the following decades he conquered Malwa, Gujarat, Bengal, Kashmir, and parts of the Deccan, and he bound Rajput rulers to the empire through marriage alliances and high office, while fighting those who resisted, such as Mewar under Rana Pratap, whom he defeated at Haldighati in 1576 without ending Mewar's resistance.

Akbar's most famous policy was sulh-i-kul, universal tolerance. He abolished the pilgrim tax in 1563 and the jizya, the tax on non-Muslims, in 1564, and he held religious discussions at the Ibadat Khana, the house of worship he built at Fatehpur Sikri in 1575, inviting Sunni and Shia scholars, Hindus, Jains, Zoroastrians, and Jesuit missionaries from Goa. In 1582 he proclaimed the Din-i Ilahi, a court-centred order based on loyalty to the emperor and reason; scholars debate how far it was a religion at all, since it had few followers and no scripture, and it died with him.

In administration, Akbar built the mansabdari system, ranking every officer by a numerical rank that fixed pay and military obligation, and the zabt system of land revenue, under which fields were measured and tax was fixed on the average price of crops over ten years. His finance minister Todar Mal is traditionally associated with these revenue reforms. Akbar also centralised the empire by dividing it into subas, or provinces, each under a governor, and he patronised the translation of Sanskrit works into Persian and the painting workshop that produced the Akbarnama, the official history written by his friend Abul Fazl.

Akbar's legacy is debated. Supporters point to a plural empire in which Hindus served as generals and ministers, while critics note that tolerance at court did not end the empire's wars or its demand for revenue. For civil studies, Akbar is the key case of an empire that tried to base loyalty on inclusion rather than on a single religious identity, and of the limits of that experiment when later rulers reversed it.