Rulers of India Akbar and the Rise of the Mughal Empire

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RULERS OF INDIA AKBAR AND THE RISE OF THE MUGHAL EMPIRE by COLONEL G. B. MALLESON Originally published in 1899. Contents include: CHAP. PACKS I. THE ARGUMENT ...... 5-11 II. THE FAMILY AND EARLY DAYS os 1 BAOBAB . . 12-16 III. BA BAR CONQUERS KABUL 17-25 IV. BABARS INVASIONS OF INDIA ... 26-34 Y. THE POSITION OP BABAR IN HINDUSTAN . . 35-49 VI. HUM YUN AND THE EARLY DAYS oj AKBAR . 50-59 VII. HUMAYUN INVADES INDIA. HlS DEATH . 60-64 VIII. AKBARS FIGHT TOR HIS FATHERS THRONE . 65-71 IX. GENERAL CONDITION OF INDIA IN THE MIDDLE OP THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY . . . . 72-80 X. THE TUTELAGE UNDER BATR M KHAN. . . 81-90 XI. CHRONICLE or THE KEIGN 91-145 XIL THE PRINCIPLES AND INTERNAL ADMINISTRATION OF AKBAR 146-200 INDEX 201-204 NOTE The orthography of proper names follows the system adopted by the Indian Government for the Imperial Gazetteer of India. That system, while adhering to the popular spelling of vory well-known places, such as Punjab, Lucknow, etc., employs in all other cases the vowels with the following uniform sounds a, as in woman a, as in land i, as in police o, as in cold u, as in bull u, as in sure o, as in gray. THE EMPEROR AKBAR CHAPTER I THE ARGUMENT I the indulgence of the reader whilst I explain as briefly as possible the plan upon which I have written this short life of the great sovereign who firmly established the Mughal dynasty in India The original conception of such an empire was not Akbars own. His grandfather, Babar, had conquered a great portion of India, but during the five years which elapsed between the conquest and his death, Babar enjoyed but few opportunities of donning the robe of the administrator. By the rivals whom he had over thrown and by the children of the soil, Babar was alike regarded as a conqueror, and as nothing more. A man of remarkable ability, who had spent all his life in arms, he was really an adventurer, though a brilliant adventurer, who, soaring above his contemporaries in genius, taught in the rough school of adversity, had beheld from his eyrie at K bul the distracted condition l For the purposes of this sketch I have referred to the following authorities Memoirs of JBdbar, written by himself, and translated by eyden and Erskine Erskines JBafiar ancLHumdy n The Ain-i-JLJcbarl Blochmanns translation The History of India, as told ly its own Historians, edited from the posthumous papers of Sir H. M. Elliot, K. G. B., by Professor Dowson Bows Ferishta Elphinstones History qf India Tods Annals of Rajasfhan, and various other works. 6 THE EMPEROR AKBAR of fertile HindustdHj and had dashed down upon her plains with a force that was irresistible. Such was Bbar, a man greatly in advance of his age, generous, affectionate, lofty in his views, yet, in his connection with Hindustan, but little more than a conqueror. He had no time to think of any other system of admini stration than the system with which he had been familiar all his life, and which had been the system introduced by his Afghan predecessors into India, the system of governing by ineans of large camps, each commanded by a general devoted to himself, and each occupying a central position in a province. It is a question whether the central idea of B bars policy was not the creation of an empire in Central Asia rather than of an empire in India. Into this system the welfare of the children of the soil did not enter. Possibly, if Bdbar had lived, and had lived in the enjoyment of his great abilities, he might have come to see, as his grandson saw, that such a system was practically unsound that it was wanting in the great principle of cohesion, of uniting the in terests of the conquering and the conquered that it secured no attachment, and conciliated no prejudices that it remained, without roots, exposed to all the storms of fortune...