Akbar the Great: Difference between revisions

Abu'l-Fath Jalal ud-din Muhammad Akbar (1542–1605), greatest of Mogul emperors, an embodiment of the Ascended Master [[El Morya]].

The emperor was born a Muslim but respected Hindu religion and culture and offered Hindus and Muslims alike the highest posts in his government. He assembled scholars of the Muslim and Hindu sects, Jains, Zoroastrians, and Jesuits in his capital, where in 1575 he built an ''ibadat khana'', a “house of worship,” where learned men of all religions could meet to discuss both theology and philosophy. In 1582 Akbar founded a monotheistic, unitarian religion called Din-i-Ilahi (“Divine Faith”) with himself as its spiritual leader.  

In an attempt to resolve the discord among the many religious factions in his empire, and recognizing the limitations of each, he proposed that “we ought, therefore, to bring them all into one, but in such fashion that they should be both ‘one’ and ‘all’, with the great advantage of not losing what is good in any one religion, while gaining whatever is better in another.” He did not, however, demand that his countrymen espouse his beliefs, and Akbar’s new religion had few adherents outside his court.  

At the end of his reign, the peace and prosperity which Akbar had brought to India was disturbed by the court intrigues and subversive activities of his son, Jahangir. When he inherited the throne, Jahangir rejected his father’s reforms, especially those of religious tolerance, and the empire rapidly crumbled. Jahangir’s son and heir, [[Shah Jahan]], inherited only a small and unruly kingdom but retained a great love for the cultural heritage of his grandfather. As the greatest of the Mogul builders, Shah Jahan gave to India its most cherished romance: the Taj Mahal.

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