Empire: World History - 210. Akbar the Great: Revolutionising Religious Tolerance

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

Raja Birbal is a man of such exceptional wisdom and wit that he will become the stuff of legends. Birbal is just one of the Nine Gems Akbar surrounds himself with, remarkable people who will help the emperor enact a series of wide reaching and radical reforms. The ruler takes it upon himself to absorb the teachings of all religions he has access to, which includes the Portuguese Jesuits who are making Goa their home. In rejecting tradition in the pursuit of reason, how will Akbar foster open minded religious debate? And how, amidst all this peaceful dialogue, does he still manage to wage war and expand his kingdom?  Listen as William and Anita discuss how Akbar revolutionised his governance and promoted religious tolerance in his realm.  Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Assistant Producers: Anouska Lewis & Alice Horrell Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpower.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Durhampool. Did we just talk to you just a second ago? Are you a member of the club? Did you just listen to Akbar 1 and then you couldn't wait for Akbar 2, so you join the club? done you. And if it is a week on for you, you're probably, well, I hope, sort of chumping at the bit

about this story, which we think is a fabulous story about Akbar, the Mughal Emperor. I wanted to talk about the story that we as sort of Asian children all know, and your children grew up with, which is the story of Akbar and his wise man of the court, Beirbel, the fabulous stories. I mean, your kids grew up with these as well, don't they? My kids grew up on those Amachitra comics. Amachitra Katha comics. So, I mean, I should say that these are largely deemed to be folklore tales. There is a lot of doubt from historians about whether any of these stories actually happen

because they're just so good and they do sound very Esauph's fables. First of all, he was a real man. Let's start with that. Birbel was a real man. That was his title, Raja Birbel. And Birbal is literally translated as the quick thinker. So he was an Indian minister. He was one of Akbar's nine jewels.

His real name was Mahesh Das. So a Hindu, again, if you joined us for the first episode, you'll realize that this is a new type of empire that is being developed in India and what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan and Kashmir, where the Hindus are equal partners almost in this. Akbar, of course, at the top. But there isn't any kind of penalty for being a Hindu and Hindus can rise to the very top. And it is said that Akbar had an inner sanctum. He called them the nine jewels, which were nine of his most trusted courtiers. And nine jewels, we should say, is something that's around in Hindu mythology before Akbar. It's something that's incredibly auspicious. The Navratness in gemology are what you want when you're getting married, for example, on your ring and so on. Oh, I didn't know that.

So you're into all this sort of astrological Hocom. Me and who mine. We like all our batshit crazy stuff. Yeah, Hocom. But look, the shiniest jewel in the nine jewels is Raja Birbel, the quick thinker. And I'll just tell you some of the stories because I love them so much. and it's been an absolute delight to go through this. You dive deep into this.

You've been looking forward to this for a while. It's a little bit sort of nostalgic for me, to be honest. So, first of all, Raja Birbel, or Birbal, is about 20 years older than Akbar. So he is an older man in the court, a grey hair, and he trusts him as a counsellor, and he's meant to be the wisest to them all. So the stories go like this. One day, Akbar and Birabwe and Birabwe are walking through the Imperial Gardens. And Akbar always likes to test Beirbal and tease him, like, you're not as clever as you think you are.

and Beable always gets the last word. So Akbar sees crows in the tree and he says, Beirbel, you're so clever. Tell me how many crows there are in the kingdom. And without missing a bit, Beirbel goes, well, there are 95,463 crows in our kingdom? And Akbar looks at Beirbal and goes, what? He goes, the 95,463 crows in our kingdom. And he says, you know I can count them. I've got the men who can count them, Beirable.

Are you sure? He goes, yes, of course. And Agba says, okay, so what if there are fewer crows? Beable smiles and goes, well, it just means that some of the crows have gone to meet their relatives and neighboring kingdoms. What if there are more crows? He goes, well, that's just the crows coming from the other kingdoms visiting their relatives. I mean, I'm right. Prove me wrong, which is fabulous.

Did I tell the story about the stealing the gold story? I think I might have told you. No, tell you. No. Oh, the stealing. That is my absolute favorite story, okay? So Akbar is convinced that somebody, one of his goldsmiths, and he has about 12 goldsmiths who make jewelry for him, and he thinks somebody is stealing gold and mixing it with some other cheaper metal and keeping some of the gold. But it looks the same.

So how do you prove it? And Beirbal goes, just leave it to me. I'll sort it out. And he calls all the goldsmiths, and he gives them a stick. And they're all the same size. And he says, all right, goldsmiths, I have cast a spell. You know who I am. I'm Beirable.

You know I know I know magic. You know I'm very clever. I've cast a spell on all these sticks. You must take these home and sleep with them under your pillow. And the one of you who is cheating, Akwa, is going to find that your stick is two inches bigger than everybody else is. And so we'll know it's you. And he sends them off. They go to sleep. They come back. They all produce a stick except one man who has a two inch shorter stick. And Akbar goes, well, but he goes, this is the man. And Akma says, what are you talking about?

You said it would be two inches longer. He said, well, of course sticks aren't magic, sire. I just knew someone would want to compensate for that. And there is a chicken and egg one, but I can't find it. Now, I just know that it's good, but this is the kind of story that has actually sort of made people fond of Akbar and think, actually, you know, this is a man who's sort of in search of wisdom and surrounded himself with entrusted Hindus to tell him stuff that he was wrong and to make fun of him, who were his wise counsel. I thought we'd start with those. Just go and look them up. Agbar would be able stories. We should also say who the other ones are, said the Navratnas of Akbar are a mixture. of a couple who I think it just made up and are not real characters, such as Muller Do Piazza, who is this sort of joky mullah.

The mullah of two onions. Dopiazza means two onions. It does. You can get a nice dish of do Piazza to this day. But Mullah do Piazza is the same in many of the stories as Mullah Nazrudin, who's the source of many of the comic Sufi stories. And he's this slightly doty mullah who is always riding with a huge turban and a tiny little donkey. But there are other ones who are real characters like Abel Faisal, who are going to come across a lot today,

who is Akbar's most important counsellor and his biographer, who wrote the Ayni Akbari, which is our main source for Akbar's reign. It's also one of the kind of great works of sycophancy of all sort of Indian culture. And Abel Faisal lays it on with a trowel. There is, as well as Beabel Tanzan, who is again another real character. Tanzan, the musician. Again, another legendary name that Akbar would go into these reveries when Dan Sen would play and have almost sort of visions while listening to him on his Siddhar. Exactly.

Another set of stories I grew up with. Tanzan of Gualio. And then there's Raja Todamal, who's a real guy, and we'll come across again later in this episode, who was Akbar's finance minister, a Brahmin, and who revolutionized the empire's revenue sister. There's our old friend Rajumman Singh, the Kachawa Raja of Amir, who's the main general. who we talked about last episode, yep. Then there is the son of Byram Khan, Abdul Rahim Karnikanaan, distinguished warrior and diplomat, known for his Hindi couplets,

also his work on astrology. Anyway, there's various characters, but the fact that these are still part of folklore today and part of every child's education shows how much consciousness really there was that the court of Akbar was something extraordinary. And the true story that lies behind all these folk stories is that he revolutionises the administration of India and creates one of the most successful

bureaucracies. And when the British come, they merely adapt this bureaucratic system that Akbar has created. And a lot of the forms of land revenue and so on, the Jaghears and the Mansabdas and everything continue well into British rule and right up to the late Mogul period. Yeah. One of the things we talked about in the last episode was, you know, this expanse of his empire, which has also taken in Kabul where he's put his sister in charge. I should say that Beable, I should tell you the... Because this is a true story. Back to Beable.

As opposed to the glorious Akbar Beable tales of how they tease each other. But this man, Raja Beirbel, does die when Akbar sends him to put down an uprising among the Yusufzai clan in Afghanistan. And Beirbel is killed. On the frontier, yeah. On the frontier. Not the first or last envoy to be... killed by the Yusuf Zai in those very troubled hills.

Yeah, so, I mean, it's near Malandari Pass that 8,000 of Birbos soldiers who sort of think they're going to just walk in and take it are killed. And his body is never found. And this causes Akbar such grief because he wants to give his friend, his counsellor, his father figure, a Hindu cremation, but they can't find a body. And so he's said to be in absolute anguish. He proclaims it is the greatest tragedy since his coming to the throne. A court chronicler at the time, Badoni writes,

His Majesty cared for the death of no grande more than that of Beirbel. He said, alas, they couldn't even get his body out of the past, that it might be burned. But at last, he consoled himself with the thought that Beirabal was now free and independent of all earthly fetters. And as the rays of sun were sufficient for him, it was not necessary that he should be cleansed by fire. Is that lovely? Is that a nice sort of gorgeous little aside? But also kind of indication of the reality of this, that you are effectively establishing your authority on many people's

who don't want to have your authority established on them. And who can fight back? Who can fight back very well. So pick up the reins from where we left, William. So we were just talking about the Revolution administration that takes place under that. We won't go on too long about this. But there are all these systems like the Jagirdas.

Now, the Jagerdas are the last. landowners. Now, traditionally in India, if you held some land, you handed onto your son, and it was yours forever. The revolution with the Jagadah system is that it is sort of rotational and that it isn't your ancestral acres that you keep forever. You can be reassigned. And Akbar begins this thing where the highest ranking nobles are on a sort of revolving land revenue system and that they're moved from one part of the empire to another, like modern diplomats. They don't own the land that gives them their money. And this is a way of making sure that no nobles put down roots and are strong enough to rebel against Akbar.

There's also this other system called the Man Sabdari system, which is a way of ranking the nobles in the court, thanks to talent, not to their birth or their religion or where they're from or anything else other than. how important and useful Akbar thinks they are. So all these ways are ways of clipping the wings of the nobility who either through enormous inherited wealth or the fact they have enormous private armies were apt in earlier reigns to join up with disaffected brothers or whatever and to challenge the ruler. And this becomes more and more difficult in the system invented by Akbar. I think you can sort of say he invented a civil service. At a time, you know, when this place has only known dictatorships, you know, where you have a man, at the top and you have an army enforcing his will. What he does is he, if you like, devolves power

a little bit. He creates other centres of power around his kingdom with a civil service that answers to the centre, which is a really quite modern concept. Remember at the same time, you know, like I said, it's sort of Elizabeth I first and Philip the second. These are rulers who rule from the top with their inner coterie and that's it. But he devolves power in a way that it's pretty revolutionary at the time. And there's one other thing I haven't said, which is really important, at the same time that the nobles cease to have exclusive control over a piece of land for generations, that same privilege is given to the landholders. While the nobleman can be moved from Bengal to Rajasthan to Gujarat, and like a modern diplomat, you just have to, you know, upsticks and put their things into a cart and move from one end of the empire to the other

and no longer hold the land that they had before, the opposite is the case with the peasantry. The peasantry are given hereditary right to cultivate the land if they continue to pay their dues to the landowner. So all this is all sorts of quite revolutionary stuff going on. But the biggest change of all, and this is the one that interests me the most, and the one which is most counterintuitive for those that have been told that the moguls are these oppressive foreigners, is this policy under Akbar called Sul equal. It's the policy of pluralism. And this is actually made into law at this time. The idea that there will be perfect reconciliation, universal toleration, peace with all, and complete civility. This is actually made to be the system of the empire. And way ahead of his time, Akbar and his

advisors showed a commitment to what they call at the time rational inquiry and acknowledge that no single tradition, not Islam, not Hinduism, not Sufism, have a monopoly on the truth or spiritual, moral and political power. And what Akbar always says, which is something that, you know, won't really take root in Europe until the 18th century, is this idea that he will seek to find the dry land of reason and not the marshy land of tradition, he says. I want to find out the truth, whose ever religion it is that holds it. And in a world where identity is very much dominated by religion, this is, again, a kind of revolutionary, a completely different. different practice, anything that's been there before.

Again, something else that is pretty radical for the time. And I don't know if you can go as far as to say it's a secular education system, but he does really believe in education, that he wants a more learned population. So at the time, you know, I suppose his forebears would have really cared about learning the Quran and learning, you know, the Quranic script. And it didn't go much further than that, although if you were from a royal family, poetry, art, all of those things were. But what he does is he sort of creates an education system that has topics like mathematics, accounting, and Persian literature, and music, and appreciation of the arts.

He's a great patron of the arts. So he wants to elevate his people as well, in a way, and it isn't just sort of madressa doctrinal schools, which are going to do it for a certain elite who happen to have his religion. And at this point, we find intellectuals and thinkers from all these different traditions being welcomed into the court. This actually has a kind of reflection in reality. It's not just a bunch of rhetoric. You find these Sanskrit thinkers from across the subcontinent entering the central court from the 1560s and 70s, but particularly in the 1580s. And this array of Jains and Brahmin intellectuals, they're given titles, they're welcomed into the court. Akbar orders that.

the translation of Sanskrit texts such as the Mahabharata into Persian. The Mahabharata is called the Razum Nama, the Book of War. There are different rival translations. You have the library filling not just with Persian, but with Arabic, Kashmiri, Hindi, Greek, Sanskrit and various European languages, texts from all these different places. And we talked earlier in the last episode about how Akbar, as early as 163, abolishes pilgrimage taxes on non-Muslims institutions. He ends the jizier, which is the thing you talked about, where all non-Muslims have to pay a tax. And he becomes the patron giving out land to Hindu temples. We talked about this in relation to Man Singh, and the fact that you suddenly see this

incredible growth of Hindu temples, particularly in the region of Brage during his reign. But you also see it in, this is what always fascinates me. you see it in Akbar's personal life. He takes on many Hindu and yogic practices, even becoming a vegetarian and criticizing meat eaters for, and this is the quote, which I love, having converted their inner sides where resides the mysteries of divinity into a burial ground for animals.

And so great an impression does this make on his Hindu subjects that in some of the bardic traditions of Rajasam, which continue to this day, Akbar comes to be equated with the Hindu divinity Lord Ram. I mean, that's extraordinary. There are stories that I grew up with, but not only stories in our hymns, you know, if you are a follower of the goddess, Dürga, there is one particular hymn, which is one of the most popular to Dürga, J.J.J.J. Karasir al-Lida, which is like sing the praises of the goddess who rides the lion. And there is a verse about Akbar when he wanted to have his first son, that he went barefoot and bareheaded to the shrine of the mother goddess. and he begged her for a son and he got a son.

He was praying for a son and he got a son. Is that the same pilgrimage when he goes to Sikri? I don't know. I know the verse. Nungi, beri, Akabara Ayah. I mean, what you have on a grand scale, apart from sort of, you know, the promotion of Hindus in the ranks, but you have a commingling of ideas and equal respect.

To the point where, you know, Akbar will present a golden parasol to a temple that has the goddess in it, This has a huge impact. I mean, never before has somebody of his stature with his lands and his wealth done this. They haven't felt the need to do this. But he does it. And arguably he does it because he's actually interested. Absolutely. And sometimes in modern India, you often see some right-wing commentators alleging that pro-congress historians of a generation after independence sort of spun all this. in a way that didn't actually reflect reality. But you find contemporary observers, often from completely different perspectives like the Portuguese, writing about this very clearly at the time. This is what Father Montserrat says.

At this time, the king was showing greater and greater favor to the Hindus, at whose request he had forbidden the sale of buffalo flesh in the meat market. Furthermore, he had caused a wooden building of ingenious workmanship to be constructed and had it placed at the very highest point of the palace roof, and from this he watched the dawn and worshipped the rising sun. And this is the first sign that Akbar's beginning to spin off from, not just is he tolerating other points of view, he's actually spinning off in the direction of all sorts of other faiths.

I mean, this seems to be Zoroastrian rather than anything else. Let's take a break, because I think this idea of the religion, I mean, we've talked about warfare and the nine jewels in his. Let's talk about that in a bit more detail after the break. Welcome back. I think it's probably worth going into the religious aspect a bit more here because it is so contagious these days. And it's very sort of heavily politically loaded. But from his youth, there is evidence that he hung out with Brahmins, as well as the musicians and the poets who were Hindus.

He was also hanging out with holy men as well. And, you know, we talked before the break how he's managed to get into some of the, you know, spiritual songs that I grew up with as well. Talk a little bit more about this. He was accused of favouring Hindus among all the religions, because there were other religions in India at the time. You know, Jains, Buddhists, they were there as well. What was his attitude to all religions? Was there plurality?

Or did he just think, actually, the Rajputs are the ones I'm interested in because I can govern with them and I get them? So I get the impression that the military was dominated by Rajputs and the administration was dominated by Brahmins. And initially you see the concessions, if you like, or the active legal attempts to create more pluralism directed specifically, for example, at Hindu pilgrims. Hindu pilgrim taxes are abolished in 1563. In 166, he starts this custom, which the Rajput kings also have, of weighing themselves against precious metals.

Oh, wait, and say more about that, because that is such a great visual thing. I mean, in my head, like two scales and an emperor in one, and everybody heaping jewels to make it even, and that's the tribute to the emperor. And so he takes this up. There's some evidence that his father had done this too, that Humayin might have started this, but certainly we get it regularly happening in court with Akbar. We have the Portuguese noting that he occasionally marks his forehead like a Hindu with sandalwood paste. And he wears amulets formed of rags on his wrist. He always drinks sacred Ganges water, both at home and when he travels.

Oh, yes, he has it brought him when he's far away from the Ganges and sealed jibes. in sealed jars as well, which is something. And then in the 1570s, he begins to adopt more Sufi ideas, and he starts promoting, actively encouraging Sunnis and Shias, for example, not to fight with each other and to find common ground. We've talked about how he commissions person translations of the Mahabara, but you then get one also of the Ramayana and the Bible, and he gets his grand vizier, Abul Fasal. to do this translation of the Bible into Persian.

He was one of the nine jewels. Yeah. I mean, one thing also that he does, which is more controversial, is that he tolerates. He actually even praises the practice of Sathi, and you did talk about a Sati temple before that was built under his rule. And Sathi is, I mean, it's a ghastly, awful, horrific practice

of if you are a Hindu widow, and it was quite prevalent among the Rajputs, that if your husband died, you as a living widow had no value and to show your love and your devotion to your husband would be burned alive on the pyre of your husband. I mean, you can predict very strong, strong thoughts on that. So he was confusing about that because he prohibited its imposition. So you wouldn't have women forced into it, but he praised it and he allowed Hindu wives to remarry.

So there's lots of mixed. Can you decode that for me because I'm very confused about that? I think one of the things that is very clear about his religious policy is that it is confusing. He's often swept one way or another, depending on the last person he's talked to. And sometimes he appears to be a Hindu and a Veshnav. Other times, he's showing interest in Zoroastrian practices and sun worship. But then you get this phase of his life. And this is what I find very interesting, because I think so many people in Europe always imagine that Muslim rulers are again,

Christianity. What is one of the fascinating about this period is that in 1580, you start getting regular groups of Jesuits turning up. Remember, there's now at this period a new Portuguese colony in Goa. So you have only a few weeks march from the mogul capital at Agra. You have a major Portuguese colony. So that the Jesuits are invited up to Fatipo Sikri in 1580. And we have an account of their arrival. On entering, they became the sinisher of all eyes, on account of their strange attire. Everyone stopped and stared in great surprise and perplexity, wondering who these strange-looking unarmed men might be, with their long black robes, their curious caps, their shaven faces, and their tonsured heads. You know, they've come from Spain and Portugal

at a time when the reconquista has just finished and Muslims and Jews. are being persecuted and they're used to religion being very bloody, forcibly, bloody and forcibly imposed on people. But the emperor, who is a Muslim, allows them to set up a chapel in his palace, where they exhibit two paintings of the Madonna and child

before an excited crowd. And then to the astonishment of the Jesuits, Akbar prostrates himself before the image of Jesus. And they begin these discussions. And Akbar takes a particular interest in Jesus' function as Messiah, and he questions the Jesuits closely about the last judgment and whether Christ would be the judge. And Akbar also shows his appreciation of his guest by going as far as listening to Madrigals

and donning Portuguese garb. He turns up one day in a scarlet cloak with gold fastenings, and he ordered his sons to don the same dress together with Portuguese hats. Oh, it's amazing. Jesuits are not expecting this. It's cosplay Christianity. What is he doing? We were expected to be put to the sword. What's happening? What is actually happening?

And as more and more of these embassies come and the Jesuits are giving illustrated Bibles and breviaries to Akbar and the other courtiers, they then, after a few years, come back to find that the gospel books that have been brought by their predecessors, that pictures of them have been painted as murals in Akbar's bedroom. That's so crackers. There's pictures of Christ, his mother, the Christian saying, and they're painted not only on the walls of the palace, but also on sort of random mogul tombs and caravans. You can still see some of these in Lahore. I've seen pictures of a sort of version of a Titian in Lahore Fort. So the most sort of bizarre images from the Renaissance world are being copied in the court of Akbar. And a generation later, one Portuguese Jesuit says

the emperor had painted images of Christ our Lord and Our Lady in various places in the palace. And there are so many saints that you might say it was more like the palace of a Christian king than a Moorish one. And by the end of Akbar's reign, a mural of the Nativity fills the wall of the imperial bedchamber and Christian devotional images have become a major part of the Mughal scriptorium's output. And a copy of the image of the Virgin of Loretto is said to be a particular favourite of Akbar. goes against everything these guys are expecting to happen in a Muslim court. Well, does this not chafe with some of the more strict Muslims in his court? It does, including Badaunni, who we quoted.

Badaunis privately writes this account which has survived saying he's basically a heretic. And also saying that because he's illiterate, he's not very clever and he doesn't know any better. So Badauni just thinks this is because he's sort of credulous. And the other people that get put out by this are the early English. And I think we're going to hear at some point about the wonderful. embassy of Sir Thomas Rowe to Jahangir's court later on in the series. But you already have a few Englishmen turning up on their own. And the East India Company's Factor, Thomas Kerridge, is not at pleased by what he calls these prattling, juggling Jesuits, which is a brilliant.

Yeah. First of all, what's a factor? Is that just a representative? Is that a word for ambassador? The Factor is someone who works in a factory. Oh, is that what it is? Okay, I'm not familiar with that word. So he, okay, all right. And the factory in the East Indy Company time doesn't mean sort of a smokestack with a great mill inside, doesn't it? It just means a merchant's suite of rooms. Oh, right. Okay, thank you. Where the factors live. So he's irritated by the prattling, juggling Jesuits because he's getting a bit too Catholic in his tastes, you know, to have, you know, our Lady of Loretto or the nativity on your bedroom wall taken from a Jesuit text. It just means he's swinging too Catholic for their taste.

Yes, good English Protestants don't want images of crosses and crucifixes. This is a totally Catholic. So the fact that Akbar's favorite sculpture is, quote, a carved image of our saviour on the cross is a surprise because the Protestants don't like it. It's in a particular surprise as the Quran maintains, of course, that Christ was uniquely returned to God alive and not crucified. Right. So all this stuff is opening a whole window for Akbar on the whole width of religious, possibilities out there in the world. And his response to this is to begin, for me, this is the most extraordinary moment in the whole mogul story. He begins having these interfaith dialogues. At a time when

in England, Jesuits are being hung, drawn and quartered at the Taibun. At the same time, Akbar establishes what he calls the Iberdakana, the House of Worship, Fadipateri, specifically for religious debates. One of the things I was really interested in is during these interfaith dialogues, which you can just sound so modern, doesn't it? I mean, we have a King Charles very much involved an interfaith dialogue and defender of all faiths. All of that kind of thing feels very modern. But I was interested that, you know, he was really taken or at least concerned by this idea of a day of judgment where Christ would sit and judge all for their actions. And, I mean, he sort of said to ask Father Monserat during one such dialogue that, you know, is he going to also talk about wars

and rebellions and the kind of stuff that I done when I was younger and playing with skulls and particularly on one occasion massacring thousands of people? He's concerned about it. With good reason, yeah. He's behaved very badly in his youth. It will not go very well for him. So is this something that one of his jewels presides over, is it Abu Fasel's idea? He presides over it in person. No, I think it's very much Akbar's idea. Abel Fasel and the jewels are very much there. Right. And everyone is invited.

So it isn't just Sunni and Shia or Hindu and Muslim. You also get Zoroastrians, Jains. A lot of Jains now at the court. He's particularly interested in Jainism, which is, for those who don't know, the Jains are quite like the Buddhists. They come from the same sort of era of Indian history, but they're even more austere than Buddhists.

And the Jain monks pull out their hair, They have very, very limited diets. They sweep the ground in front of them so that they don't crush ants or destroy any living creature. They wear muslin masks, that they don't breathe in insects, you know, and don't eat onions because onions are alive underground and they can give birth to other onions. You know, there's some really strict orthodoxies. What I love about this is this is something that we Europeans like to think is our invention. We think the Enlightenment is the period when people, you know, discover interfaith dialogue. and maybe the earliest ancestor of this is Lorenzo de Medici's Platonic Academy in Florence,

which also invites scholars and priests to discuss their ideas. But at this stage here, you've got all these different folk arrived. And the Orthodox mullahs are horrified. They say, learned men from Khorasan, Iraq, transoxania and India, both doctors and theologians, shears and Sunnis, Christians, philosophers and Brahmins, assembled together at the sublime court. And here they discussed the rational and traditional methods of discourse, travel and histories to each other's prophecies. They widened the circle of debate and each attempted to prove his own claim and desire the propagation of his school.

Outstanding thinkers appeared. The lofty lord Akbar declared before the people, oh learned ones, our purpose is to seek the truth. And Akbar's thesis is that the pursuit of reason, This is a quote, rather than, quote, the reliance on the marshy land of tradition is the only way to address religious disputes. And of course, he's attacked by the traditionalists who want him to take the side of Sunni Islamic values. But he tells Abel Faisal, no, the pursuit of reason and the rejection of traditionalism are so brilliantly patent as to be above the need of argument. If traditionalism were proper, the prophets would merely have followed their own elders and not come up with new messages. So this is sort of revolutionary stuff. It is.

And he convinces people. So, I mean, Abbasel himself, sort of reacting to this very new thing of having people, you know, sitting around chatting about God and philosophy and religion becomes a real sort of fan of this. And he writes, the Shahansha's, you know, the King of Kings, meaning Akbar, his court became the home of inquirers of the seven climes, you know, from all over the world, the assemblage of the wise of every religion, every sect. reason exalted again. Now this is interesting because this is going to get right up noses. And the bigoted ulama and lawyers of orthodoxy found their positions difficult to defend. So it is a criticism of Islam and orthodox Islam coming from one of the nine jewels in Akbar's court where he is providing fertile ground for, you know, I mean, it must be unthinkable for them. You know, they must be sitting there going, hang on, I thought you were a Muslim ruler. What the hell is going on here?

Are you up to you? That you're making us face these people and you're humiliating us by saying we're losing the argument. So what happens next is that Akbar gets depressed with everyone fighting because inevitably all these debates end up with people screaming at each other. And in 1582, Atbar announces my mind is not at ease in this diversity of sex and creeds. And my heart is oppressed by this outward pomp and circumstance. On the completion of my 20th year, I experienced internal bitterness from the lack of spiritual provision from my last journey. My soul was seized with exceeding sorrow. So he seems to have some

sort of moment of depression or a sort of vision or the Jesuits think it's a sort of moment of epilepsy. But at the end of all this, he actually comes up with something that people, scholars still disputed, and there are various interpretations of it. But he comes up with a new doctrine that Some people say it's actually a whole new religion called Din-I-Elahi. Now, Din-I-Elahi is so interesting. And it sounds sort of a little bit hippie-dippy, actually, because it's like, you know what? Stop yelling at each other. Stop shouting.

You all have merit. I mean, what he is in effect saying is that the virtues are what are important in this new religion or faith or way of being in my empire. And he talks about kindness, generosity, tolerance. It is interesting that people now regard it as, what is it, moral philosophy or something more than that, it's a template of how it expects people to live in his empire. But what's interesting is that Dini Hilahi, I think, is only really held by his inner circle. It's not something he's trying to convert the empire. Push on to anyone else.

Yeah, it's like a sort of club of philosophers at court. He's gathered these extraordinary people together, these open-minded people. And I think from the way that these debates in Fetipur-Sikri have ended in such rancor, I think he's just decided to sort of create an elite, like a club of people that will subscribe to a higher faith of his own invention. But of course, because he's not actually highly educated, he's not a philosopher, he sort of mixes together all these different ideas which appeal to him, none of which have much cohesion. Well, some of them are weird. I mean, some of them are downright odd. I mean, you know, Badani, who we know is no fan of his, says he's just gone weird.

He's doing weird things. This is what Badoni says. He shaved off the hair on the crown of his head and let the hair at the sides grow because he believed the soul of perfect beings at the time of death passed out by the crown, the tenth opening of the human body right on top of your head, with a noise resembling thunder, which he can't believe. So we'd never know whether to believe Badoni, but certainly Badoni gives the idea of what I think, you know, skeptical, orthodox people are looking on with horror at their emperor.

Just like, you know, in the 1980s, used to get sort of telegraph editorials about Prince Charles talking to plants. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It does feel like that. But it does only does sound like he's writing an angry column for the Daily Mail. It does. It's a bit like that. Yeah. And even the Jesuits are noting that he's sort of, because the Jesuits had rather hoped at the peak of all these interfaith dialogues that he'd actually convert to Christianity.

They all just want him. Well, they all thought they were winning. That's the problem. They all thought they were winning him around because he's patiently indulging them, and he's got sort of nativities on his bedroom war. So they think it's only one last push and he'll convert to Christianity, but instead what he does, he then goes on and learns 1001 Sanskrit names of the sun, which is not what the Jesuits had hoped for. No, but the reason he does that, the reason he elevates the sun. And again, this is sort of almost going back to the animistic religions of India, even sort of the very early ones. He's told that the sun provides everything, you know, light to everything. It ripens the fruits. It sustains mankind.

And so he's persuaded that, you know, the sun is worthy of worship. Now, just imagine, you know, a sun worship is, that's pre-Pree Hindu Dharma as well. And so, you know, this 1001 Sanskrit names of the sun is an act of worship of the sun, which is sort of part of that animistic tradition, I feel, anyway. So that everybody must have thought he'd gone barking mad. And then what's interesting is that despite embracing all this Hindu stuff and this Jane stuff, he's adopted vegetarianism and a band, animal slaughtered, done a bit of yoga, astrology. Despite all that, he still continues to wage war. He's still a very successful general. Right up into the 1590s, he's expanding his kingdom in all directions. So the fact that he is a vegetarian doesn't mean that he can't carry on doing a bit of military stuff. So it's all a bit of a muddle philosophically, but it's fascinating. And no one is satisfied. with this religious model. The Jesuits think that they've won and then they haven't. The Sunnis

are very put out that he's sort of given up on Sunni orthodoxy. The Brahmins are happy in court and they've got jobs, but he hasn't gone the whole hog and become a Brahman himself or become a Hindu himself. So he's left the people around him, frankly confused. What you do see is tolerance and pluralism in a way that no other North Indian denizens. has seen for five or six hundred years. And Hindu temples are being built all round. And this is what we'll be dealing with in the next episode. This is a great period, of course, for art and architecture.

The reason for that is he's basically created a hippie commune. I mean, just like, peace and love man. He's like, can't we just all get on peace and love man. Lots of murals being painted everywhere. You know, there isn't peace and there isn't love. And so people fleeing from their own sort of non-tolerant homes, all end up washing up in Akbar's courts. So let's delve into that.

You're right. We should do that in the next episode. If you can't wait, you want to listen to it right now, sign up to Empire Club to get early access, add free listening, a brilliant weekly newsletter. Just go to Empirapoduk.com. That's EmpirePoduk.com. So till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnan.

And goodbye for me, William Durenpool.