Abu'l-Fath Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar (October 1542-27 October 1605), better known as Akbar the Great, was Padishah of the Mughal Empire from 11 February 1556 to 27 October 1605, succeeding Humayun and preceding Jahangir.
Biography[]
When Abu'l-Fath Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar, grandson of Babur, succeeded to the Mughal throne as a 14-year-old in 1556, it was not clear whether the Mughal Empire had a glorious future - a lot of the territory won by Babur had been lost by Akbar's father, Humayun. By creating a powerful, well-organized army and through tireless military campaigning, Akbar transformed this diminished inheritance into a great empire.
At first, Akbar was under the guardianship of Bairam Khan, but from 1560 took government and military command into his own hands. One of his earliest challenges was presented by the Hindu Rajputs at the hill fortress of Chitor in 1567. The fort was valiantly defended by the youthful Jaimal Rathore and Prince Patta, but was finally taken by assault after a six-month siege amid scenes of massacre - by some estimates the death toll was 30,000. Akbar was, however, acutely aware of the need to integrate Hindus into his Muslim empire. He had statues of Jaimal and Patta erected at Agra as a gesture of respect, and many Rajput princes did eventually take service with their followers in the Mughal army.
Akbar's attitude was typical of the manner in which he built his army into a vast force, integrating separate bodies of men. Mounted archers from Central Asia were recruited under their chiefs, as were the forces of Mughal warlords owing a form of feudal service to the emperor. Akbar's own troops provided a core of artillery, musketeers, and war elephants. The campaigns Akbar conducted with this army, possibly numbering 200,000 men, ranged from the defeat of the sultan of Ahmedabad in 1573 and the capture of Patna in Bengal in 1574, to the conquest of Kabul in 1581 and Kandahar in 1594. By the time of his death in 1605, Akbar's empire extended over the whole of the north of the Indian Subcontinent.
Gallery[]
