Rulers of India: Akbar

'The success of the three branches of the government, and the fulfilment of the wishes of the subject,' writes the author of the Ain-i-Akbari, 'whether great or small, depend up...

The position in India, in the sixth year of Akbar's reign, dating from the battle of Panipat, but the first of his personal rule, may thus be summarised. He held the Punjab and...

Master of the two great centres of power in the north-west, Babar, with the foresight of a statesman, 'took stock' of the actual situation of Hindustan. He realised at once that...

First, as to his outward appearance. 'Akbar,' wrote his son, the Emperor Jahangir,[1] 'was of middling stature, but with a tendency to be tall; he had a wheat-colour complexion,...

Brave, genial, witty, a charming companion, highly educated, generous, and merciful, Humayun was even less qualified than his father to found a dynasty on principles which shoul...

The empire conquered south of the Sutlej by the Afghan predecessors of the Mughal had no claim to be regarded as the empire of Hindustan. It was rather the empire of Delhi, that...

Into the first period of Indian history, that extending from the earliest times to the invasion of Mahmud of Ghazni, in the beginning of the eleventh century, I do not propose t...

At this period the kingdom of Kabul comprehended solely the provinces of Kabul and Ghazni, the territory which we should call eastern Afghanistan. Herat was the capital of an in...

The news of his father's death, I have said, reached Akbar as he was entering the town of Kalanaur at the head of his army. At the moment he had not heard of the revolt at Kabul...

I crave 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...

Sher Khan Sur, who had defeated Humayun at Kanauj in 1540, had used his victory to possess himself of the territories which Babar had conquered, and to add somewhat to them. He...

On the 9th of April, 1336, there was born to the chief of the Birbas, a tribe of the purest Mughal origin, at Shehr-Sebz, thirty miles to the north of Samarkand, a son, the elde...