Journey
Akbar's court circle
The nine jewels are a later listing, but the men are real and their functions are documented: a finance minister who surveyed and classified the empire's land, a chronicler who wrote its official history and its gazetteer, a poet laureate who translated Sanskrit mathematics, a Rajput general, a singer, a commander who is also a canonical Hindi poet, and a wit.
Stops (10)
- Akbar · r. 1556–1605
Emperor from the age of thirteen, who turned a claim held by two battles at Panipat into an administered empire: a surveyed and classified land revenue, a ranked service open to Rajputs, Persians and Indian Muslims alike, a translation bureau, and a court at Agra and Fatehpur Sikri where Jesuits, Jains and Zoroastrians argued in front of him.
- Raja Todar Mal · revenue, from 1560s
The administrator who carried out the zabt settlement: measure the land with a standard bigha and a jarib chain, classify it by fertility and continuity of cultivation, average the yields and prices over ten years, and fix a cash demand. Every Indian land-revenue system until 1947 is descended from it, and he began as a Sur clerk.
- Abu’l-Fazl · Akbarnama, 1590s
Akbar's court historian, who wrote the official chronicle and, as its third volume, the Ain-i-Akbari — a gazetteer of the empire's provinces, prices, wages, castes, crops, mansabs and court procedure. It is the fullest administrative description of any pre-modern state in Asia, and he was murdered on Prince Salim's instructions in 1602.
- Abu'l-Faiz Faizi · poet laureate 1588
Abu'l-Fazl's elder brother, made malik-ush-shu'ara and the court's chief translator from Sanskrit. He put Bhaskara's Lilavati into Persian and turned the Nala-Damayanti episode of the Mahabharata into the Nal-Daman. Akbar is recorded carrying him on his own shoulders as he was dying, which the Akbarnama rarely does for anybody. He also wrote a Quranic commentary using only undotted letters, a technical feat of no religious consequence.
- Raja Man Singh I · Amber, from 1562
Kachhwaha ruler of Amber and one of Akbar's most senior commanders, who fought in Gujarat, Bihar, Bengal, Kabul and Orissa and led the Mughal army at Haldighati against Maharana Pratap. The Rajput houses' entry into Mughal service, as mansabdars with their own states intact, largely runs through him. He also brought the Shila Devi image from Bengal to Amber, where it is still worshipped.
- Abdur Rahim Khan-i-Khanan · Khan-i-Khanan
Son of Bairam Khan, Akbar's regent, and himself commander-in-chief and governor of Gujarat and the Deccan. He translated Babur's Chagatai memoirs into Persian, and wrote couplets in Braj and Awadhi that are still learned by heart — so the empire's senior soldier is also a canonical Hindi poet. His tomb at Nizamuddin was stripped in the 1750s to face Safdarjung's, and refaced only after 2014.
- Tansen · the court musician
Brought from Rewa to Akbar's court in 1562, and the figure every Hindustani gharana traces itself to. The ragas attributed to him, the Darbari and Miyan ki Todi among them, are the standard repertoire, and the seniya and rababiya lineages of instrumentalists claim descent from his children and pupils. His tomb at Gwalior stands beside his teacher Muhammad Ghaus's, which is the arrangement he asked for.
- Birbal (Mahesh Das) · the licensed wit
Mahesh Das, titled Raja Birbal, a poet who became one of the few men permitted to contradict the emperor and was killed in the Yusufzai campaign in 1586. His documented career is a courtier's; the enormous Akbar-Birbal story cycle is later, and the office it describes — a man whose job is to say what nobody else may — is real.
- Agra Fort · the citadel
Akbar's fort at Agra, rebuilt in red sandstone from 1565 with a double wall and a moat, and the seat of government for most of the reign. Shah Jahan reworked its interiors in marble and was then imprisoned in them by Aurangzeb, looking downriver at the tomb he had built.
- Fatehpur Sīkrī · 1571–1585
The city Akbar built after Salim Chishti's blessing was credited with the birth of his heir, and abandoned within twenty years. The Ibadat Khana debates, the translation bureau and the declaration of the din-i ilahi all belong to it, and it is imperial urbanism following a shrine rather than the reverse.