Short essay on Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar

Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar was the son of Humayun and Hamida Banu Begum. The most formidable claimant of Akbar’s throne was Himu who had captured Agra and Delhi. Thus Akbar was extremely insecure at his accession.

Himu, in the meanwhile, sent an advance guard to check the Mughal advance, but they were de­feated and their artillery fell into Mughal hands. In fact, the Mughal forces also formed an advance guard under the leadership of Ali Quli Khan.

Undeterred by this setback, Himu took courage and marched on with a huge force consisting of artillery, cavalry, infantry and 1,500 war-elephants to the famous batdefield of Panipat where the two oppo­nents commenced the fight on 5 November, 1556. Himu’s forces were much larger in number than the Mughal forces of Akbar.

The battle was proceeding in Himu’s favour when he was hit on the eye by an arrow and became unconscious. The leaderless army deserted the battle; Himu was captured in the unconscious state and killed. Delhi and Agra were in Mughal hands again, and the two Sur dynasty claimants were dealt with eventually. Sikandar Sur surrendered, was pardoned and given a fief. Adil Shah continued to stay in the east and was killed in a conflict with the king of Bengal. Akbar, through his position was ‘chal­lenged, had to still fight many more battles to make himself secure.

Akbar was at this time advised and guided by his guardian, Bairam Khan. Between 1558 and 1560, Gwalior was recaptured, the fortress of Ajmer taken, and Jaunpur in the east was regained. In 1560, Akbar announced his intention of taking the reins of the government into his own hands.

He dismissed Bairam Khan from office and ordered him to take a pilgrimage to Mecca. This made Bairam Khan revolt against Akbar but the revolt failed. Akbar pardoned him and sent him to Mecca. Bairam Khan reached Patan in Gujarat where he was stabbed to death by an Afghan whose father had been executed by his order.

In the next two years, when Akbar left the inistration to his mother’s relations and indulged self in sport, Malwa and Khandesh were taken implicating much cruelty on the inhabitants. Thereafter Akbar adopted an ambitious and aggressive policy of expansion.

Akbar took up arms against Garh Katanga, a kingdom in Gondwana, ruled by the heroic Rani Durgavati as the regent of her minor son, Bir Narayan. The Rani was defeated by the army of Asaf Khan, after a strong resistance. She committed suicide.

The kingdom thus became part of the Mughal empire. The storming of the fortress of Chitor under the Sisodias was one of the most famous military feats of Akbar. Rana Udai Singh was its ruler. The independent attitude of his principality proved too much for Akbar’s ambition and he laid siege of Chittor in AD 1567. Jai Mai, the brave general of Udai Singh, offered stout resistance to the attackers but died fighting in the battlefield.

The garrison thereafter died fighting the invad­ers and the women of the fort committed jauhar. Akbar was so enraged by the fierce resistance that he ordered killing of 30,000 people who assisted in the defence of the fort. Ranthambhor was the next fort to be taken by Akbar. The mighty fort Kalinjar in Bundelkhand was also taken in 1569, year of the fall of Ranthambhor. Akbar was now almost the paramount chief of Rajputana. Almost because he could never subdue Mewar, against whom he sent expeditions from time to time.

Rana Pratap, the son of Udai Singh, defied Akbar and refused to acknowledge his supreramacy. Akbar sent a strong army under Man Singh and Asaf Khan to subdue the Rana. A fierce battle was fought at the pass of Haldighati near Gogunda in 1576. Rana Pratap was defeated after a stubborn contest, How ever, the Rana succeeded in recovering the greater part of his kingdom and founded the new capital of Udaipur. (He died in 1577, leaving his son Amar Singh as his heir.) Despite Akbar’s success in other regions of Rajasthan his object in Mewar remained unfulfilled. Rajasthan was merely a ‘suba’ or province ^: with its headquarters at Ajmer.

The occupation and conquest of Gujarat proved to be a brilliant example of Akbar’s personal courage and military skill. The province was for a brief period under the occupation of Humayun, and it was a prosperous and wealthy region thereby inviting aggression.

Just then the administration had fallen into disorder and Akbar was requested to intervene by a local chief. The campaign began in July 1572.Surat was taken after a siege and after a hard fight at Sarnal the province fell into Akbar’s hands. Making the necessary arrangement for civil administration, Akbar left for Fatehpur Sikri in April 1573.

Within a few days of his arrival there, heard reports of a fearful resurrection started by his cousins, known as the Mirzas, and a noble, Ikhtiyar- ul-Mulk. Personally arranging an expeditionary force, all the details of which he himself checked, he rode out with about 3,000 men on August 23, reaching Ahmedabad, a distance of 600 miles, within 11 days. He fought a force of 20,000 of the enemy with his 3,000 men, won a decisive victory and was back in his capital on October 4.

The conquest of Gujarat was an important event in Akbar’s life: his land-locked empire got an access to the sea. Besides the province was wealthy due to its extensive trading and commercial activities, and its annexation brought all those benefits to the empire. Further, the province became a practising ground for Raja Todormal, Akbar’s able financier, who made his first revenue settlement on improved principles in Gujarat.

It was in order to commemorate his victory of Gujarat that Akbar got the Buland Darwaza con­structed at Sikri.

Bengal, which had been a part of the sultan­ate earlier, was in the sight of Akbar and would have been occupied but for the judicious policy of Sulaiman Karnam who formally accepted Akbar’s overlordship while re­maining practically inde­pendent. His son, the Afghan king of Bengal, Daud Khan, openly de­fied the authority of Akbar and invited the emperor’s wrath. Akbar came down the river in 1574 to drive Daud out of Patna and Hajipur so as to discipline him and returned to his capital leaving the cam­paign in the hands of his officials.

Daud was de­feated early in 1575, but the lenient commander, Munim Khan, gave him easy terms allowing him to recover. Another battle therefore became inevi­table which was fought in July 1576 near Rajmahar, killing Daud and ending Bengal’s independence. With this victory, 20 years after his accession to the throne, Akbar became the sovereign of the most valuable regions of India extending from the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal and from the Himalayas to the river Narmada, besides the semi-independent Kabul province.

Within four years of the conquest of Bengal, a rebellion broke out in that province and Bihar as a reaction to Akbar’s reforms. The Muslim chiefs and the Afghan officers of Bengal and Bihar considered the reforms of Akbar as an attack on the Muslim faith and were irked by his administrative measures. They received support from the qazi of Jaunpur who declared Akbar as an apostate (for which the qazi paid for with his life). The rebellion broke out in

January 1580 and continued for five years.The rebels wanted to replace Akbar by his half-brother Mohammad Hakim, the governor of Kabul, who welcomed the idea. Akbar left the matter to be dealt with by his officers; because of the distance which separated the rebels and their supporters, he thought the danger to be not very serious.

However, the action of his half-brother Mohammad Hakim caused him concern and he decided to deal with the situation personally. On hearing of Akbar’s march to Kabul with a force, Hakim fled from Punjab and did not show his face to Akbar while he was in Kabul or thereafter. Akbar set out for Kabul in February 1581, reaching there in August and was back in December. He allowed Hakim to continue as ruler of Kabul up to 1585 when he died and the province came under the direct control of Delhi.

Freed from the threat posed by Hakim, Akbar embarked afresh on his policy of expansion. In 1586, he annexed Kashmir; southern Sindh was taken in 1590; Man Singh conquered Orissa in 1592; Baluchistan with Makran coast was taken in 1594; and Kandahar was given up by its Persian governor a year later.

With regard to the states in the Deccan, Akbar had been trying since 1590 by diplomatic means to persuade them to accept his suzerainty and pay tribute to him. Excepting the state of Khandesh which agreed to his proposal, his envoys were politely rebuffed everywhere.

Military operations were started in 1593 and the city of Ahmadnagar was raided but valiantly defended by Chand Bibi, who was compelled to accept a treaty in 1596 by which the province of Berar was ceded to the Mughals. War broke out again soon, to be terminated in 1600 after the death of Chand Bibi and the fall of Ahmadnagar city. In the meantime the ruler of Khandesh had second thoughts over his acceptance of the suzerainty of Akbar and resolved not to follow it.

Preparing for a fight with Akbar he relied on the strength of his fortress of Asirgarh which was defended by gunners who had deserted the Portu­guese. Besides, it was one of the strongest forts of the world at that time and was so amply provided with guns, provisions, water and munitions that its defenders might reasonably hope that they would hold out for years.

Now there was a development which made it possible for Akbar to take charge of the campaign personally which was till then conducted by his sons. Although Akbar had thought of extending his empire to Central Asia, he did not do so because of the formidable Uzbeg power.

In fact, apprehensive of an attack by the able ruler of Transoxiana, Abdullah Khan Uzbeg, he never went away from Punjab for long. The death of Abdullah Uzbeg early in 1598 freed him from that worry, and he set out for the Deccan from Lahore late in 1598. About the middle of 1599 Akbar crossed the Narmada and occupied Burhanpur, the capital of Khandesh.

The fort of Asirgarh, however, remained out of his reach, his artillery could do nothing to its walls. Resorting to treachery, he invited the king, Bahadur Shah, to his camp for talks swearing by his own head the safe return of the king. He detained Bahadur Shah shamelessly violating the oath expecting that the leaderless garrison would surrender.

But Bahadur Shah, Akbar’s son, had advised his African commander to ignore all orders for surrender. Mean while, prince Salim, Akbar’s son, had rebelled in Delhi and it was necessary for Akbar to go there. Yet the siege dragged on. Unable to wait any longer, Akbar resorted to bribery and paid the Khandesh officials large amounts. The gates of Asirgarh were opened on January 17, 1601 ending the last conquest of Akbar in a dishonourable manner.