On This Day in History: February 14

Akbar the Great

AUDIO VERSION HERE

Madonna. Bono. Sting. Cher. Seal. Shakira. Sade. Akbar? Akbar. He wasn’t a singer, but he was just . . . Akbar. AKA Akbar the Great, and he earned it so that he became known as the Akbar, Mughal emperor for almost half a century and doer of deeds both great and terrible that transformed the world.

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: February 14, 1556--

Akbar ascended the throne of the South Asian empire of Mughal on February 14, 1556, at the age of 13, while his empire was in the middle of a war. A direct descendant of Genghis Khan—not that there was any shortage of such descendants—the lad decided to do some conquering. The Mughal Empire, which would come to cover much of the Indian subcontinent, had begun under Akbar’s grandfather. But his father was overthrown, and Akbar was born in exile. Dad had only partially reclaimed the throne a few months previous when he died and Akbar ascended, inheriting a frail alliance of fiefdoms and having to fight to consolidate his power or be killed, because that’s what usually happens to rival claimants to a throne: they get dead.

Motivated to not die, in the early years Akbar relied upon his regent, Bairam Khan, to whip the nobles into line to go on the offensive against the Afghans and Hindus, where they kicked some ass. When he turned 18, Akbar came into his full power and kept up the imperial expansion, but he wasn’t stupid about it. Akbar was a brilliant general who embraced the relatively new firearms technology, creating what was referred to as a “gunpowder empire” by unleashing such weaponry upon his foes to devastating effect.

Throughout history conquerors often demanded heavy tribute taxes of their subjects, but otherwise left them to run their own affairs unsupervised. Akbar was different. The emperor created a centralized system of government and integrated conquered leaders into it. He rewarded talent and loyalty, regardless of their race or religion. The state was secular, liberal (relatively speaking), and focused on cultural integration. He also used marriage as a tool to strengthen alliances.

Akbar took many princesses as wives and made their families part of his court. Just like Genghis, he was not a one-woman kind of ruler. This marrying of daughters to rulers had previously been viewed as an indignity, but Akbar changed the plot by elevating their families, transforming it into an honor, thereby forging strong bonds of loyalty and strengthening his empire further.

After 49 years of rule he met an ignoble end via dysentery, shitting himself to death in 1605. The empire he built, however, would last long after he was gone.

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