Akbar's religious world: the two reconstructions in Mobad's Dabistān

Abstract

AbstractIn the early 1650s in Mughal India ‘Mobad’ (Kaikhusrau Isfandyār) wrote a remarkable work, titled Dabistān, devoted to a description of the world's major religions. He adopted an avowedly objective approach that he strives to maintain throughout. An account of the religious tendencies under Akbar is offered in a long concluding chapter, dedicated to Islam. The account is given in two nearly totally different versions. In Version A, Akbar is credited with supernatural powers, with many anecdotes offered of their exercise. In Version B, all such anecdotes have been deleted and replaced by an extensive account of inter-religious debates held under Akbar, in which Christian (and Jewish) objections to Islamic traditions figure prominently. This version also seems to have been the major source of the belief current in later times that Akbar established a sect of his own under the designation of dīn-i ilāhī. In both versions the section on Akbar closes with the insightful observation that Akbar's policy of forming a nobility composed of diverse racial and religious elements was designed to protect the monarchy from any possibility of a unified aristocratic opposition.