The third Mughal emperor, who inherited a shaky North Indian realm at thirteen and turned it into one of the great powers of the early-modern world. Uniquely among the Muslim rulers of India, he made religious conciliation a principle of state — abolishing the tax on non-Muslims, allying with Hindu Rajput clans, and setting the throne above every faith — while remaining a conquering, sometimes ruthless emperor whose armies sacked the fortress of Chittor.
Akbar, by tradition, could not read or write. The most powerful man in sixteenth-century India was said to be illiterate, yet he had others read to him for hours and built one of the great libraries of his age. In a hall at his new capital he made Muslim scholars, Hindu priests, Jains, Zoroastrians, and Jesuit priests argue religion in front of him, then placed himself above all of them as the throne that no single faith could claim. He abolished the tax on non-Muslims and bound the Hindu Rajput houses to his throne through alliance, marriage, and high office. He also ordered the inhabitants of a conquered fortress put to the sword. The conciliation and the conquest were the same reign.