The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c15.185

v4.c15.185

Akbar returned to Ahmadābād on 2 April and, having confirmed Khān A‘zam as governor of the new province of the empire, allotted various grants to the leading officers who had accompanied him, and appointed Muzaffar Khān Turbatī to the government of Mālwā in the place of Qutb-ud-dīn Muhammad Khān, who had not shown sufficient promptitude in obeying his bidding to assist in establishing peace and order in Gujarāt. He left Ahmadābād on 13 April, and at Sirohī learnt that Husain Qulī Khān, governor of the Punjab, had captured both Ibrāhīm Husain Mīrzā and his brother Mas‘ūd Husain Mīrzā. He arrived at Ajmer on 13 May, and, after performing his usual pilgrimage, continued his journey to Fathpur Sīkrī, which he reached on 3 June. Shaikh Mubārak, the father of Faizī and Abu-’l-Fazl, appeared before him on this occasion and welcomed him in a speech in which he congratulated him on his victories. In this speech he expressed the hope that the emperor might become the spiritual as well as the temporal head of his people. We may be sure that no such hope would have been expressed unless there had been some reason for supposing that it would be welcome, and the heterodox orator, a man who in religion was “everything by turns and nothing long”, had probably heard that Akbar, while besieging Surat, had listened attentively to the famous *mūbid* or Zoroastrian theologian Dastūr Māhyārjī Rānā of Navsārī. It was not until nine years later that he promulgated his new religion, the Divine Faith, but he had always been given to religious discussions and it was certainly in 1573 that he began to feel misgivings as to the sufficiency of orthodox Islām. Henceforth he sought a more perfect way, but his spiritual pride misled him.