The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c16.196

v4.c16.196

The age of Akbar has been described as an age of great rulers, and some hold that of his contemporaries, Elizabeth of England, Henry IV of France, and ‘Abbās the Great of Persia, he was not the least. Some have even written of him as though he were no less than what his enemies alleged he pretended to be. But with all his faults, and they were neither few nor venial, he was by far the greatest of all who ruled India during the era of the dominance of Islām in that land. A foreigner in blood, though he happened to have been born on Indian soil, he was the only one of the long line of rulers professing Islām who even conceived the idea of becoming the father of all his subjects, rather than the leader of a militant and dominant minority, alien in faith, and to a great extent in race, to the nations of India.