The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c16.20

v4.c16.20

Abu-’l-Fazl was now a young man of twenty-three. As a boy he had studied assiduously under his father, Shaikh Mubārak, and had afterwards followed his own bent in reading and meditation, until he became, as he himself confesses, a prig of the first water. He meditated and speculated on the mysteries of all religions, and was so perplexed by the differences between the formalists of every faith that he had “neither strength to remain silent nor power to cry out”. He was a mystic and a visionary, and was the worst possible adviser that one of Akbar’s tendencies could have had in spiritual matters. It was probably not he who invented the “Divine Faith”, for that seems to have been the bantling of Akbar’s own brain, but both he and his father undoubtedly had a part in encouraging Akbar’s extravagant view of his spiritual prerogative.