The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c16.78

v4.c16.78

The decree limited Akbar to the adoption of one of the conflicting opinions delivered by the jurists of Islām, or, in case there was no dispute, to the authority of a verse of the Korān, and one of its chief objects was, ostensibly, the propagation of Islām; but these conditions were ignored by Akbar. He was now pope as well as king, and so far was he from propagating Islām that he ridiculed and persecuted it, and shortly afterwards attempted to substitute for it a religion of his own invention; but he did not venture at once to violate the conditions of the decree, and immediately after its issue set out on his last annual pilgrimage to Ajmer, earning thereby the contempt of the orthodox. "The wonder of wonders was that he should have all this faith in the saint of Ajmer while he denied the foundation of everything, the prophet from each fold of whose skirt many millions of perfected saints like him of Ajmer had sprung."