The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c14.s9.t4.43

c14.s9.t4.43

Had we known less than we actually do about Akbar's socio-religious pro-Hindu propaganda and the ultraliberal intellectual activities of Abul Fazl, his elder brother Faizi, and their father we might perhaps have been led to suspect that part of the idealism in Abul Fazl's work,—the general preface as well as the text—is to be ascribed to an acquaintance with Al-Farabi's treatise on the *Model City* (c. 950). As a learned scholar Abul Fazl may certainly have studied the Arabic treatise on governmental statutes (*El Akham es Soulthaniyah*) by Mawerdi (972-1058), chief justice of Bagdad, or derived profit from the Persian *Siassat Namah* (Treatise on Government) by Nazamoul Mulk (c. 1063-1092). And of course the greatest philosophico-historical work of the "Middle Ages," namely, the *Mokaddemah* in Arabic by Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), the Egyptian judge, could not have failed to furnish this "Hindusthani Shaikh" with literary norms.⁷