Page 182 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

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invariably involved time-consuming political negotia- Khan, I. A. (1973). The political biography of a Mughal noble: Mun’im
tions, but Akbar crafted a new arrangement. He had the Khan Khan-i Khanan. Delhi, India: Munshiram Manoharlal
Publishers.
zamindars collect from the peasants the required revenue Khan, I. A. (Ed.). (1999). Akbar and his age. New Delhi, India: North-
—which the state determined through a highly sophisti- ern Book Centre.
Nizami, K.A. (1989). Akbar and religion. Delhi, India: Idarah-i-Adabiyat-
cated system of measuring cultivated lands and calculat-
i-Delli.
ing average prices and yields over the previous ten years Richards, J. F. (1993). The Mughal empire. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
—in return for which service the zamindars retained their University Press.
Rizvi, S., & Abbas, A. (1975). The religious and intellectual history of the
claim over the land and between 10 and 25 percent of Muslims in Akbar’s reign. New Delhi, India: Munshiram Manoharlal
the revenue they collected.The presence of imperial rev- Publishers.
Streusand, D. E. (1989). The formation of the Mughal empire. New Delhi,
enue officials, accountants, and Mughal military contin-
India: Oxford University Press.
gents in the countryside provided a crucial check on the
ability of zamindars to obstruct the will of the Mughal
state.
Besides remarkable military and political achieve-
ments, Akbar’s reign witnessed tremendous cultural and Aksum
artistic accomplishments. Massive imperial patronage
for Persian poetry, historical writing, and translations of ksum was the capital of an important kingdom in
Hindu scriptures into Persian were accompanied by the AnortheastAfrica during the first millennium CE.It was
creation of new schools of art and architecture that suc- also the religious center of the earliest Christian state in
cessfully blended Persian and Indic styles, techniques, Africa.At the peak of its power in the fourth and fifth cen-
and themes. Some of the finest examples of Mughal turies,Aksum ruled an empire that extended from Cush in
miniature painting (like the illustrations for the Akbar- the modern Republic of Sudan to Saba (Sheba) inYemen
nama) and architecture (seen in Akbar’s short-lived impe- and included much of contemporary Ethiopia,Eritrea,and
rial capital at Fatehpur Sikri) date to this period.The long- Somalia. It is understandable, therefore, that the third-
lasting influence of Mughal art and architecture is best century Iranian religious leader Mani ranked Aksum with
attested by the continuing attempts in South Asia to emu- Rome, Persia, and China as one of the four great empires
late their fine sense of balance and proportion long after that divided the inhabited world among them.
the Mughal dynasty had collapsed in the early 1700s.
Akbar’s last years were clouded by the rebellion of his Sources of
eldest and formerly favorite son, Salim, between 1599 Aksumite History
and 1604. Ultimately, their partial reconciliation paved Although Ethiopia has an extensive literature, it provides
the way for the succession of Salim—as Emperor little information about historical Aksum, emphasizing
Jahangir—following Akbar’s death in October 1605. instead the legend that the kings of medieval and mod-
ern Ethiopia were the lineal descendants of Menelek
Munis D. Faruqui
(late tenth century BCE), the son of King Solomon and the
See also Mughal Empire Queen of Sheba, who reigned at Aksum until being
exiled by usurpers in the early Middle Ages. The princi-
pal sources for the history of ancient Aksum, therefore,
Further Reading are Aksumite royal inscriptions and coins, references to
Habib, I. (Ed.). (1997). Akbar and his India. New Delhi, India: Oxford Aksum in ancient classical and Christian literature,
University Press.
Habib, I. (1999). The agrarian system of Mughal India. New Delhi, India: Sabaean inscriptions, and archaeology.The most impor-
Oxford University Press. tant of these sources are the royal inscriptions, which