Curious, open-minded, visionary ruler who centralized power and established a vast and stable administrative structure bringing together Hindus and Muslims along with adherents of other faiths; made religious tolerance a policy of state; possessed only the rudiments of reading and writing and was probably dyslexic, but was endowed with a prodigious memory

• Reigned 1556-1605 (same period of reign as Elizabeth I of England), 3rd in the line of Timurid succession
• Promoted paintings to accompany texts—secular and religious, Muslim and Hindu: fables, myths, poetry, religious literature, and histories, including documentation of his own rule

• Wide variety of manuscripts commissioned from his workshop-fantastic tales, histories, documentation, Hindu and Christian as well as Muslim religious texts
• Experimentation in style by his artists, with increasing clarity of pictorial organization and representations of observed reality
• Adaptation of European techniques and subject matter

Enter the Akbar Gallery

For more information on our South Asian Collection, please visit our online catalogue.

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