Detail from ‘Akbar Tames the Savage Elephant, Hawa’i, ... Mughal emperor from 1556 to 1605. His reign overlaps with Elizabeth I’s time on the throne of England.

Since Akbar strove to be the nonpartisan emperor of all his subjects, Abu’l-Fazl dispensed with sacred figures in Islam and, instead, traced the emperor’s lineage back to Adam (whom he ...