At fourteen, in Kalanaur, Punjab, the boy was hoisted onto a newly built platform and proclaimed Shahanshah while Bairam Khan held the realm together. Humayun was dead, Sikandar Shah Suri still fought for Delhi, and the new emperor, Akbar, began his reign in 1556 with the Mughal throne far from secure.

He had been born on 15 October 1542 at Amarkot in Rajputana, in modern-day Sindh, while his father Humayun was in exile. His mother was Hamida Banu Begum, and he was raised in Kabul by his uncles Kamran Mirza and Askari Mirza. He never learned to read or write, yet every evening someone read to him, and that habit stayed with him all his life.

In 1556 and 1557, with Bairam Khan at his side, Akbar took Delhi after the Second Battle of Panipat on 5 November 1556, then Agra, Lahore, and Multan. By 1560 he dismissed Bairam Khan, and after that the emperor ruled more directly, building a court that could outlast any one noble.

The next years were hard ones. In January 1564 an arrow pierced his right shoulder near the Dargah of Hazrat Nizamuddin by Delhi, and he ordered the assassin beheaded. In 1567 he took Chittor Fort, and in February 1568 the fortress fell after a four-month siege. Rajputana was drawn into his orbit, and in 1569 he laid the foundations of Fatehpur Sikri, the City of Victory, 23 miles west of Agra.

Akbar’s power grew with law as much as with war. He reorganised the mansabdari ranks, reformed land revenue, and by 1580 replaced older methods with the dahsala system, fixed at one-third of the average produce of the previous ten years. He also abolished the jizya, promoted Rajputs such as Raja Bharmal and Man Singh, and made marriage and diplomacy part of empire.

His court at Fatehpur Sikri, Delhi, and Agra became a place where Abul Fazl, Faizi, Birbal, Jesuits from Goa, Jain teachers like Hiravijaya, and many others argued over faith. In 1575 he built the Ibadat Khana, and from those debates came his attempt at Din-i Ilahi, a creed of tolerance and moral discipline. It did not become a mass faith, but it marked his reign.