Akbar’s religious reforms and his personal religion

This article focuses on the figure of the Mughal Emperor Akbar (1542-1605) and on the motivation behind his religious reforms. It brings into discussion the analysis of certain historians who have interpreted these reforms as resulting from a shift in the religious identity of the Mughal monarch. However, such analysis have not sufficiently taken into account the bias characterizing the chroniclers of the time, works of which are one of the main sources of the history of that period. Unlike other studies, this article highlights the political nature of these religious reforms that facilitated the establishment of strategic alliances with non-Muslim political leaders and, at the same time, allowed Akbar to significantly weaken the influence of Muslim religious leaders in affairs of state. This interpretation reveals that the Mughal emperor was, far from being a mere political or religious actor, a clever strategist who managed to balance religious and political issues in the way he administered the empire.