THE RISE AND FALL OF THE MUGHAL EMPIREUsbeks against the Persians, and vice versa. These two constantly fought
each other and each tried to enlist Akbar’s support. Abdullah offered Akbar a
share of Persia if he would join him in a campaign against that country; the
shah of Persia, for his part, tried to entice Akbar into a joint campaign against
the Usbeks, promising the return of Samarkand as a prize of victory.
Although Akbar kept in touch with both of them, he did not get
involved in any rash action and so managed to maintain the balance of
power in the whole region. In this way he also snatched back from the
Persians Kandahar, a territory he had been forced to give up in the early
years of his reign. Thus the Helmand river became the western border of
his empire. The Persians, however, still considered the Indus to be the
eastern border of their empire and therefore always tried to recover
Kandahar, which was the crucial key to this area. As long as Akbar lived
they did not succeed, because Akbar valued a strong position in
Baluchistan and Afghanistan more than any excursion to the northwest. By
indulging in the latter policy his successors lost Kandahar once more.
Akbar’s prudent foreign policy enabled him to devote most of his energy
in the best years of his life to the internal consolidation of his vast empire
which extended from the Helmand river in the west, to Orissa in the east;
from Kashmir in the north, to Gujarat in the south. He laid the material
and moral foundations of the Mughal empire so solidly that his successors
could benefit from his achievements for a long time. This, of course, made
them take such foundations for granted and they finally destroyed the very
bases on which their power rested by their rash actions.
In many ways Akbar played a role similar to that of his older
contemporary the Ottoman sultan, Suleiman Kanuni (the lawgiver). He
also conceived of himself as giving laws rather than only following Islamic
law. He emphasised the dynastic charisma of the Great Mughals and his
own spiritual leadership. In this way he contributed to the cohesion of his
state which can be compared to the absolutist monarchies emerging in
Europe. Attempts have been made to describe his state as a patrimonial-
bureaucratic one. But in its structure it was far more complex than the
patrimonial states which are conceived of as extensions of the ruler’s
household. On the other hand the term ‘bureaucratic’ could be misleading,
because the Great Mughals did not rely on a civil bureaucracy but on a
systematically organised military elite whose structure will be discussed
subsequently. This elite continued in many ways the tradition of military
feudalism as described earlier, but with the difference that the imperial
officers were part of a hierarchy of service and could be transferred in
keeping with the duties assigned to them. ‘Bureaucrats’ in the usual sense
of the term were the ‘civil servants’ working for the imperial officers who
prided themselves on wielding the sword rather than the pen. Most of these
‘civil servants’ were Hindus who relied on the pen rather than on the
sword under Mughal rule.