Short answers, pulled from the story.
Fathullah Shirazi was an Indo-Persian Sufi polymath who served Emperor Akbar as one of his closest advisors. He held the titles Amin-ul-Mulk (Trustee of the State) and Azud-ud-Dawlah (Arm of the Emperor), led diplomatic missions to the Deccan, audited Mughal financial records, and regulated the empire's currency.
Fathullah Shirazi was born and raised in Shiraz, in Safavid Iran. He studied philosophy and logic at the school of Azar Kayvan under Khwajah Jamaluddin Mahmud, a disciple of the logician Jalal al-Din Davani, and later studied medicine, mathematics, and science under Mir Ghayasuddin Mansur.
Shirazi invented a multi-barrel anti-infantry volley gun, a seventeen-barrel matchlock cannon, and a machine called the Yarghu that could clean sixteen gun barrels simultaneously using a cow as power. He also designed a dual-purpose carriage praised for comfort that doubled as a grain grinder, and created a harvest calendar known as the fosholi shon for aligning Bengal's land taxes with solar agricultural cycles.
Fathullah Shirazi joined Akbar's imperial court in Agra in 1583, after receiving a personal invitation from the emperor. He was quickly granted the rank of Amir and a mansab of 3000, and by 1584 Akbar had appointed him Amin-ul-Mulk.
Shirazi fell ill and died during Akbar's stay in Kashmir in 1588-89. Akbar was deeply disturbed by his death and said that had Shirazi fallen into the hands of the Franks and they demanded all his treasures in exchange, he would gladly have paid that price to recover him. Shirazi was buried at the monastery of Mir Sayyid Ali Hamadani on the Koh-i-Sulaiman.
Shirazi designed a new curriculum for the madrasas that emphasized the rational sciences, known as uloom-i-muqalat, and introduced geometry, medicine, philosophy, and mathematics as new subjects. The curriculum is credited with producing a generation of eminent scholars, engineers, and architects.