Curated playlist
Akbar
- AkbarMughal emperor from 1556 to 1605
- Tomb of Mariam-uz-ZamaniThe Tomb of Mariam-uz-Zamani stands in Agra's Sikandra suburb, just steps from the grave of the Mughal Emperor Akbar himself. Of all the women Akbar married, she alone was buried close to him. Her son Jahangir built the mausoleum between…
- RazmnamaThe Razmnama arrived at the Mughal court not as a curiosity but as a command. Emperor Akbar ordered a Persian translation of the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata, one of the longest literary works in human history, containing a hundred thousand…
- Nizamuddin AhmadNizamuddin Ahmad was born in 1551, and by the time he died in 1621, he had left behind a book that preserved centuries of Indian history no other surviving source could fully replace. He served at the court of the Mughal emperor Akbar as…
- HumayunHumayun was descending the stone staircase from his library, the Sher Mandal, with his arms full of books. It was the 24th of January 1556. When the muezzin called the faithful to prayer, the emperor did what he always did at that sound.…
- Ain-i-AkbariThe Ain-i-Akbari, whose title translates as "Administration of Akbar", was composed in Persian between 1589 and 1596 by Abu'l Fazl, the court historian of the Mughal Emperor Akbar. It is a document that catalogues an entire empire in the…
- Akbar's tombAkbar's tomb stands in Sikandra, a suburb of Agra, on 119 acres of grounds that once held the remains of one of the most consequential rulers the subcontinent has ever known. The third Mughal emperor reigned from 1556 to 1605, expanded an…
- AkbarnamaThe Akbarnama is not just a history book. It is the official record of an empire, commissioned by the emperor himself, written by one of his closest allies, and illustrated by no fewer than forty-nine different artists working at the peak…
- Din-i IlahiDin-i Ilahi, which translates literally as "God's Religion" or "Divine Religion", was born in 1582 from the mind of one of the most powerful rulers the world has ever known. Akbar, emperor of the Mughal Empire, gathered theologians, poets,…
- Humayun's TombHumayun's tomb stands in Delhi, India, as a structure that changed the course of an entire architectural tradition. It was the first garden-tomb on the Indian subcontinent. It introduced the Persian double dome to India. And it served,…
- Ibadat KhanaIbadat Khana, the House of Worship, was built in 1575 CE by the Mughal Emperor Akbar at Fatehpur Sikri. Every Thursday evening, a striking gathering took shape inside its walls: mystics, theologians, philosophers, and intellectuals drawn…
- Hamida Banu BegumHamida Banu Begum was fourteen years old and living in the household of a Mughal prince when the emperor of India decided he wanted to marry her. She refused. For forty days, Humayun pursued her, and for forty days she held her ground.…
- Agra FortAgra Fort sits 2.5 kilometres northwest of the Taj Mahal, and yet it is the older story. When Shah Jahan finally built his famous tomb across the river, he was already a prisoner in the fort that had housed Mughal emperors for more than a…
- Fatehpur SikriFatehpur Sikri stands 35.7 km from Agra, a city that was built, gloried in, and then simply walked away from. Emperor Akbar raised it from a rocky ridge in 1571, declared it the capital of the Mughal Empire, and abandoned it just fourteen…
- Salim ChishtiSalim Chishti was a Sufi saint whose prayer for an emperor changed the shape of one of history's greatest cities. He lived from 1478 to 1572, nearly a full century, and he spent his life in the Chishti Order, a lineage of Muslim mystics…