Abu'l-Fazl recorded that the Mughal emperor possessed a library containing more than 24,000 volumes written in languages ranging from Punjabi and Hindustani to Greek, Latin, and Arabic. This vast collection existed despite the fact that Akbar suffered from severe dyslexia, rendering him completely unable to read or write a single word himself.
In the year 1575, Akbar constructed the Ibādat Khāna, or House of Worship, at his newly built capital of Fatehpur Sikri to serve as a forum for religious dialogue. This building was designed to invite theologians, poets, scholars, and philosophers from every conceivable religious denomination to engage in open debate.
The year 1582 marked the official establishment of Dīn-i Ilāhī, a syncretic theology that Akbar proclaimed as the religion of God, though it was contemporarily known as Tawhid-i-Ilāhī, or the Oneness of the Divine. Akbar and a small group of his loyal officials, including the famous courtier Birbal, converted to this new religion in the same year, effectively leaving Islam behind.
Despite the state backing that the religion received during Akbar's reign, only a handful of upper-class Mughal subjects adopted the new faith, with the total number of adherents never exceeding 19 identified followers. The silence of the majority of the population and the vocal opposition of the religious establishment meant that Dīn-i Ilāhī remained a small, elite movement rather than a mass religion.
The practices of Dīn-i Ilāhī were deeply rooted in the concept of light as a focus of divine worship, incorporating a light-fire ritual based on the yasna, the primary form of worship in Zoroastrianism. Followers were encouraged to adopt the principle of ahimsa, or nonviolence, which extended from humans to animals, leading to a strict prohibition on the slaughter of animals and the consumption of meat of all kinds.
Following the death of Akbar in 1605, the movement known as Dīn-i Ilāhī was suppressed by force and eventually totally eradicated by his great-grandson Aurangzeb, who reimposed Islamic law across the Indian subcontinent. The movement, which had lasted just over 20 years, was made defunct by Jahangir, who moved away from many of his father's policies in regard to religion, and was completely abolished by Aurangzeb, who sought to return the empire to a strict Islamic identity.