Jalal-ud-din Mohammed Akbar (1542-1605) was the third Mogul emperor of India. The administrative system that he built was copied by the British, and it is discernible in contemporary India.

On Nov. 23, 1542, Akbar was born at Umarkot, Sind, while his father, the emperor Humayun, driven from the throne of Delhi, was escaping to Persia. Humayun died in 1556 soon after his return to Delhi, and Akbar was proclaimed emperor on February 14, under the regency of Bairam Khan. The regent wrested control of northern India from the Afghans, who had defeated Humayun, but in 1560 Akbar rid himself of the regent and assumed full imperial powers. By 1605 Akbar had made himself the master of the Indo-Gangetic Basin, Kashmir and Afghanistan in the north, Gujarat and Sind in the west, Bengal in the east, and part of the Deccan to the Godavari River in the south.

The Emperor presided over a Hindu-Moslem cultural...