[Footnote 32: Noer, I, 262]

[Footnote 33: Noer, I, 259.]

The Mohammedan priesthood, the community of the Ulemâs in whose hands
lay also the execution of justice according to the dictates of Islam,
had attained great prosperity in India by countless large bequests.
Its distinguished membership formed an influential party at court.
This party naturally represented the Islam of the stricter observance,
the so-called Sunnitic Islam, and displayed the greatest severity and
intolerance towards the representatives of every more liberal
interpretation and towards unbelievers. The chief judge of Agra
sentenced men to death because they were Shiites, that is to say they
belonged to the other branch of Islam, and the Ulemâs urged Akbar to
proceed likewise against the heretics.[34] That arrogance and vanity,
selfishness and avarice, also belonged to the character of the Ulemâs
is so plainly to be taken for granted according to all analogies that
it need hardly be mentioned. The judicature was everywhere utilized by
the Ulemâs as a means for illegitimate enrichment.

[Footnote 34: J.T. Wheeler, IV, I, 156.]

This ecclesiastical party which in its narrow-minded folly considered
itself in possession of the whole truth, stands opposed to the noble
skeptic Akbar, whose doubt of the divine origin of the Koran and of
the truth of its dogmas began so to torment him that he would pass
entire nights sitting out of doors on a stone lost in contemplation.
The above mentioned brothers Faizî and Abul Fazl introduced to his
impressionable spirit the exalted teaching of Sûfism, the Mohammedan