1876 (judges Akbar very unfairly in many places, but declares at the
bottom of page 135, "The reign of Akbar is one of the most important
in the history of India; it is one of the most important in the
history of the world"); Mountstuart Elphinstone, _History of India,
the Hindu and Mahometan Periods_, with notes and additions by E.B.
Cowell, 9th ed., London, 1905; G.B. Malleson, _Akbar and the Rise of
the Mughal Empire_, Oxford, 1890 (in W.W. Hunter's _Rulers of India_);
A. Müller, _Der Islam im Morgen-und Abendland_, Vol. II, Berlin, 1887;
but especially Count F.A. von Noer, _Kaiser Akbar, ein Versuch über
die Geschichte Indiens im sechzehnten Jahrhundert_, Vol. I, Leyden,
1880; Vol. II, revised from the author's manuscript by Dr. Gustav von
Buchwald, Leyden, 1885. In the preface to this work the original
sources are listed and described; compare also M. Elphinstone, pp.
536, 537, note 45.]

When we wish to understand a personality we are in the habit of
ascertaining the inherited characteristics, and investigating the
influences exercised upon it by religion, family, environment,
education, youthful impressions, experience, and so forth. Most men
are easily comprehensible as the products of these factors. The more
independent of all such influences, or the more in opposition to them,
a personality develops, the more attractive and interesting will it
appear to us. At the first glance it looks as if the Emperor Akbar had
developed his entire character from himself and by his own efforts in
total independence of all influences which in other cases are thought
to determine the character and nature of a man. A Mohammedan, a
Mongol, a descendant of the monster Timur, the son of a weak incapable
father, born in exile, called when but a lad to the government of a
disintegrated and almost annihilated realm in the India of the
sixteenth century,--which means in an age of perfidy, treachery,