A few weeks afterwards, Shaikh 'Abdunnabí and Makhdúm ul-Mulk were sent to Makkah, and Shaikh Mubárak and his two sons triumphed over their enemies. How magnanimous Abul Fazl was, may be seen from the manner in which he chronicles in the Akbarnámah the banish­ment of these men. Not a sentence, not a word, is added indicative of his personal grievances against either of them, though they had persecuted and all but killed his father and ruined his family; the narrative proceeds as calm and statesmanlike as in every other part of his great work, and justifies the high praise which historians have bestowed upon his character that “neither abuse nor harsh words were ever found in his household.”

The disputations had now come to an end (A. D. 1579), and Faizí and Abul Fazl had gained the lasting friendship of the emperor. Of the confidence which Akbar placed in Faizí, no better proof can be cited than his appointment, in the same year, as tutor to Prince Murád; and as both brothers had entered the military, then the only, service and had received mansabs, or commissions, their employment in various depart­ments gave them repeated opportunities to gain fresh distinctions. Enjoying Akbar's personal friendship, both remained at court in Fath­púr Síkrí, or accompanied the emperor on his expeditions. Two years later, Faizí was appointed Sadr of A´grah, Kálpí, and Kálinjar, in which capacity he had to enquire into the possibility of resuming free tenures (sayurghál), which in consequence of fraudulent practices on the part of government officers and the rapaciousness of the holders them­selves had so much increased as seriously to lessen the land revenue; and Abul Fazl, in the very beginning of 1585,* was promoted to the man­sab of Hazárí, or the post of a commander of one thousand horse, and was in the following year appointed Díwán of the Province of Dihlí. Faizí's rank was much lower; he was only a commander of Four Hun­dred. But he did not care for further promotion. Devoted to the muse, he found in the appointment as Poet Laureate, with which Akbar honored him in the end of 1588, that satisfaction which no political office, however high, would have given him. Though the emperor did not pay much attention to poetry, his appreciation of Faizí's genius was but just; for after Amír Khusrau of Dihlí, Muhammadan India has seen no greater poet than Faizí.*

In the end of 1589, Abul Fazl lost his mother, to whose memory he has devoted a page in the Akbarnámah. The emperor, in order to console him, paid him a visit, and said to him, “If the people of this world lived for ever and did not only once die, kind friends would not be required to direct their hearts to trust in God and resignation to His will; but no one lives long in the caravanserai of the world, and hence the afflicted do well to accept consolation.”*

Religious matters had in the meantime rapidly advanced. Akbar had founded a new religion, the Dín i Iláhí, or ‘the Divine Faith,’ the chief feature of which, in accordance with Shaikh Mubárak's document mentioned above, consisted in belief in one God and in Akbar as His viceregent (khalífah) on earth. The Islamitic prayers were abolished at court, and the worship of the ‘elect’ was based on that of the Pársís and partly on the ceremonial of the Hindús. The new era (táríkh i iláhí), which was introduced in all government records, as also the feasts observed by the emperor, were entirely Pársí. The Muhammadan grandees at court shewed but little resistance: they looked with more anxiety on the elevation of Hindú courtiers than on Akbar's religious innovations, which after all affected but a few. But their feeling against Abul Fazl was very marked, and they often advised the emperor to send him to the Dak'hin, hoping that some mismanagement in war or in administration would lessen his influence at court. Prince Salím [Jahángír] also belonged to the dissatisfied, and his dislike to Abul Fazl, as we shall see below, became gradually so deep-rooted, that he looked upon him as the chief obstacle to the execution of his wild plans. An unexpected visit to Abul Fazl gave him an excellent opportunity to charge him with duplicity. On entering the house, he found forty writers busy in copying commentaries to the Qorán. Ordering them to follow him at once, he took them to the emperor, and shewing him the copies, he said, “What Abul Fazl teaches me is very different from what he practises in his house.” The incident is said to have produced a temporary estrange­ment between Akbar and Abul Fazl. A similar, but less credible, story is told by the author of the Zakhírat-ul Khawánín. He says that Abul Fazl repented of his apostacy from Islám, and used at night to visit incognito the houses of dervishes, and, giving them gold muhurs, requested them “to pray for the stability of Abul Fazl's faith,” sighing at the same time and striking his knees and exclaiming, “What shall I do!” And just as writers on the history of literature have tried to save Faizí from apostacy and consequent damnation, by representing that before his death he had praised the Prophet, so have other authors suc­ceeded in finding for Abul Fazl a place in Paradise; for it is related in several books that Sháh Abul Ma'álí Qádirí of Láhor, a man of saintly renown,* once expressed his disapproval of Abul Fazl's words and deeds. But at night, so runs the story, he saw in his dream that Abul Fazl came to a meeting held by the Prophet in Paradise; and when the Prophet saw him enter, he asked him to sit down, and said, “This man did for some time during his life evil deeds, but one of his books com­mences with the words, ‘O God, reward the good for the sake of their righteousness, and help the wicked for the sake of Thy love,’ and these words have saved him.” The last two stories flatter, in all probability, the consciences of pious Sunnís; but the first, if true, detracts in no way from that consistency of opinion and uniform philosophic conviction which pervades Abul Fazl's works; and though his heart found in pure deism and religious philosophy more comfort and more elements of harmony than in the casuistry of the Mullás, his mind from early youth had been so accustomed to hard literary work, that it was perfectly natural for him, even after his rejection of Islám, to continue his studies of the Qorán, because the highest dialectical lore and the deepest philological research of Muhammadan literature have for centuries been concentrated on the explanation of the holy book.

To this period also belong the literary undertakings which were commenced under the auspices of the Emperor himself. Abul Fazl, Faizí, and scholars as Badáoní, Naqíb Khán, Shaikh Sulṭán, Hájí Ibráhím, Shaikh Munawwar and others, were engaged in historical and scientific compilations and in translations from the Sanskrit or Hindí into Persian.* Faizí took the Líláwatí, a well-known book on mathematics, and Abul Fazl translated the Kalílah Damnah under the title of 'Ayár Dánish from Arabic into Persian. He also took a part in the translation of the Mahábhárat and in the composition of the Táríkh i Alfí, the ‘History of the Millennium.’ The lastmentioned work, curious to say, has an intimate connection with the Mahdawí movement, of which particulars have been given above. Although from the time of Shaikh 'Aláí's death the disciples of the millennium had to suffer persecution, and the movement to all appearances had died out, the idea of a restorer of the millennium was revived during the discussions in Fathpúr Síkrí and by the teachings of men of Sharíf i A´mulí's stamp,* with this important modification that Akbar himself was pointed to as the ‘Lord of the Age,’ through whom faded Islám was to come to an end. This new feature had Akbar's full approval, and exercised the greatest influ­ence on the progress of his religious opinions. The Táríkh i Alfí, therefore, was to represent Islám as a thing of the past; it had existed thousand (alf) years and had done its work. The early history, to the vexation of the Sunnís, was related from a Shí'ah point of view, and worse still, the chronology had been changed, inasmuch as the death of the Prophet had been made the starting point, not the hijrah, or flight, of the Prophet from Makkah to Madínah.