Mughal
Akbar's House of Worship at Fatehpur Sikri
The Ibadat Khana debates, c. 1575
c. 983 AH / 1575 CE
Educational historical reconstructionWhere
Fatehpur Sikri, near Agra
27.0945, 77.6610 · View on OpenStreetMap
Background
Around 1575 (983 AH) the Mughal emperor Akbar built a hall he called the Ibadat Khana, the House of Worship, at his new capital of Fatehpur Sikri near Agra, a planned city raised in red sandstone on a ridge. The hall was first set aside for debates on religion among the Sunni ulama of the court, held on Thursday nights. Within a few years, from about 1578, Akbar opened the debates to scholars of other communities, Shia divines, Hindu pandits, Jain ascetics, Zoroastrian priests and Christian Jesuit fathers brought from Goa, and pressed them to dispute matters of faith before him. This was part of his policy of sulh-i kull, the keeping of peace among the religions of his realm. The court historian Abu'l-Fazl praised the gatherings, but the contemporary scholar Abd al-Qadir Bada'uni, himself present, recorded them with deep disapproval, seeing in them the loosening of Akbar's adherence to Islam. The debates were followed in 1579 by the so-called Mahzar, a document that made the emperor an arbiter in religious disputes, and later by Akbar's promotion of a court cult sometimes called the Din-i Ilahi. These steps drew sharp criticism from the Sunni scholars of India and, in the next generation, a sustained reassertion of the Shariah by the Naqshbandi reformer Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi (rahimahu Allah), remembered in the Sunni tradition as the Mujaddid Alf-i Thani, the renewer of the second millennium. Fatehpur Sikri itself was abandoned around 1585, within a decade of its building, for want of a reliable water supply, and the precise building that housed the Ibadat Khana has not been securely identified in the surviving ruins. This scene depicts a debate session in the hall, the mixed assembly of scholars disputing before the raised imperial seat.
What you see
The buildings are all of warm red sandstone, raised on a rocky ridge in dry country. This is a freshly built planned palace-city, its stone uniform and its courts new and unweathered, not an old accreted town.
The construction is post-and-lintel, with flat brackets, carved struts, pillared halls, latticed jali screens and small domed kiosks on the rooflines. This is the Indo-Islamic Mughal manner that fuses Indian trabeate building with Islamic forms, not arch-and-dome alone.
A hall is arranged for formal debate: a raised seat or alcove for the ruler dominates one side, with ranks of low platforms and cushions for participants set facing one another across the floor.
The men in the hall wear markedly different dress: Muslim scholars in turbans with bound books, beside Hindu pandits, a Jain ascetic, a Zoroastrian priest, and black-robed Christian priests holding a Gospel. The assembly is deliberately mixed across religions.
Manuscripts, inkpots and a shelved study alcove of bound volumes line one wall, with oil lamps for sessions that ran late into the night. This is a place of argument and books, not a mosque or a throne-room of state.
The single raised imperial seat overlooking and presiding over the disputation, rather than a scholar's chair among equals, sets the ruler above the debate as its arbiter, a posture that troubled the orthodox scholars of the age.
Further reading & cross-references
Abu'l-Fazl, Akbarnama and A'in-i Akbari (late 16th c.): The official court history of Akbar's reign, favourable to the emperor and to the Ibadat Khana debates. Used for the founding of the hall, the schedule of debates and the opening to other religions. Confidence high for the events, with the caution that it is the court's apologetic voice.
Abd al-Qadir Bada'uni, Muntakhab al-Tawarikh (late 16th c.): The contemporary Sunni scholar's history, written privately and critical of Akbar's religious drift. The essential counterweight to Abu'l-Fazl and the source for the orthodox Sunni reaction recorded from inside the court. Confidence high for the critical perspective.
Antonio Monserrate, Commentary (Mongolicae Legationis Commentarius) (c. 1582, non-Muslim cross-reference): The Jesuit who attended the court describes the debates and the presence of the Christian fathers. Used only to confirm the mixed-religion character of the assembly, not to frame the scene.
S.A.A. Rizvi, Religious and Intellectual History of the Muslims in Akbar's Reign (Munshiram, 1975): Standard modern academic study of religion under Akbar. Used for the chronology of the Ibadat Khana, the 1578 opening, the Mahzar of 1579, and the Sunni reaction.
Catherine B. Asher, Architecture of Mughal India (Cambridge, 1992): Used for the building and red-sandstone idiom of Fatehpur Sikri and for the uncertainty over the exact location of the Ibadat Khana within the site.
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