4O AKBAR, EMPEROR OF INDIA.
Fazl, murdered while on a journey. Very close to Akbar
also was the loss of his old mother to whom he had clung
his whole life long with a touching love and whom he out-
lived only a short time.
Akbar lost his best friends and his most faithful ser-
vants before he finally succumbed to a very painful abdom-
inal illness, which at the last changed him also mentally to
a very sad extent, and finally carried him off on the night
of the fifteenth of October, 1605. He was buried at Sikan-
dra near Agra in a splendid mausoleum of enormous pro-
portions which he himself had caused to be built and which
even to-day stands almost uninjured.
This in short is a picture of the life and activities of
the greatest ruler which the Orient has ever produced.
In order to rightly appreciate Akbar's greatness we must
bear in mind that in his empire he placed all men on an
equality without regard to race or religion, and granted
universal freedom of worship at a time when the Jews were
still outlaws in the Occident and many bloody persecutions
occurred from time to time: when in the Occident men
were imprisoned, executed or burnt at the stake for the
sake of their faith or their doubts; at a time when Europe
was polluted by the horrors of witch-persecution and the
massacre of St. Bartholemew.46 Under Akbar's rule India'
stood upon a much higher plane of civilization in the six-
teenth century than Europe at the same time.
Germany should be proud that the personality of Akbar
who according to his own words "desired to live at peace
with all humanity, with every creature of God," has so
inspired a noble German of princely blood in the last cen-
tury that he consecrated the work of his life to the biography
of Akbar. This man is the Prince Friedrich August of
Schleswig-Holstein, Count of Noer, who wandered through
the whole of Northern India on the track of Akbar's ac-
40 Noer, I, 490 n.