structural:scholar_edition
Din-i Ilahi

Akbar was deeply interested in religious and philosophical matters. An orthodox Muslim at the outset, he later came to be influenced by the Sufi mysticism that was being preached in the country at that time. He moved away from orthodoxy, appointing to his court several people with liberal religious philosophies, including Abul Fazl, Faizi, and Birbal. In 1575, he built a hall called the Ibadat Khana ("House of Worship") at Fatehpur Sikri, to which he invited theologians, mystics, and selected courtiers renowned for their intellectual achievements to discuss matters of spirituality with them. These discussions, initially restricted to Muslims, were acrimonious and resulted in the participants shouting at and abusing each other. Upset by this, Akbar opened the Ibadat Khana to people of all religions as well as atheists, resulting in the scope of the discussions broadening, even extending into areas such as the validity of the Quran and the nature of God. This shocked orthodox theologians, who sought to discredit Akbar by circulating rumours of his desire to forsake Islam.

Akbar's effort to evolve a meeting point among the representatives of various religions was not successful, as each of them attempted to assert the superiority of their respective religions by denouncing other religions. The debates at the Ibadat Khana grew more acrimonious and, contrary to their purpose of leading to a better understanding among religions, instead led to greater bitterness among them, resulting in the discontinuance of the debates by Akbar in 1582.

Akbar's interaction with various religious theologians had convinced him that despite their differences, all religions had several good practices, which he sought to combine into a new religious movement known as Din-i-Ilahi. Virtues in Din-i-Ilahi included generosity, forgiveness, abstinence, prudence, wisdom, kindness, and piety. Celibacy was respected, chastity enforced, the slaughter of animals was discouraged, and there were no sacred scriptures or a priestly hierarchy. A leading noble of Akbar's court, Aziz Koka, wrote a letter to him from Mecca in 1594 arguing that the discipleship promoted by Akbar amounted to nothing more than a desire on Akbar's part to portray his superiority regarding religious matters. To commemorate Din-e-Ilahi, Akbar changed the name of Prayag to Allahabad (pronounced as ilahabad) in 1583.

Some modern scholars claim that Akbar did not initiate a new religion, instead introducing what Oscar R. Gómez has called a transtheistic outlook, derived from tantric Tibetan Buddhism, and that Akbar did not use the word Din-i-Ilahi.

Scholars have also argued that the theory that Din-i-Ilahi was a new religion is a misconception that arose because of erroneous translations of Abul Fazl's work by later British historians. It has been accepted that the policy of sulh-e-kul, which formed the essence of Din-i-Ilahi, was adopted by Akbar not merely for religious purposes, but as a part of general imperial administrative policy. This also formed the basis for Akbar's policy of religious tolerance. At the time of Akbar's death in 1605, there were no signs of discontent among his Muslim subjects, and even theologians like Abdu'l Haq accepted that close ties remained.