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The great prince received him with courtesy, and entranced by his varied talent, shortly afterwards attached him to his court, as teacher in the higher branches of knowledge to the princes, his sons. He was occasionally also employed as ambassador. His abundant leisure Faizí devoted to poetry. In his thirty-third year he was nominated to an office equivalent to that of Poet Laureate.
The eight now elevated to this exalted rank are: Enoch Olinga, William Sears, and John Robarts, in West and South Africa; Hasan Balyuzi and John Ferraby in the British Isles; Collis Featherstone and Rahmatu’lláh Muhájir, in the Pacific area; and Abu’l-Qásim Faizí in the Arabian Peninsula—a group chosen from four continents of the globe, and representing the Afnán, as well as the black and white races and whose members are derived from Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Pagan backgrounds.
Badauní goes on to state that Akbar conferred with Bráhmans and Sumánís, and under their influence accepted the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. There can be no doubt, however, but that the two brothers, Faizí and Abulfazl, like himself born and brought up in the faith of Islám, greatly influenced the direction of his studies on religion.
The above mentioned brothers Faizî and Abul Fazl introduced to his impressionable spirit the exalted teaching of Sûfism, the Mohammedan mysticism whose spiritual pantheism had its origin in, or at least was strongly influenced by, the doctrine of the All-One, held by the Brahman Vedânta system.
It is related that, on one occasion, when he applied to the Kadr for the grant of a small tract of land, that officer, who was a Sunní, not only refused him but, solely because he was a Shiah, drove him from the hall with contumely and insult. Meanwhile, moved by the report of his great ability, Akbar had summoned Faizí to his camp before Chitor, which place he was besieging.
Early then, in the ninth year of his reign, and in the twenty-third of his life, three years, be it borne in mind, before he had come under the influence of either of the two illustrious brothers, Faizí and Abulfazl, he, prompted by his own sense of the eternal fitness of things, issued an edict abolishing the jizyá. Thenceforth all were equal in matters of faith before the one Eternal.
But if Shaikh Faizí stood high in the favour of Akbar, his brother, Shaikh Abulfazl, the author of the Ain-í-Akbarí, stood still higher. Abulfazl was born near Agra the 14th January, 1551. He too, equally with his brother, profited from the broad and comprehensive teaching of the father.
About a mile further on the right-hand side, is a great walled enclosure, named after Ladli Begam, the sister of Abul Fazl, Akbar's famous Prime Minister and biographer. It formerly contained her tomb, as well as that of Sheikh Mubarak, her father, and of Faizi, her eldest brother. Many years ago the whole enclosure was sold by Government.
Faizi was the Persian Poet Laureate, and tutor to the Royal Princes. He was also employed on many diplomatic missions. Abul Fazl was the author of the celebrated "Akbarnâma," a history of the Mogul Emperors down to the forty-seventh year of Akbar's reign.
For a long time this man held fast to the orthodox profession of faith, ridiculing the 'new religion' of Akbar, and especially ridiculing Faizí and Abulfazl, to whom he applied nicknames expressing his sense of their pretensions. But at a later period he had occasion to make the pilgrimage to Mekka, and there he was so fleeced by the priests that his attachment to Islám insensibly cooled down.
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