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From this time forth the two brothers, Faizí and Abulfazl, were the chief confidants of the Emperor in his schemes for the regeneration and consolidation of the empire. He caused them both to enter the military service, as the service which best secured their position at court.
The inquiring nature of the mind of Akbar was displayed by the desire he expressed to learn something tangible regarding the religion of the Portuguese, then settled at Goa. He directed Faizí to have translated into Persian a correct version of the New Testament, and he persuaded a Jesuit priest, Padre Rodolpho Aquaviva, a missionary from Goa, to visit Agra.
He discovered, moreover, that the 'Ulamá, or learned doctors, a class more resembling the pharisees of the New Testament than any class of which history makes record, and whom he cordially detested, had been very free in helping themselves during the period of his minority, and before the representations of Faizí had induced him to make inquiries.
The elder son, Shaikh Faizí, was born near Agra to the vicinity of which the father had migrated in 1547. He was thus five years younger than Akbar. Shortly after that prince had reconquered the North-western Provinces, Shaikh Faizí, then about twenty, began his quiet, unostentatious life of literature and medicine. He soon made a name as a poet.
I propose now to relate how the broad principles natural to Akbar and confirmed by his association with Faizí and Abulfazl, affected the system of administration introduced by the reforming sovereign. In a previous page of this chapter I have quoted an expression of his own, to the effect that he had, at one time of his reign, forced Bráhmans to embrace Muhammadanism.
He was just in time, for the pile was already lighted when his agents, one of them the uncle of the deceased, reached the ground, seized Udai Singh, dispersed the assembly, and saved the princess. Attached as Akbar was to his learned and liberal-minded friends, Faizí and Abulfazl, he encouraged all who displayed a real love for learning, and a true desire to acquire knowledge.
For forty years Badauní lived at court in company with Shaikh Mubárik and his sons Faizí and Abulfazl, but there was no real friendship between them, as Badauní, an orthodox Musalmán, always regarded them as heretics. Under instructions from Akbar he translated the Rámáyana from its original Sanscrit into Persian, as well as part of the Máhábhárata.
It is occupied by a lineal descendant of Salîm Chishti, and is only rarely shown to visitors. The Houses of Abul Fazl and Faizi. The houses where these two famous brothers, the friends of Akbar, lived, are close under the north wall of the great mosque. Their father, Sheikh Mubarak, was one of the most learned men of the age, and the sons were as distinguished as the father.
Though the Rajah was one of Akbar's most trusted friends, his palace would hardly be placed within the enclosure of the Emperor's own zanana and connected with it; nor is it likely that Akbar would provide Birbal with a residence so incomparably more magnificent than those he gave to his other two intimate friends, Abul Fazl and Faizi, by the side of the great mosque.
When, in consequence of the inquiries set on foot at the instance of Faizí, it was discovered that the whole of this department was a hotbed of corruption, Akbar made a clean sweep of the officials, from the Sadr down to the smallest Kází, and nominated men drawn from a different class, fencing their functions with strict regulations.
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