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138 question the truth of his inherited Muhammadan creed. The counsels of his friend Abul Fazl, coinciding with that sense of superhuman omnipotence which is bred of despotic imperial power, led Akbar at last to promulgate a new State religion, called 'The Divine Faith,' based upon natural theology, and comprising the best practices of all known forms of belief. Of this made-up creed Akbar himself was the prophet, or rather the head of the Church. Every morning he worshipped in public the sun, as the representative of the divine soul which animates the universe, while he was himself worshipped by the ignorant multitude. It is doubtful how far he encouraged this popular adoration of his person, but he certainly allowed his disciples to prostrate themselves before him in private. The stricter Muhammadans accused him, therefore, of accepting a homage permitted only to God.

Akbar's Organization of the Empire.—Akbar not only subdued all India to the north of the Vindhya mountains, he also organized it into an empire. He partitioned it into Provinces, over each of which he placed a governor, or viceroy, with full civil and military control. This control was divided into three departments—the military, the judicial, including the police, and the revenue. With a view to preventing mutinies of the troops, or assertions of independence by their leaders, he re-organized the army on a new basis. He substituted, as far as possible, money payments to the soldiers for the old system of grants of land (jágírs) to the generals. Where this change could not be carried out, he brought the holders of the old military fiefs under the control of the central authority at Delhi. He further checked the independence of his provincial generals, by a sort of feudal organization, in which the Hindu tributary princes took their place side by side with the Mughal nobles. The judicial administration was presided over by a lord justice (mír-i-adt) at the capital, aided by kázís or law-officers in the principal towns. The police in the cities were under a superintendent or kotwál, who was also a magistrate. In country districts, where police existed at all, they were left to the management of the landholders or revenue officers. But throughout rural India no regular police force can be said to