Page:Akbar and the Rise of the Mughal Empire.djvu/197

190 with high command, by temporary grants of land in lieu of a money allowance. He found that the most powerful of his immediate predecessors, the Shor Sháh who had expelled his father, Humáyún, had been more than lavish in his grants of land to his immediate followers, men mostly of Afghán descent. Akbar inquired into the circumstances under which these grants had been made, and in many instances he resumed them to bestow thom upon his own adherents.

In acting in this way he only followed the precedent set him by previous sovereigns. But he had even more reason than that which precedent would sanction. He found that the land specified in the firmán granted to the holder but rarely corresponded in extent to the land which he actually held. Sometimes it happened that the language of the firmán was so ambiguously worded as to allow the holder to take all that he could get by bribing the Kázís and the provincial Sadr. Hence, in the interests of justice and the interests of the crown and the people, he had a perfect right to resume whatever, after duo inquiry, he found to be superfluous. 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. He therefore made the strictest investi-