"Both law and taxation were severe, but far less than before. From one-sixth to one-third of the gross produce of the soil was taken from the peasants, amounting to some $100,000,000 a year in land tax. The Emperor was legislator, executive and judge; as supreme court he spent many hours in giving audience to important litigants. His law forbade child marriage and compulsory suttee, sanctioned the remarriage of widows, abolished the slavery of captives and the slaughter of animals for sacrifice, gave freedom to all religions, opened career to every talent of whatever creed or race, and removed the head-tax that the Afghan rulers had placed upon all Hindus unconverted to Islam.91 At the beginning of his reign the law included such punishments as mutilation; at the end it was probably the most enlightened code of any sixteenth-century government. Every state begins with violence, and (if it becomes secure) mellows into liberty."
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Will Durant Our Oriental Heritage. Ch. XVI : From Alexander to Aurangzeb, § VII : Akbar the Great
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Akbar
Abu'l-Fath Jalal ud-din Muhammad Akbar, popularly known as Akbar I (IPA: [əkbər], literally "the great"; 15 October 1542– 27 October 1605), and later Akbar the Great (Urdu: Akbar-e-Azam; literally "Great the Great"), was the third Mughal emperor, who reigned from 1556 to
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