title: John Major

text: Since leaving office, Major has pursued business and charitable interests, making occasional political interventions. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005 for services to politics and charity. Major is viewed as average in historical rankings and public opinion of British prime ministers.


title: John Major

text: John Major was born on 29 March 1943 at St Helier Hospital and Queen Mary's Hospital for Children in St Helier, Surrey, the son of Gwen Major ("née" Coates, 1905–1970) and former music hall performer Tom Major-Ball (1879–1962), who was 63 years old when Major was born. He was christened "John Roy Major" but only "John Major" was recorded on his birth certificate; he used his middle name until the early 1980s. His birth had been a difficult one, with his mother suffering from pleurisy and pneumonia and John Major requiring several blood transfusions due to an infection, causing permanent scarring to his ankles.


title: John Major

text: The Major family (John, his parents, and his two older siblings Terry and Pat) lived at 260 Longfellow Road, Worcester Park, Surrey, a middle-class area where Major's father ran a garden ornaments business and his mother worked in a local library and as a part-time dance teacher. John Major later described the family's circumstances at this time as being "comfortable but not well off". Following a German V-1 flying bomb attack in the area in 1944 which killed several people, the Majors moved to the village of Saham Toney, Norfolk, for the duration of the war.


title: John Major

text: John began attending primary school at Cheam Common School from 1948. His childhood was generally happy, and he enjoyed reading, sports (especially cricket and football) and keeping pets, such as his rabbits. In 1954 John passed the 11+ exam, enabling him to go to Rutlish School, a grammar school in Merton Park, though to John's chagrin his father insisted that he register as 'John Major-Ball'. The family's fortunes took a turn for the worse, with his father's health deteriorating, and the business in severe financial difficulties. A recalled business loan which the family were unable to repay forced Tom Major to sell the house in Worcester Park in May 1955, with the family moving to a cramped, rented top-floor flat at 144 Coldharbour Lane, Brixton. With his parents distracted by their reduced circumstances, John Major's difficulties at Rutlish went unnoticed.


title: John Major

text: Acutely conscious of his straitened circumstances vis-à-vis the other pupils, Major was something of a loner and consistently under-performed except in sports, coming to see the school as "a penance to be endured". Major left school just before his 16th birthday in 1959 with just three O-level passes in History, English Language and English Literature, to his parents' disappointment.


title: John Major

text: Major's interest in politics stems from this period, and he avidly kept up with current affairs by reading newspapers on his long commutes from Brixton to Wimbledon. In 1956 Major met local MP Marcus Lipton at a local church fair and was invited to watch his first debate in the House of Commons, where Harold Macmillan presented his only Budget as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Major has attributed his political ambitions to this event.


title: John Major

text: Major's first job was as a clerk in the London-based insurance brokerage firm Price Forbes in 1959, though finding the job dull and offering no prospects he quit. Major began working with his brother Terry at the garden ornaments business; this had been sold in 1959, enabling the family to move to a larger residence at 80 Burton Road, Brixton. Major's father died on 17 March 1962. John left the ornaments business the following year to care for his ill mother, though when she got better he was unable to find a new job and was unemployed for much of the latter half of 1962, a situation he says was "degrading". After Major became prime minister, it was misreported that his failure to get a job as a bus conductor resulted from his failing to pass a maths test; he had in fact passed all of the necessary tests but had been passed over owing to his height. In the meantime he studied for a qualification in banking via correspondence course. Eventually in December 1962 he found a job working at the London Electricity Board (LEB) in Elephant and Castle.


title: John Major

text: In 1959 Major had joined the Young Conservatives in Brixton and soon became a highly active member, which helped increase his confidence following the failure of his school days. Encouraged by fellow Conservative Derek Stone, he started giving speeches on a soap-box in Brixton Market. According to his biographer Anthony Seldon, Major brought "youthful exuberance" to the Tories in Brixton, but was sometimes in trouble with the professional agent Marion Standing. Major stood as a Councillor in the 1964 Lambeth London Borough Council election for Larkhall ward at the age of 21 in 1964, losing to Labour. He also assisted local Conservative candidates Kenneth Payne in the 1964 general election and Piers Dixon in the 1966 general election. Another formative influence on Major in this period was Jean Kierans, a divorcée 13 years his elder with two children who lived opposite the family on Burton Road, who became his mentor and lover. Seldon writes "She ... made Major smarten his appearance, groomed him politically, and made him more ambitious and worldly." Major later moved in with Kierans when his family left Burton Road in 1965; their relationship lasted from 1963 to sometime after 1968.


title: John Major

text: Major left the LEB and took up a post at District Bank in May 1965, though he soon left this to join Standard Bank the following year, largely because the latter offered the chance to work abroad. In December 1966 he was sent for a long secondment in Jos, Nigeria, which he enjoyed immensely, though he was put off by the casual racism of some of the ex-pat workers there. In May 1967 he was involved in a serious car crash in which he broke a leg and had to be flown home. Leaving hospital, he split his time between Jean Kierans' house and a small rented flat in Mayfair, working at Standard Bank's London office and resuming his banking diploma and activities with the Young Conservatives in his spare time.


title: John Major

text: Major stood again as Councillor in the 1968 Lambeth London Borough Council election, this time for Ferndale ward. Though a Labour stronghold, the Conservatives received a huge boost following Enoch Powell's anti-immigration 'Rivers of Blood speech' in April 1968 and Major won, despite strongly disapproving of Powell's views. Major took a major interest in housing matters, with Lambeth notorious for overcrowding and poor-quality rented accommodation. In February 1970 Major became Chairman of the Housing Committee, being responsible for overseeing the building of several large council estates. He also promoted more openness at the council, initiating a series of public meetings with local residents. Major also undertook fact-finding trips to the Netherlands, Finland and the Soviet Union. Despite the Lambeth housing team being well-regarded nationally, Major lost his seat in the 1971 Lambeth London Borough Council election.


title: John Major

text: Major met Norma Johnson at a Conservative party event in Brixton in April 1970, and the two became engaged shortly thereafter, marrying at St Matthew's Church in Brixton on 3 October 1970. John's mother died shortly before in September at the age of 65. John and Norma moved into a flat at Primrose Court, Streatham, which John had bought in 1969, and had their first child, Elizabeth, in November 1971. In 1974 the couple moved to a larger residence at West Oak, Beckenham, and had a second child, James, in January 1975. Meanwhile, Major continued to work at Standard Bank (renamed Standard Chartered from 1975), having completed his banking diploma in 1972. Major was promoted to head of the PR department in August 1976, and his duties necessitated the occasional foreign trip to East Asia.


title: John Major

text: Despite his setback at the 1971 Lambeth Council election, Major continued to nurse political ambitions, and with help from friends in the Conservative Party managed to get onto the Conservative Central Office's list of potential MP candidates. Major was selected as the Conservative candidate for the Labour-dominated St Pancras North constituency, fighting both the February and October 1974 general elections, losing heavily both times to Labour's Albert Stallard. Major then attempted to get selected as a candidate for a more promising seat, and despite numerous attempts was unsuccessful until December 1976. Growing increasingly frustrated, Major resolved to make one last attempt, applying for selection to the safe Conservative seat of Huntingdonshire and finally he succeeded. Major was in some ways an odd choice, being a born-and-bred Londoner in a largely rural constituency still home to many landed families; however, he was seen as being the most likely to win-over the increasingly large numbers of upwardly mobile London over-spill families living in the area, and he was helped to familiarise himself with the area by local MP David Renton. In 1977 the Major family purchased a house at De Vere Close in the village of Hemingford Grey. Major took on a less demanding job at Standard Chartered, and started working part-time in 1978 so that he could devote more time to his constituency duties.


title: John Major

text: Major won the Huntingdon seat by a large margin in the 1979 general election, which brought Margaret Thatcher to power. He made his maiden speech in the House of Commons on 13 June 1979, voicing his support for the government's budget. Major assiduously courted contacts at all levels of the party in this period, joining the informal 'Guy Fawkes club' of Conservative MPs and attending various Committees. He became Secretary of the Environment Committee and also assisted with work on the Housing Act 1980, which allowed council house tenants the Right to Buy their homes. At this time Major lived in De Vere Close, Hemingford Grey.


title: John Major

text: Major's first promotion came when he was appointed as a Parliamentary Private Secretary in January 1981 to Patrick Mayhew and Timothy Raison, both Ministers of State at the Home Office. Seeking to gain more exposure to foreign affairs, he joined several Labour Party MPs on a fact-finding trip to the Middle East in April 1982. The group met with King Hussein of Jordan and Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation in Lebanon; in Israel they were briefly caught in the middle of a shooting incident between Israeli troops and a Palestinian rock-thrower.


title: John Major

text: Major later became an assistant whip in January 1983, responsible for East Anglian MPs. During this period Major became also involved in the response to protests at RAF Molesworth, which lay in his constituency; various peace groups were opposed to the siting of cruise missiles at the base and had established a permanent 'peace camp' there. Major addressed public meetings opposed to the protesters, organised by parish councillors, and also met Bill Westwood and separately Michael Heseltine to discuss the issue. The protesters were evicted in February 1984.


title: John Major

text: Major comfortably won re-election to the now slightly enlarged seat of Huntingdon at the 1983 general election. Shortly thereafter he and Norma moved to a larger house (Finings) in Great Stukeley; Major generally spent his weekends there, and weekdays at a rented flat in Durand Gardens, Stockwell. Major was invited to join the prestigious 'Blue Chip' group of rising stars in the Conservative Party, and he was promoted to Treasury Whip in October 1984. It was later revealed (in 2002) that during this period Major had conducted an affair with Edwina Currie, a Conservative backbencher and later Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Health and Social Security; the affair ended in 1988. Major narrowly avoided the IRA's Brighton hotel bombing in October 1984, having left the hotel only a few hours before the bomb went off. Also in this period, Major stood in for a Foreign Office minister on a trip to South America, visiting Colombia, Peru and Venezuela.


title: John Major

text: In September 1985 he was made Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS), before being promoted to become Minister of State in the same department in September 1986. The large size of the DHSS granted Ministers a greater degree of responsibility than in other departments, with Major assisting with work on the Social Security Act 1986 and improving provision for disabled people. Major began to gain a bigger profile, giving his first speech at the Conservative Party Conference in October 1986. He first attracted major national media attention in January 1987 over cold weather payments to the elderly, when Britain was in the depths of a severe winter. Amidst intense media criticism, Major discussed the issue with Margaret Thatcher and an increase in the payments was approved.


title: John Major

text: Following the 1987 general election, in which Major retained his seat with an increased majority, he was promoted to the Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, making him the first MP of the 1979 intake to reach the Cabinet. The then-Chancellor Nigel Lawson generally made significant decisions with little input from others, and Major was put in charge of agreeing departmental budgets with the Secretaries of State. These discussions went well, and for the first time in several years budgets were agreed without recourse to the external adjudication of the so-called 'Star Chamber'. Major successfully concluded a second round of such spending reviews in July 1988.


title: John Major

text: Whilst Chief Secretary Major took part in discussions over the future funding of the NHS, against the background of an NHS strike in February 1988 over pay, resulting in the 'Working for Patients' white paper and subsequent National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990. Major also insisted in discussions with Thatcher that government assistance should be provided to support the sale of Short Brothers to Bombardier, an aerospace company and major employer in Northern Ireland which might otherwise have collapsed.


title: John Major

text: In 1987–88 it became clear that Major had become a 'favourite' of Margaret Thatcher and he was widely tipped for further promotion. Nevertheless, Major's appointment to Foreign Secretary in July 1989 came as a surprise due to his relative lack of experience in the Cabinet and unfamiliarity with international affairs. Major found the prospect daunting, and unsuccessfully attempted to convince Thatcher to allow him to stay on at the Treasury. There were also fears within the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) that Major would be Thatcher's 'hatchet-man', as her relations with the department under Geoffrey Howe had been poor and characterised by mutual distrust. Major accepted the job and began to settle into the department, living in an upstairs room at the FCO and devolving decision making where necessary, though he found the increased security burdensome and disliked the extensive ceremonial aspects of the role.


title: John Major

text: Amongst Major's first acts as Foreign Secretary was to cancel the sale of Hawk aircraft to Iraq, over concerns they would be used for internal repression. He represented Britain at the Paris Peace Conference to determine the future of Cambodia. Major also met with US secretary of state James Baker, with whom he primarily discussed the issue of Vietnamese boat people, and with Qian Qichen, Foreign Minister of China, becoming the first senior Western politician to meet with a Chinese official since the violent crackdown of pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square the previous month. Discussions focused primarily on the future of Hong Kong, which Britain was scheduled to hand over to China in 1997.


title: John Major

text: Major spent most of a summer holiday that year in Spain conducting extensive background reading on foreign affairs and British foreign policy. Upon his return to the UK he and Thatcher met with French president François Mitterrand, in which the future direction of the European Community was discussed. In September 1989 Major delivered a speech at the United Nations General Assembly, in which he pledged to support Colombia's effort to tackle the drugs trade and reiterated Britain's opposition to the apartheid regime in South Africa. Major also met US president George H. W. Bush in Washington, D.C. and Domingo Cavallo, the Argentine foreign minister, the first such meeting since the end of the Falklands War seven years earlier.


title: John Major

text: Major's last major summit as Foreign Secretary was the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Malaysia. The meeting was dominated by the issue of sanctions on South Africa, with Britain being the only country to oppose them, on the grounds that they would end up hurting poorer South Africans far more than the apartheid regime at which they were aimed. The summit ended acrimoniously, with Thatcher controversially and against established precedent issuing a second final communiqué stating Britain's opposition to sanctions, with the press seizing on the apparent disagreement on the matter between Major and Thatcher.


title: John Major

text: After just three months as Foreign Secretary Major was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer on 26 October 1989 after the sudden resignation of Nigel Lawson, who had fallen out with Thatcher over what he saw as her excessive reliance on the advice of her Economic Adviser Alan Walters. The appointment meant that, despite only being in the Cabinet for a little over two years, Major had gone from the most junior position in the Cabinet to holding two of the Great Offices of State. Major made tackling inflation a priority, stating that tough measures were needed to bring it down and that "if it isn't hurting, it isn't working." He delivered his first Autumn Statement on 15 November, announcing a boost in spending (mainly for the NHS) and with interest rates to be kept as they were.


title: John Major

text: As Chancellor, Major presented only one Budget, the first to be televised live, on 20 March 1990. He publicised it as a 'budget for savers', with the creations of the Tax-exempt special savings account (TESSA), arguing that measures were required to address the marked fall in the household savings ratio that had been apparent during the previous financial year. Major also abolished the composite rate tax and stamp duty on share trades, whilst increasing taxes on alcohol, cigarettes and petrol. Tax cuts were also made which benefited football associations, the aim being to increase funding on safety measures following the Bradford City stadium fire and Hillsborough disaster. Extra funding was also made available to Scotland in order to limit the impact of the Community Charge (widely dubbed the 'Poll Tax'), which had been introduced there that year.


title: John Major

text: The European Community's push for full Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) was another important factor in Major's time as Chancellor; in June 1990 he proposed that instead of a single European currency there could instead be a 'hard ECU', which different national currencies could compete against and, if the ECU was successful, could lead to a single currency. The move was seen as a wrecking tactic by France and Germany, especially when the increasingly Euro-sceptic Thatcher announced her outright opposition to EMU, and the idea was abandoned. More successfully, Major managed to get the new European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) located in London.


title: John Major

text: By early 1990 Major had become convinced that the best way to combat inflation and restore macroeconomic stability would be if the British pound were to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), and he and Douglas Hurd (Major's successor as Foreign Secretary) set about trying to convince a reluctant Thatcher to join it. The move was supported by the Bank of England, the Treasury, most of the Cabinet, the Labour Party, several major business associations and much of the press. With the 'Lawson Boom' showing signs of running out of steam, exacerbated by rising oil prices following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, there were fears of a potential recession and pressure to cut interest rates. Thatcher finally agreed on 4 October, and Britain's entry into the ERM at a rate of DM 2.95 to £1.00 (with an agreed 6% floating 'band' either side) was announced the following day. An interest rate cut of 1% (from 15%) was also announced on the same day.


title: John Major

text: The rest of Major's Chancellorship prior to the leadership contest was largely uneventful; he considered granting the Bank of England operational independence over monetary policy, with the ability to set interest rates, but decided against it. He also agreed a restructuring and write-off of some Third World debt at a Commonwealth Finance Ministers meeting in Trinidad and Tobago in September 1990.


title: John Major

text: Opposition within the Conservative Party to Margaret Thatcher had been brewing for some time, focusing on what was seen as her brusque, imperious style and the poll tax, which was facing serious opposition across the country. In December 1989, she had survived a leadership bid by Anthony Meyer; though she won easily, 60 MPs had not voted for her, and it was rumoured that many more had had to be strong-armed into supporting her. By early 1990, it was clear that bills for many under the new poll tax regime would be higher than anticipated, and opposition to the Tax grew, with a non-payment campaign gaining much support and an anti-poll tax demonstration in Trafalgar Square in March ending in rioting. The Conservatives lost the 1990 Mid Staffordshire by-election to Labour and the 1990 Eastbourne by-election to the Liberal Democrats, both Conservative seats, causing many Conservative MPs to worry about their prospects at the upcoming general election, due in 1991 or 1992. Thatcher's staunch anti-European stance also alienated pro-Europe Conservatives. On 1 November, the pro-European deputy prime minister Geoffrey Howe resigned, issuing a fiercely critical broadside against Thatcher in the House of Commons on 13 November.


title: John Major

text: The day after Howe's speech Michael Heseltine, Thatcher's former Secretary of State for Defence who had acrimoniously resigned in 1986 over the Westland affair, challenged Thatcher for the leadership of the Conservative Party. Both John Major and Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd supported Thatcher in the first round. Major was at home in Huntingdon recovering from a pre-arranged wisdom tooth operation during the first leadership ballot, which Thatcher won but not by the required threshold, necessitating a second round. Following discussions with her cabinet, in which many stated that though supporting her they doubted she could win, Thatcher withdrew from the contest and announced that she would resign as prime minister once a new leader had been elected. Major subsequently announced on 22 November that he would stand in the second ballot, with Thatcher's backing. Major's platform was one of moderation on Europe, a review of the poll tax, and the desire to build a "classless society".


title: John Major

text: Unlike in the first ballot, a candidate only required a simple majority of Conservative MPs to win, in this case 187 of 372 MPs. The ballot was held on the afternoon of 27 November; although Major obtained 185 votes, 2 votes short of an overall majority, he polled far enough ahead of both Hurd and Heseltine to secure their immediate withdrawal. With no remaining challengers, Major was formally named Leader of the Conservative Party that evening and was duly appointed prime minister the following day. At 47, he was the youngest prime minister since Lord Rosebery some 95 years earlier.


title: John Major

text: Major became prime minister on 28 November 1990 when he accepted the Queen's invitation to form a government, succeeding Margaret Thatcher. He inherited a majority government from Margaret Thatcher who had been the prime minister for the previous eleven years. The Conservatives' popularity was low, with some polling showing Labour's Neil Kinnock with a 23% lead over the Tories in April 1990 following the introduction of the Community Charge (poll tax). By the time of Major's appointment, Labour's lead had shrunk to 14%. However, by 1991, the Conservatives had narrowly retaken Labour in the polls.


title: John Major

text: Major's first ministry was dominated by the early 1990s recession which was believed to be caused by high interest rates, falling house prices and an overvalued exchange rate. The high interest rates led to more saving, less spending and less investment in the UK's sectors. Falling house prices stalled construction in the housing sector. Economic growth wasn't re-established until early 1993. By December 1991, unemployment was at 2.5 million (compared to 1.6 million 18 months earlier). Additionally, inflation was in double digits and interest rates reached 15%. However, opinion polling for Major's government remained stable during this period.


title: John Major

text: On 9 April 1992, Major called an election. To the surprise of many pollsters, the Conservatives won a majority, with 336 seats, and earning 41.9% of the vote. With a high turnout, the Conservatives earned over 14 million votes which remains a record in any UK general election. This was the Conservatives' fourth consecutive election victory. Neil Kinnock was replaced by John Smith as Labour leader in 1992.


title: John Major

text: On 16 September 1992, the pound sterling crashed out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism after the Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont had invested heavily in trying to keep it there, adjusting interest rates four times in one day. This event would later be called Black Wednesday. Despite the recession finally ending in 1993, the Conservatives' popularity didn't improve. Major's second ministry was also defined by conflicts within the Conservative Party regarding Europe after the government's defeat on the Maastricht Treaty.


title: John Major

text: On 12 May 1994, the Leader of the Opposition John Smith died from a heart attack and was replaced by Tony Blair who continued Labour's modernisation under the slogan of "New Labour". Some polling at the end of 1994 and the start of 1995 had Labour with a vote share of over 60%. The Tories remained divided over this era and with an attempt to silence his critics, Major resigned as Party leader. In the leadership election, Major comfortably beat John Redwood in June 1995. Following a string of by-election defeats, the Conservatives' majority of 21 had been eroded by 13 December 1996.


title: John Major

text: In the 1997 election, Labour won a 179-seat majority, ending their eighteen years in opposition. This was the worst general election result of the 20th century for the Conservatives, seeing the loss of all the party's seats in Wales and Scotland. Major's term ended with his resignation on 2 May 1997. While serving as prime minister, Major also served as the first lord of the Treasury and minister for the Civil Service. He was succeeded by Tony Blair following the 1997 general election. The Conservatives would not win another election until 2010.


title: John Major

text: Speculation over Major's leadership had continued since his re-election in 1995, and intensified as it became increasingly likely that the Conservatives would suffer a landslide defeat in the upcoming general election. During this period, Michael Portillo had frequently been touted as the favourite to replace Major, but lost his seat in the election, thus eliminating him from the running. Although many Conservative MPs wanted Major to resign as leader immediately because of the 1997 election loss, there was a movement among the grassroots of the party, encouraged by his political allies, to have him stay on as leader until the autumn. Lord Cranborne, his chief of staff during the election, and the chief whip, Alastair Goodlad, both pleaded with him to stay on: they argued that remaining as leader for a few months would give the party time to come to terms with the scale of defeat before electing a successor. Major refused, saying: "It would be terrible, because I would be presiding with no authority over a number of candidates fighting for the crown. It would merely prolong the agony."


title: John Major

text: Major served as Leader of the Opposition for seven weeks while the leadership election to replace him was underway. He formed a temporary Shadow Cabinet, but with seven of his Cabinet ministers having lost their seats at the election, and with few senior MPs left to replace them, several MPs had to hold multiple briefs. Major himself served as shadow foreign secretary (having served as foreign secretary for three months in 1989) and Shadow Secretary of State for Defence, and the office of Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland was left vacant until after the 2001 general election as the party no longer had any Scottish MPs. Major's resignation as Conservative leader formally took effect on 19 June 1997 after the election of William Hague.


title: John Major

text: Major's Resignation Honours were announced on 1 August 1997. He remained active in Parliament, regularly attending and contributing in debates. He stood down from the House of Commons at the 2001 general election, having announced his retirement from Parliament on 10 March 2000. Jonathan Djanogly took over as MP for Huntingdon, retaining the seat for the Conservatives at the 2001 election.


title: John Major

text: Like some post-war former prime ministers (such as Edward Heath), Major turned down a peerage when he retired from the House of Commons in 2001. He said that he wanted a "firebreak from politics" and to focus on writing and his business, sporting and charity work.


title: John Major

text: Since leaving office, Major has tended to maintain a low profile in the media, occasionally commentating on political developments in the role of an elder statesman. In 1999 he published his autobiography, covering his early life and time in office, which was generally well received. Major went on to write a book about the history of cricket in 2007 ("" and a book about music hall ("My Old Man: A Personal History of Music Hall" in 2012.


title: John Major

text: Major has further indulged his love of cricket as President of Surrey County Cricket Club from 2000 to 2001 (and Honorary Life Vice-president since 2002). In March 2001 he gave the tribute to cricketer Colin Cowdrey at his memorial service in Westminster Abbey. In 2005 he was elected to the Committee of the Marylebone Cricket Club, historically the governing body of the sport, and still guardian of the laws of the game. Major left the committee in 2011, citing concerns with the planned redevelopment of Lord's Cricket Ground.


title: John Major

text: John Major has also been actively engaged in charity work, being President of Asthma UK, and a Patron of the Prostate Cancer Charity, Sightsavers UK, Mercy Ships, Support for Africa 2000 and Afghan Heroes. In February 2012, Major became chairman of the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust, which was formed as part of the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II and is intended to support charitable organisations and projects across the Commonwealth, focusing on areas such as cures for diseases and the promotion of culture and education. Major was a Patron of the sight loss and learning disability charity SeeAbility from 2006 to 2012 and has been a vice-president since 2013.


title: John Major

text: Major has also pursued a variety of business interests, taking up appointments as Senior Adviser to Credit Suisse, chairman of the board of Senior Advisers at Global Infrastructure Partners, Global Adviser to AECOM, Chairman of the International Advisory Board of the National Bank of Kuwait, and Chairman of the European Advisory Council of the Emerson Electric Company. He was a member of the Carlyle Group's European Advisory Board from 1998 and was appointed Chairman of Carlyle Europe in May 2001. He stood down from the Group circa 2004–05. Major was also a director at the bus manufacturers the Mayflower Corporation from 2000 to 2003, which was liquidated in 2004 due to funding issues.


title: John Major

text: Following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997, Major was appointed a special guardian to Princes William and Harry, with responsibility for legal and administrative matters. As a result of this, Major was the only current or former prime minister out of the five then still alive invited to the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in May 2018. Major has also attended the funerals of notable political figures, such as Nelson Mandela in December 2013, former US first lady Barbara Bush at St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Houston, Texas on 21 April 2018 and the state funeral of George H. W. Bush on 5 December 2018.


title: John Major

text: As a former Prime Minister, Major with Lady Major had a place of honour at the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II on 19 September 2022.


title: John Major

text: In 1993, Major sued two magazines, "New Statesman and Society" and "Scallywag", as well as their distributors, for reporting rumours of an affair with Clare Latimer, a Downing Street caterer, even though at least one of the magazines had said that the rumours were false. The allegations of an affair with Latimer were indeed proven false. However, an affair with a different woman, Currie, came out a decade later, and both of these publications considered legal action to recover their costs when that happened.


title: John Major

text: In September 2002, it was revealed that, prior to his elevation to the Cabinet, Major had had a four-year-long extramarital affair with Edwina Currie, from 1984 to 1988. Commentators were quick to refer to Major's previous 'Back to Basics' platform to throw charges of hypocrisy at him. An obituary of Tony Newton in "The Daily Telegraph" claimed that if Newton had not kept the affair a closely guarded secret, "it is highly unlikely that Major would have become prime minister". In a press statement, Major said that he was "ashamed" by the affair and that his wife had forgiven him. In response, Currie said "he wasn't ashamed of it at the time and he wanted it to continue."


title: John Major

text: Major has become an active after-dinner speaker, earning over £25,000 per engagement for his "insights and his own opinions" on politics and other matters according to his agency. Major is also actively involved in various think tanks: he is the Chair of the Panel of Senior Advisers at Chatham House (having previously served as a president of Chatham House), a member of the International Advisory Boards of the Peres Center for Peace in Israel, the InterAction Council, the Baker Institute in Houston, and a Patron of the Atlantic Partnership. Major was also a Director with the Ditchley Foundation from 2000 to 2009, and a President of the influential centre-right think tank the Bow Group from 2012 to 2014.


title: John Major

text: In February 2005, it was reported that Major and Norman Lamont delayed the release of papers on Black Wednesday under the Freedom of Information Act. Major denied doing so, saying that he had not heard of the request until the scheduled release date and had merely asked to look at the papers himself. He told BBC News that he and Lamont had been the victims of "whispering voices" to the press. He later publicly approved the release of the papers.


title: John Major

text: In December 2006, Major led calls for an independent inquiry into Tony Blair's decision to invade Iraq, following revelations made by Carne Ross, a former British senior diplomat, that contradicted Blair's case for the invasion.


title: John Major

text: He was touted as a possible Conservative candidate for the Mayor of London elections in 2008, but turned down an offer from the Leader of the Conservatives at the time, David Cameron. A spokesperson for Major said "his political career is behind him".


title: John Major

text: Following the 2010 general election, Major announced his support for the Cameron–Clegg coalition, and stated that he hoped for a "liberal conservative" alliance beyond 2015, criticising Labour under Ed Miliband for playing "party games" rather than serving the national interest. Nevertheless, in 2013 Major expressed his concern at the seeming decline in social mobility in Britain: "In every single sphere of British influence, the upper echelons of power in 2013 are held overwhelmingly by the privately educated or the affluent middle class. To me, from my background, I find that truly shocking."


title: John Major

text: During the 2014 Scottish independence referendum Major strongly encouraged a "No" vote, stating that a vote for independence would be damaging both for Scotland and the rest of the UK. This was similar to his stance on devolution in Scotland before referenda were held on the subject both there and in Wales in 1997.


title: John Major

text: Major was a vocal supporter for the Remain campaign in the 2016 referendum on British membership of the European Union. Major supported a second referendum over Brexit, stating that the leave campaign put out a "fantasy case" during the referendum campaign, adding that to describe a second vote as undemocratic was "a rather curious proposition" and that he could see no "intellectual argument" against redoing the ballot. Major feared Brexit would make the UK poorer and could endanger the peace settlement in Northern Ireland.


title: John Major

text: On 30 August 2019, it was announced that Major intended to join a court case by Gina Miller against the proroguing of Parliament by the prime minister, Boris Johnson. In the 2019 general election Major urged voters to vote tactically against candidates supporting Boris Johnson when those candidates wanted a hard Brexit. Major said Brexit is, "the worst foreign policy decision in my lifetime. It will affect nearly every single aspect of our lives for many decades to come. It will make our country poorer and weaker. It will hurt most those who have least. Never have the stakes been higher, especially for the young. Brexit may even break up our historic United Kingdom." In early 2020, after the UK formally left the EU with an initial deal, Major expressed his concerns about a future trading deal with the EU being "flimsy".


title: John Major

text: In February 2022, Major made a speech at the Institute for Government think-tank in London, in which he criticised Boris Johnson over the Partygate scandal, suggesting that he ought to resign, and also the proposed policy for those seeking asylum which he called "un-British". In July 2022, immediately following Boris Johnson's announcement he intended to resign as prime minister but would stay until a successor was chosen, Major called for Johnson's immediate replacement and removal "for the overall wellbeing of the country."


title: John Major

text: Major's mild-mannered style and moderate political stance contrasted with that of Thatcher, and made him theoretically well-placed to act as a conciliatory and relatively uncontroversial leader of his party. In spite of this, conflict raged within the parliamentary Conservative Party, particularly over the extent of Britain's integration with the European Union. Major never succeeded in reconciling the "Euro-rebels" among his MPs to his European policy, who although relatively few in number, wielded great influence because of his small majority and their wider following among Conservative activists and voters. Episodes such as the Maastricht Rebellion, led by Bill Cash and Margaret Thatcher, inflicted serious political damage on him and his government. The additional bitterness on the right wing of the Conservative Party at the manner in which Margaret Thatcher had been deposed did not make Major's task any easier, with many viewing him as a weak and vacillating leader. Ongoing 'sleaze'-related scandals among leading Conservative MPs also did Major and his government no favours, decreasing support for the party amongst the public.


title: John Major

text: His task became even more difficult after the election of the modernist and highly media-savvy Tony Blair as Labour leader in July 1994, who mercilessly exploited Conservative divisions whilst shifting Labour to the centre, thus making it much more electable. Whilst few observers doubted that Major was an honest and decent man, or that he made sincere and sometimes successful attempts to improve life in Britain and to unite his deeply divided party, he was also perceived as a weak and ineffectual figure, and his approval ratings for most of his time in office were low, particularly after "Black Wednesday" in September 1992 which destroyed the Conservative's reputation for effective economic management.


title: John Major

text: Major defended his government in his memoirs, focusing particularly on how under him the British economy had recovered from the recession of 1990–1993. He wrote that "during my premiership interest rates fell from 14% to 6%; unemployment was at 1.75 million when I took office, and at 1.6 million and falling upon my departure; and the government's annual borrowing rose from £0.5 billion to nearly £46 billion at its peak before falling to £1 billion". Major's Chancellor Ken Clarke stated in 2016 that Major's reputation looked better as time went by, in contrast to that of Tony Blair's which appeared to be in decline. Paddy Ashdown, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats during Major's term of office, was more sympathetic, writing in 2017 that Major was "one of the most honest, brave and sincere men to ever be Prime Minister" and that his time in office compares favourably with that of his successor Tony Blair.


title: John Major

text: Writing shortly after he left office, the historian and journalist Paul Johnson wrote that Major was "a hopeless leader" who "should never have been Prime Minister". The sentiments echoed that of much of the press at the time, which was generally hostile to Major, especially after Black Wednesday. The journalist Peter Oborne was one such figure, though writing in 2017 he stated that he now regrets his negative reporting, stating that he himself and the press in general were "grossly unfair to Major" and that this was motivated at least in part by snobbery at Major's humble upbringing. In 2012 Oborne had written that Major's government looks ever more successful as time goes by. Oborne singled out Major's achievements in the Northern Irish peace process, boosting the economy, keeping Britain out of the Eurozone, and his reforms of public services as being worthy of praise. Others remain unconvinced however and, writing in 2011, the BBC's Home editor Mark Easton judged that "Majorism" had made little lasting impact.


title: John Major

text: In academic circles Major's legacy has generally been better received. Mark Stuart, writing in 2017, stated that Major is "the best ex-Prime Minister we have ever had", praising him for initiating the Northern Ireland peace process, peacefully handing Hong Kong back to China, creating the National Lottery and leaving a sound economy to Labour in 1997. Dennis Kavanagh likewise states that Major did relatively well considering the unbridgeable divides that existed in the Conservative Party in the 1990s, chiefly over Europe, whilst also delivering economic growth, a more user-focused public sector and the basis of peace settlement in Northern Ireland. He also notes that Major's unexpected 1992 election victory effectively sealed in the Thatcher-era reforms and forced the Labour Party to ditch most of its more socialist-tinged policies, thereby permanently shifting the British political landscape to the centre ground. Anthony Seldon largely agrees with this assessment, adding that Major's deep dislike of discrimination contributed to the continuing decline in racism and homophobia in British society, and that his proactive foreign policy stance maintained Britain's influence in the world at a time of profound global change. He also notes that Major faced a deeply unfavourable set of circumstances: most of the obvious and pressing Conservative reforms (e.g. reining in the power of trade unions and privatising failing industries) had already been completed under Thatcher, the swift nature of his rise to power left him little time to formulate policy positions and upon becoming prime minister he was immediately thrust into having to deal with the Gulf War and a major recession. Furthermore, the narrow majority achieved after the 1992 election left him exposed to internal Conservative rebellions, which only worsened as time went by, abetted by a hostile press, as it became clear the Conservatives would lose the next election. Seldon concludes that "Major was neither non-entity nor failure. His will be judged an important if unruly premiership at the end of the Conservative century, completing some parts of an earlier agenda while in some key respects helping to define a Conservatism for the 21st century." Seldon reiterated these views in his contribution to the 2017 volume "John Major: An Unsuccessful Prime Minister?"


title: John Major

text: Political historian Robert Taylor, in his 2006 biography of Major, concurs with many of these points, summing up that "In the perspective provided by the years of New Labour government since May 1997, John Major's record as Prime Minister looked much better than his many critics liked to suggest... Britain's most extraordinary Conservative Prime Minister bequeathed an important legacy to this party and his country to build on. One day both yet may come to recognise and appreciate it." Noted political historian Dick Leonard, however, writing in 2004, was more harsh in his assessment, concluding that Major was "A man of evident decent instincts, but limited abilities: as Prime Minister he pushed these abilities to the limit. It was not enough."


title: John Major

text: During his leadership of the Conservative Party, Major was portrayed as honest ("Honest John") but unable to exert effective control over his fractious party. However, his polite, easy-going manner was initially well received by both his supporters and his critics. Major's appearance was noted for its greyness, his prodigious philtrum, and large glasses, all of which were exaggerated in caricatures. For example, in "Spitting Image", Major's puppet was changed from a circus performer to that of a literally grey man who ate dinner with his wife in silence, occasionally saying "nice peas, dear", while at the same time nursing an unrequited crush on his colleague Virginia Bottomley – an invention, but an ironic one in view of his affair with Edwina Currie, which was not then a matter of public knowledge. By the end of his premiership his puppet would often be shown observing the latest fiasco and ineffectually murmuring "oh dear". Long-standing Conservative MP Enoch Powell, when asked about Major, stated "I simply find myself asking – does he really exist?", whereas on the left Labour's Alastair Campbell dismissed him as a "piece of lettuce that passes for prime minister" and Labour MP Tony Banks said of Major in 1994 that, "He was a fairly competent Chairman of Housing on Lambeth Council. Every time he gets up now I keep thinking, 'What on earth is Councillor Major doing?' I can't believe he's here and sometimes I think he can't either."


title: John Major

text: The media (particularly "The Guardian" cartoonist Steve Bell) used the allegation by Alastair Campbell that he had observed Major tucking his shirt into his underpants to caricature him wearing his pants outside his trousers, as a pale grey echo of both Superman and Supermac, a parody of Harold Macmillan. Bell also used the humorous possibilities of the Cones Hotline, a means for the public to inform the authorities of potentially unnecessary traffic cones, which was part of the Citizen's Charter project established by John Major. Major was also satirised by Patrick Wright with his book "101 Uses for a John Major" (based on a comic book of some 10 years earlier called "101 Uses for a Dead Cat", in which Major was illustrated serving a number of bizarre purposes, such as a train-spotter's anorak or as a flag-pole; Wright published a second collection of '101 Uses', as well as a parodic cartoon biography of Major entitled "Not Inconsiderable: Being the Life and Times of John Major".


title: John Major

text: "Private Eye" parodied Sue Townsend's "The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, age 13¾" to run a regular column "", in which Major was portrayed as naïve and childish, keeping lists of his enemies in a Rymans Notebook called his "Bastards Book", and featuring "my wife Norman" and "Mr Dr Mawhinney" as recurring characters. The magazine still runs one-off specials of this diary (with the age updated) on occasions when Major is in the news, such as on the breaking of the Edwina Currie story or the publication of his autobiography.


title: John Major

text: The impressionist comedian Rory Bremner often mocked John Major, for example depicting him as 'John 90', a play on 1960s puppet show "Joe 90"; his impersonation was so accurate that he managed to fool the MP Richard Body that he was really speaking to Major in a prank phone call. The incident prompted Cabinet Secretary Robin Butler to warn Channel 4 head Michael Grade against any further calls for fear that state secrets could be inadvertently leaked.


title: John Major

text: Major was often mocked for his nostalgic evocation of what sounded like the lost Britain of the 1950s ; for example, his famous speech stating that "Fifty years from now Britain will still be the country of long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers and – as George Orwell said – 'old maids bicycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist'." Major complained in his memoirs that these words (which drew upon a passage in George Orwell's essay "" had been misrepresented as being more naive and romantic than he had intended, and indeed his memoirs were dismissive of the common conservative viewpoint that there was once a time of moral rectitude; Major wrote that "life has never been as simple as that". Throughout his time in office Major was often acutely sensitive to criticism of him in the press; his biographer Anthony Seldon posits this to an inner vulnerability stemming from his difficult childhood and adolescence. After leaving office, Major stated that "Perhaps up to a point I was too sensitive about some of the things in the press, I’m happy to concede that. But, the politicians who are said to have hides like rhinos and be utterly impervious to criticism, if they’re not extinct, they are very rare and I freely confess I wasn't amongst them."


title: John Major

text: Major has been depicted on screen by Keith Drinkel in "" (1991), Michael Maloney in "Margaret" (2009), Robin Kermode in "The Iron Lady" (2011), Marc Ozall in the TV series "The Crown", Gordon Griffin in "Westminster on Trial" and Roger Sansom in "On the Record". Footage of Major's 1992 election win is used in Patrick Keiller's 1994 documentary film "London". Major was also one of the prime ministers portrayed in the 2013 stage play "The Audience". Less flatteringly, Major was the subject of the song "John Major – Fuck You" by Scottish punk band Oi Polloi.


title: John Major

text: Major was portrayed by Jonny Lee Miller in the fifth season of "The Crown" in 2022. Major called the series a "barrel-load of nonsense" for a fictitious storyline in which the then Prince Charles lobbies Major in 1991, attempting to oust Queen Elizabeth II from power. Netflix defended the series as a "fictional dramatisation".


title: John Major

text: Major married Norma Johnson (now Dame Norma Major) on 3 October 1970 at St Matthew's Church, Brixton. She was a teacher and a member of the Young Conservatives. They met on polling day for the Greater London Council elections in London, and became engaged after only ten days. They have two children: a daughter, Elizabeth (born November 1971) and a son, James (b. January 1975). They continue to live at their constituency home, Finings, in Great Stukeley, Huntingdonshire. They also own a flat in London and a holiday home on the Norfolk coast at Weybourne, which they have in the past invited ex-soldiers to use for free as part of the Afghan Heroes charity. As with all former prime ministers, Major is entitled to round-the-clock police protection.


title: John Major

text: Elizabeth Major, a qualified veterinary nurse, married Luke Salter on 26 March 2000 at All Saints Church, Somerby, having been in a relationship with him since 1988. Salter died on 22 November 2002 from cancer. James Major, a former retail manager and nightclub promoter, married gameshow hostess Emma Noble on 29 March 1999 in the Chapel Crypt at Westminster Abbey. They had a son, Harrison, born July 2000, who was later diagnosed with autism. The marriage ended in an acrimonious divorce in 2003, with Noble accusing Major of "unreasonable behaviour". James later married Kate Postlethwaite (née Dorrell), the mother of his second son.


title: John Major

text: Major's elder brother Terry, who died in 2007, became a minor media personality during Major's period in Downing Street, writing a 1994 autobiography, "Major Major: Memories of an Older Brother", and appearing on TV shows such as "Have I Got News for You". John's sister Patricia Dessoy kept a much lower profile; she died in 2017. After leaving office Major became aware that his father fathered two half-siblings extramaritally: Tom Moss and Kathleen Lemmon.


title: John Major

text: Research conducted by Paul Penn-Simkins, a genealogist formerly employed as a researcher at the College of Arms and as a heraldic consultant at Christie's, and subsequently corroborated by Lynda Rippin, a genealogist employed by Lincolnshire Council, showed that John Major and Margaret Thatcher were fifth cousins once removed, both descending from the Crust family, who farmed at Leake, near Boston, Lincolnshire.


title: John Major

text: Major has been keen on sports since his youth, most notably cricket; he is also a supporter of Chelsea F.C. and a Patron of British Gymnastics. He also enjoys gardening, listening to music and reading; Anthony Trollope being among his favourite authors. Major is a Christian, though his upbringing was never especially religious and he states that he is "a believer at a distance". He shied away from the topic when in office, stating that "I have always been a little wary of politicians who parade their faith, and prefer a little English reserve on the subject."


title: John Major

text: In the 1999 New Year Honours List, Major was made a Companion of Honour for his work on the Northern Ireland peace process.


title: John Major

text: On 23 April 2005, Major was bestowed with a knighthood as a Companion of the Order of the Garter by Queen Elizabeth II. He was installed at St George's Chapel, Windsor, on 13 June. Membership of the Order of the Garter is limited in number to 24, and as a personal gift of the Monarch is an honour traditionally bestowed on former prime ministers.


title: John Major

text: On 20 June 2008, Major was granted the Freedom of the City of Cork. He was also granted the Outstanding Contribution to Ireland award in Dublin on 4 December 2014.


title: John Major

text: On 8 May 2012, Major was personally decorated at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo by the Emperor of Japan with the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun in recognition of his invaluable contributions to Japan–UK relations through his work in the political and economic arena, and also in promoting mutual understanding. While prime minister, Major had pursued energetic campaigns aimed at boosting bilateral trade: "Priority Japan" (1991–94) and "Action Japan" (1994–97). The 1991 Japan Festival also took place under his premiership.


title: John Major

text: An oil painting of Major, painted in 1996 by June Mendoza, is part of the Parliamentary collection, as is a bronze bust by Anne Curry, unveiled in the Members' Lobby on 16 October 2017. There is another bust of Major in the Norman Shaw Building North by Neale Andrew, sculpted in 1993 and installed in 2004, however this is not accessible to the public.


title: John Major

text: A large bust of John Major by Shenda Amery in Huntingdon Library was unveiled by his wife Norma in 1993.


title: John Major

text: A painting of John Major by Diccon Swan is on display at the Carlton Club, and was unveiled by his wife Norma in 1994. The National Portrait Gallery holds two paintings of Major – the first official portrait of him as prime minister, painted by Peter Deighan in 1994, and one of John and Norma by John Wonnacott, painted in 1997.


title: John Major

text: There is a large John Major Suite at The Oval, home to Surrey County Cricket Club; the venue also contains a painting of Major.


title: John Major

text: There is a 'Heritage in Sutton' plaque on St Helier Hospital, where John Major was born in 1943, and a plaque commemorating him in Archbishop's Park next to Lambeth Palace, included as part of the Lambeth Millennium Pathway. There are also various plaques commemorating facilities opened by John Major: at Brampton Memorial Centre, Brampton (opened 1988), Hamerton Zoo Park, Hamerton (1990), Cadbury World, Birmingham (1991), a tree commemorating the restoration of the River Mill pub, Eaton Socon, the gardens at Hinchingbrooke Hospital, Huntingdon (2009), the North Terminal extension at Gatwick Airport (2011), Huntingdonshire Football Association headquarters, Huntingdon (2015), and Alconbury Weald cricket pitch (2019).


title: John Major

text: In 2013 the town of Candeleda in Spain named a street for John Major (, as Major has holidayed there for many years. Major Close, in Loughborough Junction near where John grew up, is also named for him; the street was to be called 'Sir John Major Close', however this long name breached council guidelines.


title: Akbar

text: Abu'l-Fath Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar (25 October 1542 – 27 October 1605), popularly known as Akbar the Great ( ), and also as Akbar I (), was the third Mughal emperor, who reigned from 1556 to 1605. Akbar succeeded his father, Humayun, under a regent, Bairam Khan, who helped the young emperor expand and consolidate Mughal domains in India.


title: Akbar

text: A strong personality and a successful general, Akbar gradually enlarged the Mughal Empire to include much of the Indian subcontinent. His power and influence, however, extended over the entire subcontinent because of Mughal military, political, cultural, and economic dominance. To unify the vast Mughal state, Akbar established a centralised system of administration throughout his empire and adopted a policy of conciliating conquered rulers through marriage and diplomacy. To preserve peace and order in a religiously and culturally diverse empire, he adopted policies that won him the support of his non-Muslim subjects. Eschewing tribal bonds and Islamic state identity, Akbar strove to unite far-flung lands of his realm through loyalty, expressed through an Indo-Persian culture, to himself as an emperor.


title: Akbar

text: Mughal India developed a strong and stable economy, leading to commercial expansion and greater patronage of culture. Akbar himself was a patron of art and culture. He was fond of literature, and created a library of over 24,000 volumes written in Sanskrit, Urdu, Persian, Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Kashmiri, staffed by many scholars, translators, artists, calligraphers, scribes, bookbinders, and readers. He did much of the cataloging himself through three main groupings. Akbar also established the library of Fatehpur Sikri exclusively for women, and he decreed that schools for the education of both Muslims and Hindus should be established throughout the realm. He also encouraged bookbinding to become a high art. Holy men of many faiths, poets, architects, and artisans adorned his court from all over the world for study and discussion. Akbar's courts at Delhi, Agra, and Fatehpur Sikri became centres of the arts, letters, and learning. Timurid and Perso-Islamic culture began to merge and blend with indigenous Indian elements, and a distinct Indo-Persian culture emerged characterized by Mughal style arts, painting, and architecture. Disillusioned with orthodox Islam and perhaps hoping to bring about religious unity within his empire, Akbar promulgated Din-i-Ilahi, a syncretic creed derived mainly from Islam and Hinduism as well as some parts of Zoroastrianism and Christianity.


title: Akbar

text: Akbar's reign significantly influenced the course of Indian history. During his rule, the Mughal Empire tripled in size and wealth. He created a powerful military system and instituted effective political and social reforms. By abolishing the sectarian tax on non-Muslims and appointing them to high civil and military posts, he was the first Mughal ruler to win the trust and loyalty of the native subjects. He had Sanskrit literature translated, participated in native festivals, realising that a stable empire depended on the co-operation and good-will of his subjects. Thus, the foundations for a multicultural empire under Mughal rule were laid during his reign. Akbar was succeeded as emperor by his son, Prince Salim, later known as Jahangir.


title: Akbar

text: Defeated in battles at Chausa and Kannauj in 1539 to 1541 by the forces of Sher Shah Suri, Mughal emperor Humayun fled westward to Sindh. There he met and married the then 14-year-old Hamida Banu Begum, daughter of Shaikh Ali Akbar Jami, a Persian teacher of Humayun's younger brother Hindal Mirza. Jalal ud-din Muhammad Akbar was born the next year on 25 October 1542 (the fifth day of Rajab, 949 AH) at the Rajput Fortress of Amarkot in Rajputana (in modern-day Sindh), where his parents had been given refuge by the local Hindu ruler Rana Prasad.


title: Akbar

text: During the extended period of Humayun's exile, Akbar was brought up in Kabul by the extended family of his paternal uncles, Kamran Mirza and Askari Mirza, and his aunts, in particular Kamran Mirza's wife. He spent his youth learning to hunt, run, and fight, making him a daring, powerful, and brave warrior, but he never learned to read or write. This, however, did not hinder his search for knowledge as it is always said when he retired in the evening he would have someone read. On 20 November 1551, Humayun's youngest brother, Hindal Mirza, died fighting in a battle against Kamran Mirza's forces. Upon hearing the news of his brother's death, Humayun was overwhelmed with grief.


title: Akbar

text: About the time of nine-year-old Akbar's first appointment, as governor of Ghazni, he married Hindal's daughter, Ruqaiya Sultan Begum. Humayun conferred on the imperial couple all the wealth, army, and adherents of Hindal and Ghazni. One of Hindal's "jagir" was given to his nephew, Akbar, who was appointed as its viceroy and was also given the command of his uncle's army. Akbar's marriage with Ruqaiya was solemnized in Jalandhar, Punjab, when both of them were 14-years-old. She was his first wife and chief consort.


title: Akbar

text: Following the chaos over the succession of Sher Shah Suri's son Islam Shah, Humayun reconquered Delhi in 1555, leading an army partly provided by his Persian ally Tahmasp I. A few months later, Humayun died. Akbar's guardian, Bairam Khan concealed the death in order to prepare for Akbar's succession. Akbar succeeded Humayun on 14 February 1556, while in the midst of a war against Sikandar Shah to reclaim the Mughal throne. In Kalanaur, Punjab, the 14-year-old Akbar was enthroned by Bairam Khan on a newly constructed platform, which still stands. He was proclaimed "Shahanshah" (Persian for "King of Kings"). Bairam Khan ruled on his behalf until he came of age.


title: Akbar

text: Akbar had a record of unbeaten military campaigns that consolidated Mughal rule in the Indian subcontinent. The basis of this military prowess and authority was Akbar's skilful structural and organisational calibration of the Mughal army. The Mansabdari system in particular has been acclaimed for its role in upholding Mughal power in the time of Akbar. The system persisted with few changes down to the end of the Mughal Empire, but was progressively weakened under his successors.


title: Akbar

text: Organisational reforms were accompanied by innovations in cannons, fortifications, and the use of elephants. Akbar also took an interest in matchlocks and effectively employed them during various conflicts. He sought the help of Ottomans, and also increasingly of Europeans, especially Portuguese and Italians, in procuring firearms and artillery. Mughal firearms in the time of Akbar came to be far superior to anything that could be deployed by regional rulers, tributaries, or by zamindars. Such was the impact of these weapons that Akbar's Vizier, Abul Fazl, once declared that "with the exception of Turkey, there is perhaps no country in which its guns has more means of securing the Government than [India]." The term "gunpowder empire" has thus often been used by scholars and historians in analysing the success of the Mughals in India. Mughal power has been seen as owing to their mastery of the techniques of warfare, especially the use of firearms encouraged by Akbar.


title: Akbar

text: Akbar's father Humayun had regained control of the Punjab, Delhi, and Agra with Safavid support, but even in these areas Mughal rule was precarious, and when the Surs reconquered Agra and Delhi following the death of Humayun, the fate of the boy emperor seemed uncertain. Akbar's minority and the lack of any possibility of military assistance from the Mughal stronghold of Kabul, which was in the throes of an invasion by the ruler of Badakhshan Prince Mirza Suleiman, aggravated the situation. When his regent, Bairam Khan, called a council of war to marshall the Mughal forces, none of Akbar's chieftains approved. Bairam Khan was ultimately able to prevail over the nobles, however, and it was decided that the Mughals would march against the strongest of the Sur rulers, Sikandar Shah Suri, in the Punjab. Delhi was left under the regency of Tardi Baig Khan. Sikandar Shah Suri, however, presented no major concern for Akbar, and avoided giving battle as the Mughal army approached. The gravest threat came from Hemu, a minister and general of one of the Sur rulers, who had proclaimed himself Hindu emperor and expelled the Mughals from the Indo-Gangetic plains.


title: Akbar

text: Urged by Bairam Khan, who re-marshalled the Mughal army before Hemu could consolidate his position, Akbar marched on Delhi to reclaim it. His army, led by Bairam Khan, defeated Hemu and the Sur army on 5 November 1556 at the Second Battle of Panipat, north of Delhi. Soon after the battle, Mughal forces occupied Delhi and then Agra. Akbar made a triumphant entry into Delhi, where he stayed for a month. Then he and Bairam Khan returned to Punjab to deal with Sikandar Shah, who had become active again. In the next six months, the Mughals won another major battle against Sikander Shah Suri, who fled east to Bengal. Akbar and his forces occupied Lahore and then seized Multan in the Punjab. In 1558, Akbar took possession of Ajmer, the aperture to Rajputana, after the defeat and flight of its Muslim ruler. The Mughals had also besieged and defeated the Sur forces in control of Gwalior Fort, the greatest stronghold north of the Narmada river.


title: Akbar

text: Royal begums, along with the families of Mughal amirs, were finally brought over from Kabul to India at the time – according to Akbar's vizier, Abul Fazl, "so that men might become settled and be restrained in some measure from departing to a country to which they were accustomed". Akbar had firmly declared his intentions that the Mughals were in India to stay. This was a far cry from the political settlements of his grandfather, Babur, and father, Humayun, both of whom had done little to indicate that they were anything but transient rulers. However, Akbar methodically re-introduced a historical legacy of the Timurid Renaissance that his ancestors had left.


title: Akbar

text: By 1559, the Mughals had launched a drive to the south into Rajputana and Malwa. However, Akbar's disputes with his regent, Bairam Khan, temporarily put an end to the expansion. The young emperor, at the age of eighteen, wanted to take a more active part in managing affairs. Urged on by his foster mother, Maham Anga, and his relatives, Akbar decided to dispense with the services of Bairam Khan. After yet another dispute at court, Akbar finally dismissed Bairam Khan in the spring of 1560 and ordered him to leave on Hajj to Mecca. Bairam Khan left for Mecca but on his way was goaded by his opponents to rebel. He was defeated by the Mughal army in the Punjab and forced to submit. Akbar forgave him, however, and gave him the option of either continuing in his court or resuming his pilgrimage; Bairam chose the latter. Bairam Khan was later assassinated on his way to Mecca, allegedly by an Afghan with a personal vendetta.


title: Akbar

text: In 1560, Akbar resumed military operations. A Mughal army under the command of his foster brother, Adham Khan, and a Mughal commander, Pir Muhammad Khan, began the Mughal conquest of Malwa. The Afghan ruler, Baz Bahadur, was defeated at the Battle of Sarangpur and fled to Khandesh for refuge leaving behind his harem, treasure, and war elephants. Despite initial success, the campaign proved a disaster from Akbar's point of view. His foster brother retained all the spoils and followed through with the Central Asian practice of slaughtering the surrendered garrison, their wives and children, and many Muslim theologians and Sayyids, who were the descendants of Muhammad. Akbar personally rode to Malwa to confront Adham Khan and relieve him of command. Pir Muhammad Khan was then sent in pursuit of Baz Bahadur but was beaten back by the alliance of the rulers of Khandesh and Berar. Baz Bahadur temporarily regained control of Malwa until, in the next year, Akbar sent another Mughal army to invade and annex the kingdom. Malwa became a province of the nascent imperial administration of Akbar's regime. Baz Bahadur survived as a refugee at various courts until, eight years later in 1570, he took service under Akbar.


title: Akbar

text: Despite the ultimate success in Malwa, the conflict exposed cracks in Akbar's personal relationships with his relatives and Mughal nobles. When Adham Khan confronted Akbar following another dispute in 1562, he was struck down by the emperor and thrown from a terrace into the palace courtyard at Agra. Still alive, Adham Khan was dragged up and thrown to the courtyard once again by Akbar to ensure his death. Akbar now sought to eliminate the threat of over-mighty subjects. He created specialised ministerial posts relating to imperial governance; no member of the Mughal nobility was to have unquestioned pre-eminence. When a powerful clan of Uzbek chiefs broke out in rebellion in 1564, Akbar decisively defeated and routed them in Malwa and then Bihar. He pardoned the rebellious leaders, hoping to conciliate them, but they rebelled again, so Akbar had to quell their uprising a second time. Following a third revolt with the proclamation of Mirza Muhammad Hakim, Akbar's brother and the Mughal ruler of Kabul, as emperor, his patience was finally exhausted. Several Uzbek chieftains were subsequently slain and the rebel leaders trampled to death under elephants. Simultaneously the Mirzas, a group of Akbar's distant cousins who held important fiefs near Agra, had also risen up in rebellion. They too were slain and driven out of the empire. In 1566, Akbar moved to meet the forces of his brother, Muhammad Hakim, who had marched into the Punjab with dreams of seizing the imperial throne. Following a brief confrontation, however, Muhammad Hakim accepted Akbar's supremacy and retreated back to Kabul.


title: Akbar

text: In 1564, Mughal forces began the conquest of Garha, a thinly populated, hilly area in central India that was of interest to the Mughals because of its herd of wild elephants. The territory was ruled over by Raja Vir Narayan, a minor, and his mother, Durgavati, a Rajput warrior queen of the Gonds. Akbar did not personally lead the campaign because he was preoccupied with the Uzbek rebellion, leaving the expedition in the hands of Asaf Khan, the Mughal governor of Kara. Durgavati committed suicide after her defeat at the Battle of Damoh, while Raja Vir Narayan was slain at the Fall of Chauragarh, the mountain fortress of the Gonds. The Mughals seized immense wealth, an uncalculated amount of gold and silver, jewels, and 1000 elephants. Kamala Devi, a younger sister of Durgavati, was sent to the Mughal harem. The brother of Durgavati's deceased husband was installed as the Mughal administrator of the region. Like in Malwa, however, Akbar entered into a dispute with his vassals over the conquest of Gondwana. Asaf Khan was accused of keeping most of the treasures and sending back only 200 elephants to Akbar. When summoned to give accounts, he fled Gondwana. He went first to the Uzbeks, then returned to Gondwana where he was pursued by Mughal forces. Finally, he submitted and Akbar restored him to his previous position.


title: Akbar

text: Around 1564 is also when there was an assassination attempt on Akbar documented in a painting. The attempt was made when Akbar was returning from a visit to the dargah of Hazrat Nizamuddin near Delhi, by an assassin shooting an arrow. The arrow pierced his right shoulder. The assassin was apprehended and ordered beheaded by the Emperor. The culprit was a slave of Mirza Sharfuddin, a noble in Akbar's court whose rebellion had recently been curbed.


title: Akbar

text: Having established Mughal rule over northern India, Akbar turned his attention to the conquest of Rajputana. No imperial power in India based on the Indo-Gangetic plains could be secure if a rival centre of power existed on its flank in Rajputana. The Mughals had already established domination over parts of northern Rajputana in Mewat, Ajmer, and Nagor. Now, Akbar was determined to drive into the heartlands of the Rajput kings that had rarely previously submitted to the Muslim rulers of the Delhi Sultanate. Beginning in 1561, the Mughals actively engaged the Rajputs in warfare and diplomacy. Most Rajput states accepted Akbar's suzerainty; the rulers of Mewar and Marwar, Udai Singh, and Chandrasen Rathore, however, remained outside the imperial fold. Rana Udai Singh was descended from the Sisodia ruler, Rana Sanga, who had fought Babur at the Battle of Khanwa in 1527. As the head of the Sisodia clan, he possessed the highest ritual status of all the Rajput kings and chieftains in India. Unless Udai Singh was reduced to submission, the imperial authority of the Mughals would be lessened in Rajput eyes. Furthermore, Akbar, at this early period, was still enthusiastically devoted to the cause of Islam and sought to impress the superiority of his faith over the most prestigious warriors in Brahminical Hinduism.


title: Akbar

text: In 1567, Akbar moved to reduce the Chittor Fort in Mewar. The fortress-capital of Mewar was of great strategic importance as it lay on the shortest route from Agra to Gujarat and was also considered a key to holding the interior parts of Rajputana. Udai Singh retired to the hills of Mewar, leaving two Rajput warriors, Jaimal and Patta, in charge of the defence of his capital. Chittorgarh fell in February 1568 after a siege of four months. Akbar had the surviving defenders and 30,000 non-combatants massacred and their heads displayed upon towers erected throughout the region, in order to demonstrate his authority. The booty that fell into the hands of the Mughals was distributed throughout the empire. He remained in Chittorgarh for three days, then returned to Agra, where to commemorate the victory, he set up, at the gates of his fort, statues of Jaimal and Patta mounted on elephants. Udai Singh's power and influence was broken. He never again ventured out of his mountain refuge in Mewar and Akbar was content to let him be.


title: Akbar

text: The fall of Chittorgarh was followed up by a Mughal attack on the Ranthambore Fort in 1568. Ranthambore was held by the Hada Rajputs and reputed to be the most powerful fortress in India. However, it fell only after a couple of months. Akbar was now the master of almost the whole of Rajputana. Most of the Rajput kings had submitted to the Mughals. Only the clans of Mewar continued to resist. Udai Singh's son and successor, Pratap Singh, was later defeated by the Mughals at the Battle of Haldighati in 1576. Akbar would celebrate his conquest of Rajputana by laying the foundation of a new capital, W.S.W of Agra in 1569. It was called Fatehpur Sikri ("the city of victory"). Rana Pratap Singh, however, continuously attacked Mughals and was able to retain most of the kingdom of his ancestors in the life of Akbar.


title: Akbar

text: Akbar's next military objectives were the conquest of Gujarat and Bengal, which connected India with the trading centres of Asia, Africa, and Europe through the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal respectively. Furthermore, Gujarat had been a haven for rebellious Mughal nobles, while in Bengal, the Afghans still held considerable influence under their ruler, Sulaiman Khan Karrani. Akbar first moved against Gujarat, which lay in the crook of the Mughal provinces of Rajputana and Malwa. Gujarat, with its coastal regions, possessed areas of rich agricultural production in its central plain, an impressive output of textiles and other industrial goods, and the busiest seaports of India. Akbar intended to link the maritime state with the massive resources of the Indo-Gangetic plains. However, the ostensible casus belli was that the rebel Mirzas, who had previously been driven out of India, were now operating out of a base in southern Gujarat. Moreover, Akbar had received invitations from cliques in Gujarat to oust the reigning king, which served as justification for his military expedition. In 1572, he moved to occupy Ahmedabad, the capital, and other northern cities, and was proclaimed the lawful sovereign of Gujarat. By 1573, he had driven out the Mirzas who, after offering token resistance, fled for refuge in the Deccan. Surat, the commercial capital of the region, and other coastal cities soon capitulated to the Mughals. The king, Muzaffar Shah III, was caught hiding in a corn field; he was pensioned off by Akbar with a small allowance.


title: Akbar

text: Having established his authority over Gujarat, Akbar returned to Fatehpur Sikiri, where he built the Buland Darwaza to commemorate his victories, but a rebellion by Afghan nobles supported by the Rajput ruler of Idar, and the renewed intrigues of the Mirzas forced his return to Gujarat. Akbar crossed the Rajputana and reached Ahmedabad in eleven days – a journey that normally took six weeks. The outnumbered Mughal army then won a decisive victory on September 2, 1573. Akbar slew the rebel leaders and erected a tower out of their severed heads. The conquest and subjugation of Gujarat proved highly profitable for the Mughals; the territory yielded a revenue of more than five million rupees annually to Akbar's treasury, after expenses.


title: Akbar

text: Akbar had now defeated most of the Afghan remnants in India. The only centre of Afghan power was now in Bengal, where Sulaiman Khan Karrani, an Afghan chieftain whose family had served under Sher Shah Suri, was reigning in power. While Sulaiman Khan scrupulously avoided giving offence to Akbar, his son, Daud Khan, who had succeeded him in 1572, decided otherwise. Whereas Sulaiman Khan had the khutba read in Akbar's name and acknowledged Mughal supremacy, Daud Khan assumed the insignia of royalty and ordered the khutba to be proclaimed in his own name in defiance of Akbar. Munim Khan, the Mughal governor of Bihar, was ordered to chastise Daud Khan, but later, Akbar himself set out to Bengal. This was an opportunity to bring the trade in the east under Mughal control. In 1574, the Mughals seized Patna from Daud Khan, who fled to Bengal. Akbar returned to Fatehpur Sikri and left his generals to finish the campaign. The Mughal army was subsequently victorious at the Battle of Tukaroi in 1575, which led to the annexation of Bengal and parts of Bihar that had been under the dominion of Daud Khan. Only Orissa was left in the hands of the Karrani dynasty as a fief of the Mughal Empire. A year later, however, Daud Khan rebelled and attempted to regain Bengal. He was defeated by the Mughal general, Khan Jahan Quli, and had to flee into exile. Daud Khan was later captured and executed by Mughal forces. His severed head was sent to Akbar, while his limbs were gibbeted at Tandah, the Mughal capital in Bengal.


title: Akbar

text: Following his conquests of Gujarat and Bengal, Akbar was preoccupied with domestic concerns. He did not leave Fatehpur Sikri on a military campaign until 1581, when Punjab was again invaded by his brother, Mirza Muhammad Hakim. Akbar expelled his brother to Kabul and this time pressed on, determined to end the threat from Muhammad Hakim once and for all. In contrast to the problem that his predecessors once had in getting Mughal nobles to stay on in India, the problem now was to get them to leave India. They were, according to Abul Fazl "afraid of the cold of Afghanistan." The Hindu officers, in turn, were additionally inhibited by the traditional taboo against crossing the Indus. Akbar, however, spurred them on. The soldiers were provided with pay eight months in advance. In August 1581, Akbar seized Kabul and took up residence at Babur's old citadel. He stayed there for three weeks, in the absence of his brother, who had fled into the mountains. Akbar left Kabul in the hands of his sister, Bakht-un-Nissa Begum, and returned to India. He pardoned his brother, who took up de facto charge of the Mughal administration in Kabul; Bakht-un-Nissa continued to be the official governor. A few years later, in 1585, Muhammad Hakim died and Kabul passed into the hands of Akbar once again. It was officially incorporated as a province of the Mughal Empire.


title: Akbar

text: The Kabul expedition was the beginning of a long period of activity over the northern frontiers of the empire. For thirteen years, beginning in 1585, Akbar remained in the north, shifting his capital to Lahore in the Punjab while dealing with challenges from beyond the Khyber Pass. The gravest threat came from the Uzbeks, the tribe that had driven his grandfather, Babur, out of Central Asia. They had been organised under Abdullah Khan Shaybanid, a capable military chieftain who had seized Badakhshan and Balkh from Akbar's distant Timurid relatives, and whose Uzbek troops now posed a serious challenge to the northwestern frontiers of the Mughal Empire. The Afghan tribes on the border were also restless, partly on account of the hostility of the Yusufzai of Bajaur and Swat, and partly owing to the activity of a new religious leader, Bayazid, the founder of the Roshaniyya sect. The Uzbeks were also known to be subsidising Afghans.


title: Akbar

text: In 1586, Akbar negotiated a pact with Abdullah Khan in which the Mughals agreed to remain neutral during the Uzbek invasion of Safavid held Khorasan. In return, Abdullah Khan agreed to refrain from supporting, subsidising, or offering refuge to the Afghan tribes hostile to the Mughals. Thus freed, Akbar began a series of campaigns to pacify the Yusufzais and other rebels. Akbar ordered Zain Khan to lead an expedition against the Afghan tribes. Raja Birbal, a renowned minister in Akbar's court, was also given military command. The expedition turned out to be a disaster, and on its retreat from the mountains, Birbal and his entourage were ambushed and killed by the Afghans at the Malandarai Pass in February 1586. Akbar immediately fielded new armies to reinvade the Yusufzai lands under the command of Raja Todar Mal. Over the next six years, the Mughals contained the Yusufzai in the mountain valleys, and forced the submission of many chiefs in Swat and Bajaur. Dozens of forts were built and occupied to secure the region. Akbar's response demonstrated his ability to clamp firm military control over the Afghan tribes.


title: Akbar

text: Despite his pact with the Uzbeks, Akbar nurtured a secret hope of reconquering Central Asia from today's Afghanistan. However, Badakshan and Balkh remained firmly part of the Uzbek dominions. There was only a transient occupation of the two provinces by the Mughals under his grandson, Shah Jahan, in the mid-17th century. Nevertheless, Akbar's stay in the northern frontiers was highly fruitful. The last of the rebellious Afghan tribes were subdued by 1600. The Roshaniyya movement was firmly suppressed. The Afridi and Orakzai tribes, which had risen up under the Roshaniyyas, had been subjugated. The leaders of the movement were captured and driven into exile. Jalaluddin, the son of the Roshaniyya movement's founder, Bayazid, was killed in 1601 in a fight with Mughal troops near Ghazni. Mughal rule over today's Afghanistan was finally secure, particularly after the passing of the Uzbek threat with the death of Abdullah Khan in 1598.


title: Akbar

text: While in Lahore dealing with the Uzbeks, Akbar had sought to subjugate the Indus valley to secure the frontier provinces. He sent an army to conquer Kashmir in the upper Indus basin when, in 1585, Ali Shah, the reigning king of the Shia Chak dynasty, refused to send his son as a hostage to the Mughal court. Ali Shah surrendered immediately to the Mughals, but another of his sons, Yaqub, crowned himself as king, and led a stubborn resistance against the Mughal armies. Finally, in June, 1589, Akbar himself travelled from Lahore to Srinagar to receive the surrender of Yaqub and his rebel forces. Baltistan and Ladakh, which were Tibetan provinces adjacent to Kashmir, pledged their allegiance to Akbar. The Mughals also moved to conquer Sindh in the lower Indus valley. Since 1574, the northern fortress of Bhakkar had remained under imperial control. Now, in 1586, the Mughal governor of Multan tried and failed to secure the capitulation of Mirza Jani Beg, the independent ruler of Thatta in southern Sindh. Akbar responded by sending a Mughal army to besiege Sehwan, the river capital of the region. Jani Beg mustered a large army to meet the Mughals. The outnumbered Mughal forces defeated the Sindhi forces at the Battle of Sehwan. After suffering further defeats, Jani Beg surrendered to the Mughals in 1591, and in 1593, paid homage to Akbar in Lahore.


title: Akbar

text: As early as 1586, about half a dozen Baluchi chiefs, under nominal Pani Afghan rule, had been persuaded to subordinate themselves to Akbar. In preparations to take Kandahar from the Safavids, Akbar ordered the Mughal forces to conquer the rest of the Afghan held parts of Baluchistan in 1595. The Mughal general, Mir Masum, led an attack on the stronghold of Sibi, northeast of Quetta and defeated a coalition of local chieftains in battle. They were made to acknowledge Mughal supremacy and attend Akbar's court. As a result, the modern-day Pakistani and Afghan parts of Baluchistan, including the Makran coast, became a part of the Mughal Empire.


title: Akbar

text: Kandahar was the name given by Arab historians to the ancient Indian kingdom of Gandhara. It was intimately connected with the Mughals since the time of their ancestor, Timur, the warlord who had conquered much of Western, Central, and parts of South Asia in the 14th century. However, the Safavids considered it as an appanage of the Persian-ruled territory of Khorasan and declared its association with the Mughal emperors to be a usurpation. In 1558, while Akbar was consolidating his rule over northern India, the Safavid emperor, Tahmasp I, had seized Kandahar and expelled its Mughal governor. For the next thirty years, it remained under Persian rule. The recovery of Kandahar had not been a priority for Akbar, but after his prolonged military activity in the northern frontiers, a move to restore Mughal rule over the region became desirable. The conquests of Sindh, Kashmir, and parts of Baluchistan, and the ongoing consolidation of Mughal power over today's Afghanistan had added to Akbar's confidence. Furthermore, Kandahar was at this time under threat from the Uzbeks, but the Emperor of Persia, himself beleaguered by the Ottoman Turks, was unable to send any reinforcements. Circumstances favoured the Mughals.


title: Akbar

text: In 1593, Akbar received the exiled Safavid prince, Rostam Mirza, after he had quarreled with his family. Rostam Mirza pledged allegiance to the Mughals; he was granted a rank (mansab) of commander of 5000 men and received Multan as a jagir. Beleaguered by constant Uzbek raids, and seeing the reception of Rostom Mirza at the Mughal court, the Safavid prince and governor of Kandahar, Mozaffar Hosayn, also agreed to defect to the Mughals. Mozaffar Hosayn, who was in any case in an adversary relationship with his overlord, Shah Abbas, was granted a rank of 5000 men, and his daughter Kandahari Begum was married to Akbar's grandson, the Mughal prince, Khurram. Kandahar was finally secured in 1595 with the arrival of a garrison headed by the Mughal general, Shah Bayg Khan. The reconquest of Kandahar did not overtly disturb the Mughal-Persian relationship. Akbar and the Persian Shah continued to exchange ambassadors and presents. However, the power equation between the two had now changed in favour of the Mughals.


title: Akbar

text: In 1593, Akbar began military operations against the Deccan Sultans who had not submitted to his authority. He besieged Ahmednagar Fort in 1595, forcing Chand Bibi to cede Berar. A subsequent revolt forced Akbar to take the fort in August 1600. Akbar occupied Burhanpur and besieged Asirgarh Fort in 1599, and took it on 17 January 1601, when Miran Bahadur Shah refused to submit Khandesh. Akbar then established the Subahs of Ahmadnagar, Berar, and Khandesh under Prince Daniyal. "By the time of his death in 1605, Akbar controlled a broad sweep of territory from the Bay of Bengal to Qandahar and Badakshan. He touched the western sea in Sind and at Surat and was well astride central India."


title: Akbar

text: Akbar's system of central government was based on the system that had evolved since the Delhi Sultanate, but the functions of various departments were carefully reorganised by laying down detailed regulations for their functioning


title: Akbar

text: Akbar set about reforming the administration of his empire's land revenue by adopting a system that had been used by Sher Shah Suri. A cultivated area where crops grew well was measured and taxed through fixed rates based on the area's crop and productivity. However, this placed hardship on the peasantry because tax rates were fixed on the basis of prices prevailing in the imperial court, which were often higher than those in the countryside. Akbar changed to a decentralised system of annual assessment, but this resulted in corruption among local officials and was abandoned in 1580, to be replaced by a system called the '. Under the new system, revenue was calculated as one-third of the average produce of the previous ten years, to be paid to the state in cash. This system was later refined, taking into account local prices, and grouping areas with similar productivity into assessment circles. Remission was given to peasants when the harvest failed during times of flood or drought. Akbar's ' system (also known as ")" is credited to Raja Todar Mal, who also served as a revenue officer under Sher Shah Suri, and the structure of the revenue administration was set out by the latter in a detailed memorandum submitted to the emperor in 1582–83.


title: Akbar

text: Other local methods of assessment continued in some areas. Land which was fallow or uncultivated was charged at concessional rates. Akbar also actively encouraged the improvement and extension of agriculture. The village continued to remain the primary unit of revenue assessment. Zamindars of every area were required to provide loans and agricultural implements in times of need, to encourage farmers to plough as much land as possible and to sow seeds of superior quality. In turn, the zamindars were given a hereditary right to collect a share of the produce. Peasants had a hereditary right to cultivate the land as long as they paid the land revenue. While the revenue assessment system showed concern for the small peasantry, it also maintained a level of distrust towards the revenue officials. Revenue officials were guaranteed only three-quarters of their salary, with the remaining quarter dependent on their full realisation of the revenue assessed.


title: Akbar

text: Akbar organised his army as well as the nobility by means of a system called the "mansabdari". Under this system, each officer in the army was assigned a rank (a "mansabdar"), and assigned a number of cavalry that he had to supply to the imperial army. The "mansabdars" were divided into 33 classes. The top three commanding ranks, ranging from 7,000 to 10,000 troops, were normally reserved for princes. Other ranks between 10 and 5,000 were assigned to other members of the nobility. The empire's permanent standing army was quite small and the imperial forces mostly consisted of contingents maintained by the "mansabdars". Persons were normally appointed to a low "mansab" and then promoted, based on their merit as well as the favour of the emperor. Each "mansabdar" was required to maintain a certain number of cavalrymen and twice that number of horses. The number of horses was greater because they had to be rested and rapidly replaced in times of war. Akbar employed strict measures to ensure that the quality of the armed forces was maintained at a high level; horses were regularly inspected and only Arabian horses were normally employed. The "mansabdars" were remunerated well for their services and constituted the highest paid military service in the world at the time.


title: Akbar

text: Akbar was a follower of Salim Chishti, a holy man who lived in the region of Sikri near Agra. Believing the area to be a lucky one for himself, he had a mosque constructed there for the use of the priest. Subsequently, he celebrated the victories over Chittor and Ranthambore by laying the foundations of a new walled capital, west of Agra in 1569, which was named Fatehpur (""town of victory"") after the conquest of Gujarat in 1573 and subsequently came to be known as Fatehpur Sikri in order to distinguish it from other similarly named towns. Palace for Akbar's favorite queen, a huge artificial lake, and sumptuous water-filled courtyards were built there. However, the city was soon abandoned and the capital was moved to Lahore in 1585. The reason may have been that the water supply in Fatehpur Sikri was insufficient or of poor quality. Or, as some historians believe, Akbar had to attend to the northwest areas of his empire and therefore moved his capital northwest. Other sources indicate Akbar simply lost interest in the city or realised it was not militarily defensible. In 1599, Akbar shifted his capital back to Agra from where he reigned until his death.


title: Akbar

text: The reign of Akbar was characterized by commercial expansion. The Mughal government encouraged traders, provided protection and security for transactions, and levied a very low custom duty to stimulate foreign trade. Furthermore, it strived to foster a climate conducive to commerce by requiring local administrators to provide restitution to traders for goods stolen while in their territory. To minimize such incidents, bands of highway police called "" were enlisted to patrol roads and ensure the safety of traders. Other active measures taken included the construction and protection of routes of commerce and communications. Indeed, Akbar would make concerted efforts to improve roads to facilitate the use of wheeled vehicles through the Khyber Pass, the most popular route frequented by traders and travelers journeying from Kabul into Mughal India. He also strategically occupied the northwestern cities of Multan and Lahore in the Punjab and constructed great forts, such as the one at Attock near the crossing of the Grand Trunk Road and the Indus river, as well as a network of smaller forts called "thanas" throughout the frontier to secure the overland trade with Persia and Central Asia. Furthermore, he established a trade business for his chief consort, Mariam-uz-Zamani who ran an extensive trade of indigo, spices, and cotton to Gulf nations through merchant's vessels.


title: Akbar

text: Akbar was a great innovator as far as coinage is concerned. The coins of Akbar set a new chapter in India's numismatic history. The coins of Akbar's grandfather, Babur, and father, Humayun, are basic and devoid of any innovation as the former was busy establishing the foundations of the Mughal rule in India while the latter was ousted by the Afghan, Sher Shah Suri, and returned to the throne only to die a year later. While the reign of both Babur and Humayun represented turmoil, Akbar's relative long reign of 50 years allowed him to experiment with coinage.


title: Akbar

text: Akbar introduced coins with decorative floral motifs, dotted borders, quatrefoil, and other types. His coins were both round and square in shape with a unique 'mehrab' (lozenge) shape coin highlighting numismatic calligraphy at its best. Akbar's portrait type gold coin (Mohur) is generally attributed to his son, Prince Salim (later Emperor Jahangir), who had rebelled and then sought reconciliation thereafter by minting and presenting his father with gold Mohurs bearing Akbar's portrait. The tolerant view of Akbar is represented by the 'Ram-Sita' silver coin type while during the latter part of Akbar's reign, we see coins portraying the concept of Akbar's newly promoted religion 'Din-e-ilahi' with the Ilahi type and Jalla Jalal-Hu type coins.


title: Akbar

text: The coins, left, represent examples of these innovative concepts introduced by Akbar that set the precedent for Mughal coins which was refined and perfected by his son, Jahangir, and later by his grandson, Shah Jahan.