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OF THE EMPEROR AKBAR.
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spired to extend the mischief, and amongst other effects to msettle the orthodoxy of the Emperor.
A learned and pious writer, Makhdúm al Mulk, published about this time a tract injurious to Sheikh Abd un Nabi*. He accused that teacher of having been wrongfully instrumental to the deaths of Khizr Khan Shirwani, who had been condemned for reviling the Prophet, and Ali Habsh, who had been charged with beresy. He added also, that the Sheikh was unworthy to mount the pulpit, both because he was subject to a bodily infirmity, and because he had been disavowed by his own father for his perverse and udutiful conduct when a youth. To these attacks Sheikh an Nabi replied by calling Makhdúm al Mulk a heretic and a fool. Opinions were divided, some of the religious men sided with one, and some with another; the dispute ran high, and a complete schism ensued. The enemies of Islam took this opportunity to augment the king's disgust and dissatisfaction, and those impressions becoming progressively more intense, he lost in the course of five or six years every particle of his original belief.
One of the first effects of this secession was the assemblage of the professors of various religions from all countries, who were not only admitted to the royal presence, but there allowed openly to assert and advocate their peculiar tenets. From the confliction of notions, with which the Emperor thus be
* [H. M. Elliot, I. l., p. 245 and p. 253.]
