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About The Book : Akbar the Great (1542–1605) is often regarded as the Mughal Empire's most accomplished ruler. This document on the workings of his empire was produced by Akbar's vizier, Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak (1551–1602). Between 1783 and 1786, the scholar Francis Gladwin (1744/5–1812) produced an English translation from the original Persian. Reissued here is the two-volume edition that appeared in 1800. As the work's dedicatee and Governor-General of Bengal, Warren Hastings had seen the translation as illuminating the Mughal Empire's 'original constitution' and believed it would educate and inform Britain's colonial administrators. Gladwin's text would not be superseded for many decades, and it testifies to the quality of his scholarship and the contemporary concerns of the East India Company. Volume 1 explains the workings of the royal household and military offices, including details of the mint, treasury and harem, as well as building regulations. About The Translator : FRANCIS GLADWIN (1745-1812) is translator of the Ain-eAkbari (as Ayeen Akbery, or the Institutes of the Emperor Akber, 3 vols. in 2, London, 1783-86) is well known. He also compiled A Dictionary of Religious Ceremonies of the Eastern Nations based on Barthelemy Herbelot’s Bibliothèque orientale (Maestricht, 1776), and he translated a polyglot medical dictionary by Mohammad Abd-Allāh Širāzi (as Ulfáz Udwiyeh or the Materia Medica, in the Arabic, Persian, and Hindevy Languages. He edited the Asiatic Miscellany and the New Asiatic Miscellany, which include many translations from Persian by himself and other authors.