The great Mughal Emperor Akbar was a Sufi mystic who firmly believed that all existence is one, a manifestation of the underlying divine reality. Akbar's thesis was that "the pursuit of reason" rather than "reliance on the marshy land of tradition" was the proper way to address religious disputes. Akbar held that love of God and one's brethren was more important than narrow religious ritual. Having entrusted his army to a Hindu, his former opponent Raja Man Singh of Jaipur, and filled his court with artists and intellectuals, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, in the 1590s Akbar also set up the earliest known multi-religious discussion groups where delegations of Muslims, Christians, Jains, Jews, Parsees and even atheists came together at court to discuss where and why they differed and how they could live together. Festival Co- director and historian William Dalrymple looks at the history and civilisation of Mughal India and compares it to the Convivencia of al-Andalus. Introduced by academic Enrique Gavilán.
William Dalrymple is the author of the Wolfson Prize-winning White Mughals, Duff Cooper Prize-winning The Last Mughal, and the Hemingway and Kapuscinski Prize-winning Return of a King. His book, The Anarchy, was shortlisted for the Duke of Wellington medal, the Tata Book of the Year, and the Historical Writers Association Award, and won the 2020 Arthur Ross Medal from the US Council on Foreign Relations. Dalrymple has held visiting lectureships at Princeton, Brown, and Oxford, where he is currently a Visiting Fellow at All Souls. He was presented with the President’s Medal by the British Academy and was named one of the world’s top 50 thinkers for 2020 by Prospect Magazine. He is a founder and co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival.
Enrique Gavilán is a former professor at the University of Valladolid. He has been a visiting professor at the universities of Valencia, Bayreuth, Berkeley, Columbia, and Autónoma de México. His major works include Escúchame con atención; Liturgia del relato en Wagner; Otra historia del tiempo, la música y la redención del pasado; and Entre la historia y el mito: el tiempo en Wagner.
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