No succession struggle followed Humayun’s death. At the time, Akbar was thirteen and already in the capital of Delhi, whereas his half-brother Mirza Hakim was a two-year old child and in distant Kabul. It was apparent, moreover, that Akbar was blessed with a gift for memory and remarkable intelligence, even though his tutors were unable to teach him to read or write, as he was apparently dyslexic. Fortuitously, the young heir was placed under the regency of Bairam Khan, whose competent generalship had facilitated Humayun’s restoration of Mughal rule. On the other hand, his father’s short tenure after the restoration had given him little opportunity to consolidate his rule, as a result of which the countryside in upper India still abounded with disaffected Afghans. In late 1556 Hemu, a Hindu general who had formerly served the dislodged Afghan regime, seized Delhi and set himself up as the city’s ‘liberator’ and new sovereign. Bairam Khan met Hemu at the historic battlefield at Panipat, using the youthful Akbar to rally support for the Mughal cause. He also allowed his charge, barely fourteen years of age, his first taste of military combat, even letting him behead Hemu so that he could claim the title of ghazi.16 Thanks to Bairam Khan’s exertions so early in Akbar’s reign, Hemu’s uprising had been quashed, and the heartland of upper India had fallen securely under Mughal control. The last two prominent princes of Sher Shah’s dynasty, Sikandar and Ibrahim, were soon defeated and driven away, while the stronghold of Gwalior, 100 kilometres south of Agra, was secured after a two-year siege.
In response, many Afghans simply packed up and moved further down the Ganges valley, settling in Bihar and Bengal. In order to put pressure on those elements, the Mughals decamped their court from Delhi to Agra, Humayun’s capital before his exile from India. It was here that Akbar, now in his late teens, began to find his voice as an independent ruler. In 1560 he managed to extract himself from Bairam Khan’s control by suggesting that he do the pious thing and perform the pilgrimage to Mecca. It was an old ploy. The appeal to piety left the veteran counsellor and commander no choice but to leave India and Mughal service. But before the young king could fully assert himself, his former wet-nurse, Maham Anga, stepped into the vacuum as Akbar’s de facto regent. This woman enjoyed immense prestige within the Mughal household, as her husband had played a critical role in rescuing Humayun in a humiliating debacle caused by Sher Shah. But she overplayed her hand by promoting her own son, the ambitions Adham Khan, who in 1562 recklessly assassinated the kingdom’s leading minister of state. This so enraged the nineteen-year-old Akbar that, although the youth was his own foster-brother, he threw him over a palace balcony to his death. When a grief-stricken Maham Anga died shortly afterwards, Akbar ordered stately tombs to be built over both their graves – a politically astute move as the young king sought to assert his autonomy in a faction-ridden Mughal household. At the same time, he restored relations with the household of Bairam Khan, whom he had manoeuvred out of India altogether, by marrying one of the latter’s widows. He also adopted into his household one of Bairam Khan’s sons, a four-year-old child who would ultimately emerge as one of the most powerful nobles in Akbar’s court: Khan-i Khanan. Akbar already understood that a successful sovereign had to build up a large household of loyal dependants who represented a broad cross-section of the realm’s political and ethnic constituencies.
Yet the Mughals were still surrounded by enemies. Powerful Afghan chiefs held considerable territory from the central Ganges valley through Bihar to Bengal, and in Malwa. Rajput lineages dominated Rajasthan, while further south lay the rich and powerful state of Gujarat. For many disaffected parties uprooted by the return of Mughal power, the sultanate of Gujarat offered an attractive refuge and source of patronage. Among those parties were Uzbek Turks, Babur’s old enemies who, as Sunni Muslims, resented the influence of Shi‘i officers who had accompanied Humayun’s return from Iran. In the mid 1560s disaffected Uzbeks rebelled in eastern India, rallying around Akbar’s half-brother Mirza Hakim when he marched to Lahore from his base in Kabul. In response, Akbar first advanced to Lahore, driving Hakim back to Kabul. Then he routed the Uzbeks rebelling in the central Ganges valley. But exerting pressure in eastern India only drove more disaffected elements, especially Afghans and Uzbeks, into Gujarat. The conquest of this wealthy state thus became an early objective in Akbar’s efforts to consolidate his rule over north India.