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The Mughal court in the late sixteenth century was the destination of choice for tens of thousands of central Asians, Persians, Arabs, Indians, and Europeans. Most sought careers as men of the sword, or of the pen, or both. Many came to trade. A few came to explain their religious beliefs and practices to the emperor. The liberality of the Mughal court was a function, in large part, of the intellectual curiosity of the emperor Akbar (d. 1605). The thrust of this book project is to describe the myriad religious influences that shaped Akbar's eclectic sensibilities, and to show how the institutionalization of those eclectic sensibilities informed in turn what it meant to be Hindu and Muslim, and even Christian, in the seventeenth century.