Differentiating Between Just and Unjust Rulers in Abul Fazal’s Theory

When we study medieval Indian political thought, one question keeps returning: what separates a good ruler from a bad one? For Abul Fazl, the brilliant historian and courtier in the court of Mughal emperor Akbar, this was not an abstract puzzle. It sat at the heart of his entire theory of kingship. In his monumental works, the Akbarnama and its third volume, the Ain-i-Akbari, Abul Fazl built a careful framework that judged rulers not by their birth or conquests, but by how they treated their people. His distinction between the just and the unjust ruler remains one of the most striking contributions to political theory in the subcontinent.

Who was Abul Fazl and why his ideas matter 🔗

Abul Fazl (1551-1602) was one of the Navaratnas, or nine jewels, in Akbar’s court. He was far more than a chronicler. He was a philosopher and political theorist who reimagined what sovereignty meant in sixteenth-century India. His family had suffered persecution at the hands of orthodox clergy, an experience that shaped his lifelong belief in tolerance and reason.

The empire he wrote about was vast and astonishingly diverse, home to Hindus, Muslims, Jains, Christians, and many sects within each faith. Uniting such a population under one authority required a theory of kingship that did not rest on any single religion. Abul Fazl provided exactly that. His ideas gave intellectual shape to Akbar’s policies and offered a vision of rulership that judged kings by their conduct, not their lineage.

The foundation: sovereignty as divine light 🔗

To understand the difference between a just and an unjust ruler, we first have to understand Abul Fazl’s idea of sovereignty itself. He described kingship as Farr-i-Izadi, meaning a divine light or divine radiance emanating from God. According to him, royalty was a ray of light sent directly by God to the chosen ruler, with no intermediary standing between God and the king.

This was a deliberate and important shift. Earlier traditions often described the ruler merely as the shadow of God, or Zill-i-Ilahi. Abul Fazl set this aside as inadequate. For him, the sovereign was not a shadow but a genuine recipient of divine light, a possessor of illuminated wisdom. The philosophical roots of this concept trace back to the twelfth-century Persian Sufi philosopher Shihabuddin Suhrawardi, whose Illuminationist philosophy described a hierarchy of light flowing from the Light of Lights.

Here lies the crucial point. Not every ruler who sits on a throne actually possesses this divine light. Anyone can seize power through military conquest or inheritance, but that does not make them a true sovereign. This is precisely why Abul Fazl needed to distinguish between rulers who genuinely carried the divine light and those who merely claimed authority. The distinction between the just and the unjust ruler grows directly out of this idea.

What makes a ruler just 🔗

Abul Fazl drew a sharp line between the two types of rulers. He argued that only a just ruler, whom he called kar-giya, possesses the genuine capacity to govern well. In one of his most memorable images, he wrote that a just ruler is able, like a salt-bed, to convert the impure into pure and the bad into good. The salt-bed metaphor is powerful: just as salt transforms whatever it touches, a just ruler transforms the moral and social fabric of the society he governs.

So what are the defining qualities of such a ruler? Several stand out clearly across Abul Fazl’s writings.

Tolerance and fairness toward all 🔗

A just ruler treats every subject equally, regardless of their religion, caste, or background. Abul Fazl was emphatic that if a king discriminated on the basis of caste, religion, or class, he could not be considered a good king. This principle of equal benevolence introduced a genuinely secular element into the theory of the state, where people of every faith had an equal claim to the ruler’s care. This was unusual and forward-looking for its era.

Rationality and respect for reason 🔗

Rationality was central to Abul Fazl’s ideal king. A true sovereign governs through reason rather than blind tradition or sectarian dogma. The just ruler is expected to understand what Abul Fazl called the spirit of the age, or the need of the hour, and to shape his conduct accordingly. Rather than rewarding people based on primordial identities like religion, the ideal king favours talent and merit. This same logic shaped Akbar’s administrative practices, where officials were ranked by capability rather than dynastic or religious allegiance.

Fatherly love for the subjects 🔗

Perhaps the most tender quality in Abul Fazl’s framework is the idea of paternal care. He considered the ruler to be the father of his people, which made it the duty of the people to respect and obey him, but equally made it the king’s duty to protect and nurture them. The running thread through his discussions of kingship is a paternal love for subjects, combined with the priceless jewel of justice and the observance of absolute peace. A just king is a protector and well-wisher, not a distant master.

The unjust ruler: the opposite of every virtue 🔗

If the just ruler is defined by tolerance, reason, and paternal care, the unjust ruler is defined by their absence. The unjust ruler discriminates between subjects, rules through whim rather than reason, and serves personal interest instead of public welfare. Such a ruler cannot perform the transformation that the salt-bed image describes. Instead of converting the impure into pure, an unjust ruler allows disorder, division, and suffering to spread.

For Abul Fazl, the unjust ruler does not truly possess the divine light at all. Holding a crown is not the same as being divinely qualified to rule. The legitimacy that comes from divine light does not absolve a ruler of his duties; it imposes them. A king who fails in fairness, reason, and care has, in effect, forfeited the moral basis of his sovereignty even if he retains the physical throne.

A notable gap in the theory 🔗

It is worth being honest about a limitation here. While Abul Fazl described what an unjust ruler looks like, the Ain-i-Akbari offered no mechanism for the people to remove a king who became tyrannical or cruel. There was no right of rebellion or replacement built into the system. The theory relied on the hope that a true sovereign, blessed with divine guidance, would honour his obligations. This is a real weakness, and it is one reason scholars note that his theory was not as fully developed as the later social contract theories of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau.

Justice, the social contract, and Sulh-i-Kul 🔗

Abul Fazl’s concept of justice connected to a broader idea of the state as a kind of agreement. In the Ain-i-Akbari, he grounded sovereignty in a social contract rather than in religious law. Under this arrangement, the king protected the life, property, honour, and faith of his subjects, and in return the subjects offered obedience and a share of resources. Crucially, he held that only a just sovereign could honour this contract with power and divine guidance.

This is where the just ruler and the welfare of the people meet. Justice was not merely a personal virtue of the king; it was the very condition that made the contract between ruler and ruled meaningful. An unjust ruler, by breaking faith with his subjects, breaks the contract that justifies his authority.

Universal peace as the goal of just rule 🔗

The practical expression of just rulership was the policy of Sulh-i-Kul, meaning universal peace or absolute peace. This doctrine held that the agent of God could not discriminate among the different faiths present in society. Under Sulh-i-Kul, all religions and sects enjoyed freedom of expression, on the condition that they neither harmed the monarchy nor fought among themselves. It was through this spirit of universal peace that Akbar’s government integrated diverse cultural groups into a stable administrative system.

Sulh-i-Kul shows us what a just ruler actually does in practice. By refusing to privilege one faith over another, the just ruler creates the conditions for social harmony and stability. The product of just rule is a society where difference does not become conflict, and where the state stands above sectarian division.

Why this distinction still resonates 🔗

Abul Fazl’s framework matters because it shifts the basis of legitimacy. A ruler is not legitimate simply because of conquest, inheritance, or religious sanction. Legitimacy depends on conduct: on whether the ruler is fair, rational, tolerant, and caring toward all subjects. This was a remarkably modern idea for the sixteenth century, and it anticipated later debates about accountable and inclusive governance.

His emphasis on merit over religious identity, on reason over dogma, and on the equal treatment of a diverse population speaks directly to questions a pluralistic society still wrestles with today. The just ruler, in his vision, is one who transforms society for the better and binds its many communities together, while the unjust ruler is one who allows division and decay. Strip away the language of divine light, and the underlying message is timeless: power carries responsibility, and the measure of a leader is the welfare of the governed.

What do you think? If legitimacy depends on a ruler’s justice and care rather than on conquest or inheritance, how should a society respond when a leader fails to live up to those standards but no formal mechanism exists to replace them? And in a diverse country, can the principle of Sulh-i-Kul, treating every community with equal fairness, serve as a useful guide for governance even now?

References

1. https://egyankosh.ac.in/bitstream/123456789/84771/1/Unit-11.pdf
2. https://lotusarise.com/abul-fazls-concept-of-monarchy/
3. https://prepp.in/question/the-idea-of-farr-i-izadi-on-which-the-mughal-kings-6448f5d1128ecdff9f523d96
4. https://www.studocu.com/in/document/university-of-delhi/ba-honours-political-science/abul-fazl-monarchy/94596220
5. https://www.vaia.com/en-us/explanations/history/the-mughal-empire/sulh-i-kul/