Education

Akbar was completing his eighth year of age. All the years, so far, since his birth had been full of instability, nomadic movements of the family and turmoils that didn’t allow Humayun to arrange for the proper education of his son. Now Humayun duly paid attention to the matter. On November 20, 1547 he organised a function in Kabul to launch his son, Akbar into learning exercise. But suddenly the boy was found missing. The function had to be postponed to the next day. A professional teacher named Mulla Asamuddin Ibrahim was appointed his preceptor.
But Mulla Asamuddin proved to be an incompetent teacher. Then the job was given to Maulana Bamzeed but he too failed to prove a worthy teacher, So, yet another tutor named Maulana Abdul Qadir was given the educational charge of Akbar.
But the youngman Akbar had some innate aversion to lettered learning. A psychological problem it could be. During that period child psychology and learning disorders were unheard of things, the teacher or the learner took all the blame for failure in educational exercise.
Abdul Qadir also failed and infact, no one could get Akbar learn letters. The boy just showed no interest in letters as if he saw devils in those crooked forms. He was more interested in pigeon flying, horse riding and the dogs. He may have taken to those activities as substitutes for consolation for whatever mental disorder was causing problem of his inability to recognise letter forms.
Humayun was greatly disappointed at disinterest shown by his son in learning letters. In this regard he even wrote a letter to Akbar—
‘Son, don’t idle away your time. It is no play time. It is time to learn letters, understand the written knowledge and do some gainful work.’
But the advice of the sire made little impact on Akbar. His aversion to studies continued. May be, no one could understand his problem. About this trait of Akbar, namely the aversion to learning letters, the historian Abul Fazal analysed in his own light in the following words—’His pious heart and pious soul never showed interest in the outer knowledge’.
But there was no doubt that Akbar had an intelligent brain, innate cleverness and capacity to imbibe knowledge from what he saw around and experienced practicaly.