ABUL FAZL  ,

wazir and historiographer of the great Mogul emperor, Akbar, was born in the year A.D . 1551 . His career as a minister of state, brilliant though it was, would probably have been by this time forgotten but for the record he himself has left of it in his celebrated history . The Akbar Nameh, or Book of Akbar, as Abul Fazl's chief literary work, written in Persian, is called, consists of two parts—the first being a complete history of Akbar's reign and the second, entitled Ain-i-Akbari, or Institutes of Akbar, being an account of the religious and political constitution and administration of the empire . The style is singularly elegant, and the contents of the second part possess a unique and lasting interest . An excellent translation of the Ain by Francis Gladwin was published in Calcutta, 1783-1786 . It was reprinted in London very inaccurately, and copies of the original edition are now exceedingly rare and correspondingly valuable . It was also translated by Professor Blockmann in 1848 . Abul Fazl died by the hand of an assassin, while returning from a mission to the Deccan in 1602 . 'The murderer was instigated by Prince Selim, afterwards Jahangir, who had become jealous of the minister's influence .