The Mughals, the Sufi Shaikhs and the Formation of the Akbari Dispensation.

An essay is presented on the political relationship between the Mughal tribe and the Indian Chishti and Central Asian Naqshbandi sufi orders during the sixteenth century. It offers an examination of the growth of Mughal power in India as supported or hindered by the Chishtis under Ubaid Allah Ahrar and the Naqshbandis under Khwaja Baqi Billah. The politics of the Islamic scholar Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi, who died in 1624, are also considered.