ingdom in Kabul. For they knew from their
adherents in {67} India that Hemu was preparing to supplement the
occupation of Delhi by the conquest of the Punjab. To be beforehand
with him, to transfer the initiative to themselves, always a great
matter with Asiatics, was almost a necessity to secure success. Akbar
marched then from Jalandhar in October, and crossing the Sutlej,
gained the town of Sirhind. There he was joined by Tardi Beg and the
nobles who had been defeated by Hemu under the walls of Delhi. The
circumstances which followed their arrival sowed in the heart of
Akbar the first seeds of revolt against the licence of power assumed
by his Atalik. Tardi Beg was a Turki nobleman, who, in the contest
between Humayun and his brothers, had more than once shifted his
allegiance, but he had finally enrolled himself as a partisan of the
father of Akbar. When Humayun died, it was Tardi Beg who by his tact
and loyalty succeeded in arranging for the bloodless succession of
Akbar, though a son of Kamran was in Delhi at the time. After his
defeat by Hemu, he had, it is true, in the opinion of some of the
other nobles, too hastily evacuated Delhi; but an error in tactics is
not a crime, and he had at least brought a powerful reinforcement to
Akbar in Sirhind. But there had ever been jealousy between Bairam
Khan and Tardi Beg. This jealousy was increased in the heart of
Bairam by religious differences, for Bairam belonged to the Shi'ah
division of the Muhammadan creed, and Tardi Beg was a Sunni. On the
arrival of the latter at Sirhind, then, Bairam summoned him to his
tent {68} and had him assassinated.[1] Akbar was greatly displeased
at this act of violence, and Bairam did not succeed in justifying
himself. It may be inferred that he excused himself on the ground
that such an act was necessary, in the interests of discipline, to
secure the proper subordination of the nobles.

[Footnote 1: Vide Dowson's Sir Henry Elliot's _History of India as
told by its own Historians_, vol. v. page 251 and note. The only
historian who states that Akbar gave a 'kind of permission' to this
atrocious deed is Badauni. He is practically contradicted by Abulfazl
and Ferishta. In Blochmann's admirable edition of the _Ain-i-Akbari_,
p. 315, the story is repeated as told by Badauni, but the translator
adds the words: 'Akbar was displeased. Bairam's hasty act was one of
the chief causes of the distrust with which the Chagatai nobles
looked upon him.'