Akbar of the Mughal Empire issued a decree in 1579 claiming broad authority in religious matters and promoted his own eclectic religion, which glorified the emperor as much as Islam and integrated many other beliefs from other religions.  

The Dīn-i Ilāhī was essentially an ethical system, prohibiting such sins as lust, sensuality, slander, and pride and enjoining the virtues of piety, prudence, abstinence, and kindness. The soul was encouraged to purify itself through yearning for God (a tenet of Sūfism, Islamic mysticism), celibacy was condoned (as in Catholicism), and the slaughter of animals was forbidden (as in Jainism). There were no sacred scriptures or a priestly hierarchy in the Dīn-i Ilāhī. In its ritual, it borrowed heavily from Zoroastrianism, making light (Sun and fire) an object of divine worship and reciting, as in Hinduism, the 1,000 Sanskrit names of the Sun.

In practice, however, the Dīn-i Ilāhī functioned as a personality cult contrived by Akbar around his own person. Members of the religion were handpicked by Akbar according to their devotion to him. Because the emperor styled himself a reformer of Islam, arriving on Earth almost 1,000 years after the Prophet Muhammad, there was some suggestion that he wished to be acknowledged as a prophet also. The ambiguous use of formula prayers (common among the Sūfīs) such as Allāhu akbar, “God is most great,” or perhaps “God is Akbar,” hinted at a divine association as well.

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