Mir Adal
Chief justice of Akbar the Great

Syed Muhammad Naqvi held a prominent judicial position (Mir-i-Adl) in the court of Akbar the Great; but he was not the Chief Justice (Qazi-ul-Quzzat), contrary to common misconception. Born at Amroha around 1500, Syed Muhammad was educated at Amroha, Sambhal (the then provincial capital), and Badaun. He was very pious and conservative, which put him at odds with the growing liberalism of the Emperor. Presumably due to this, after serving the court at Agra from 1558/1559 to 1576-1577, he was shunted to Bakkar (Sindh) as its governor. His most notable contributions in this capacity were implementing tax reforms and overcoming a rebellion at Sibi (now in Baluchistan). The force that conquered Sibi fort from the rebels was led by Syed Muhammad’s son, Abul Fazl, and also included his two other sons, Syed Abul Maoli and Syed Abul Qasim. Syed Muhammad died at Bakkar in 1578/1579.
“Mir Adal” enters the record as chief justice of Akbar the Great. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Adal, Chief and justice can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 19, 2023. The linked authority identifier is Q6872000. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1500, 1558, 1559 and 1576.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mir Adal” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.