In Fatehpur Sikri the ulema seemed not to have anticipated the undercurrents rippling below the smooth sandstone pathways of the palaces and courtyards. They had perhaps not understood that for the Timurids, the Islamic sharia was never as binding a force as it was in other Islamic kingdoms and that there remained the companionable presence of Chenghiz Khan’s yassa laws, and their pre-Islamic guiding spirits. The yassa advised the ruler ‘to consider all sects as one and not to distinguish one from another’.
