In 1571 Akbar moved twenty-six miles from Agra to Fatehpur Sikri, a newly built city that would be his capital until 1585. During his fifteen year residence at Fatehpur Sikri Akbar directed major conquests and surmounted his most dangerous political crisis. Akbar employed the design and construction of Fatehpur Sikri to symbolize, in those early years, the regime's Islamic foundation. As Akbar's piety and reverence for the leading imperial jurists of the day declined, tension between him and the men learned in the sacred law of Islam, the ulema grew into a full-blown political conflict. Partly as a result of this struggle, Akbar formulated a new, broad-based political appeal centered on a radically new dynastic ideology. Akbar stayed on in Lahore for thirteen years in a successful effort to clamp imperial Mughal power over the entire northwest. The builder of the Mughal Empire was undoubtedly a superb military commander in a generally bellicose society.