The study of pre-modern albums (Pers. muraqqa') from the Islamic World is particularly suited to a panel highlighting a museum's holdings in Islamic Painting. For, akin to museums, albums themselves are collations of fragments often from larger works, forming new wholes that reflect the individual tastes of their patrons or even serve as manuals with exemplars of calligraphic or other stylistic achievements. In the latter case, they had often "set a standard" in their own times and later for excellence in some aspect of the painted medium. The San Diego Museum of Art's manuscripts and individual folios dating to the second millennium CE, including South Asia's Mughal empire (1526-1858), constitute a stellar and unparalleled collection that indeed sets a standard for collecting in our times. As such, by bringing together examples of an inherently fragmentary ethos, the SDMA collection provides scholars with a rare opportunity to analyze the enigmatic and even frustrating practice among early modern elites of collating albums. This paper will address the question of whether the emperor Akbar (r. 1555-1605) - the best known of South Asia's Mughal emperors for his serious statesmanship, ecumenical religious policies, successful military campaigns, and extensive architectural patronage - was himself a patron of albums. Relying on works in the SDMA collection, and building on the work of David J. Roxburgh, Molly Aitken and Elaine Wright (among others), the paper will propose that, yes, the Emperor did approve of albums. The paper will begin by defining (as much as possible) the album in the Mughal context, and also highlight its reception and treatment in scholarship. The paper will contribute to the current rethinking of the significance of albums in the early modern context, suggesting that a scholarly misunderstanding of the album's importance is precisely what led to the question, "Did the emperor Akbar approve of albumsa"