BPSC 70th CCE Re-exam Prelims General Studies · Question 64 of 142

Correct — D, Shams Siraj Afif. There is a complication in this question that the option list quietly removes. Two separate Persian chronicles of the Delhi Sultanate carry the title Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi: one by Ziauddin Barani, who served at the courts of Muhammad bin Tughlaq and Firuz Shah and whose work covers the Sultanate from Balban down to the early years of Firuz Shah's reign; and one by Shams-i-Siraj Afif, who wrote the fuller and more detailed narrative of Firuz Shah Tughlaq's reign itself, composed after Timur's invasion. Barani is not on this list, so the question resolves cleanly to Afif. His chronicle is the standard primary source for the Tughlaq period and is cited as such throughout modern scholarship — it was translated in Elliot and Dowson's History of India as Told by Its Own Historians, printed by the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1891, and it is Afif whom historians quote for details of Firuz Shah's administration, his canals, his new towns and even for the affairs of neighbouring kingdoms, as when he gives Shamsuddin Ilyas Shah of Bengal the style Shah-i-Bangalah. Each of the other three names is attached, equally firmly, to a different book — and one of those titles is close enough to this one to be the trap the setter intended.

• (a)Minhaj Siraj — Minhaj-i-Siraj Juzjani wrote the Tabaqat-i-Nasiri, an elaborate history of the Islamic world in Persian, named for and dedicated to Sultan Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud, the eighth Sultan of Delhi, at whose court he served. It is the principal source for the Slave dynasty — a century and more before Firuz Shah Tughlaq — and it is where the account of Razia Sultan and of Balban's early career comes from.
• (b)Isami — Abdul Malik Isami, born in 1311, wrote the Futuh-us-Salatin around 1350 — a poetic history, in verse rather than prose, of Muslim rule in India, composed in the Deccan and dedicated to the founder of the Bahmani kingdom. He wrote against the Tughlaqs rather than for them, which is the opposite of Afif's relationship to his subject.
• (c)Yahya Sarhindi — The deliberate near-miss. Yahya bin Ahmad Sirhindi, a fifteenth-century historian, wrote the Tarikh-i-Mubarak Shahi, a Persian chronicle of the Sayyid dynasty — a title with the same Tarikh-i-[ruler's name] Shahi construction, one dynasty later. Reading the second word rather than the shape of the title is what separates the two.

Almost everything known about the Delhi Sultanate comes from a small shelf of Persian chronicles written by men attached to the court, and prelims questions on this topic are really questions about that shelf. The essential list runs: Minhaj-i-Siraj's Tabaqat-i-Nasiri for the Slave dynasty; Amir Khusrau's poetical works, including the Khaza'in-ul-Futuh, for the Khaljis; Ziauddin Barani's Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi and Fatawa-i-Jahandari for the Khaljis and early Tughlaqs; Isami's Futuh-us-Salatin from the Deccan, in verse; Shams-i-Siraj Afif's Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi for Firuz Shah Tughlaq; and Yahya bin Ahmad Sirhindi's Tarikh-i-Mubarak Shahi for the Sayyids. Alongside them stand the travel accounts, above all Ibn Battuta's Rihla. These are court histories written for patrons, so they are not neutral — Barani was an orthodox Sunni who judged the Sultans against the sharia and complained that they legislated on their own authority, and Isami wrote from the rival Bahmani court. Reading them as evidence means knowing who paid for each one.

Two title-conventions solve most questions of this kind. First, Persian chronicles are usually named after the ruler who was reigning or being honoured, not after the period they cover — Tabaqat-i-Nasiri for Nasir-ud-Din, Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi for Firuz Shah, Tarikh-i-Mubarak Shahi for Mubarak Shah of the Sayyids. So the second word of a title tells you the dynasty. Second, a title can be shared: two authors wrote a Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi, so the safe habit is to check which of the two candidates is actually on the option list. Here Barani is absent, which is the setter's way of making the question answerable. Build the shelf in your memory as author-title-dynasty triples rather than as isolated names, because both BPSC and UPSC ask it in every direction: give the book and ask the author, give the author and ask the patron, or ask what a named chronicler thought about the state he served.

• Two chronicles are titled Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi: Ziauddin Barani's, covering the Sultanate from Balban to the early years of Firuz Shah, and Shams-i-Siraj Afif's, the detailed history of Firuz Shah Tughlaq's own reign.
• Minhaj-i-Siraj Juzjani wrote the Tabaqat-i-Nasiri, dedicated to Sultan Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud, the eighth Sultan of Delhi — the principal source for the Slave dynasty.
• Abdul Malik Isami, born 1311, wrote the Futuh-us-Salatin around 1350, a verse history of Muslim rule in India composed in the Deccan under Bahmani patronage.
• Yahya bin Ahmad Sirhindi, a fifteenth-century historian, wrote the Tarikh-i-Mubarak Shahi, the Persian chronicle of the Sayyid dynasty.
• Afif's Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi was printed by the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1891 and translated in Elliot and Dowson's History of India as Told by Its Own Historians; it remains the standard primary source for Firuz Shah Tughlaq's reign.

• Reading only the first word of a Persian title. Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi and Tarikh-i-Mubarak Shahi differ by the ruler's name, and that name identifies the dynasty.
• Forgetting that Barani also wrote a Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi. Check whether he is on the option list before answering — here he is not, which is what makes Afif the only possible choice.
• Attributing the Tabaqat-i-Nasiri to the wrong century. It belongs to the Slave dynasty and Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud, not to the Tughlaqs.

BPSC asks the book-and-author pair flat, with all four options drawn from the same century so that no option can be eliminated on period alone. UPSC comes at the same shelf sideways — who Abdul Hamid Lahori was, why Barani refused to call the Sultanate a truly Islamic state — testing what a chronicler thought and whom he served rather than which book carries his name.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The 'Tabaqat-i-Nasiri' was written by

  • (a)Ziauddin Barani
  • (b)Minhaj-i-Siraj Juzjani
  • (c)Amir Khusrau
  • (d)Abdul Malik Isami

  Answer(b) Minhaj-i-Siraj Juzjani — an elaborate Persian history named for and dedicated to Sultan Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud, and the principal source for the Slave dynasty.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The 'Futuh-us-Salatin', a verse history of Muslim rule in India composed around 1350, was written by

  • (a)Shams-i-Siraj Afif
  • (b)Yahya bin Ahmad Sirhindi
  • (c)Abdul Malik Isami
  • (d)Ziauddin Barani

  Answer(c) Abdul Malik Isami — written in the Deccan under Bahmani patronage, and unusual among Sultanate chronicles for being in verse rather than prose.