MPSC 2026 Prelims Paper-I · Question 13 of 100

Correct — option (1): (a)-(iv), (b)-(i), (c)-(ii), (d)-(iii). Take the pair that needs no thought first. Ibn Battuta, the Moroccan traveller who reached India in the 1330s, was made qazi of Delhi by Muhammad bin Tughlaq and was later sent as the Sultan's envoy towards China, wrote the Rihla — printed here as Kitab-ur-Rahlah, literally the book of the journey. Only one of the four options contains that pair, and the item is therefore settled by a single recall: option (1). The remaining three pairs confirm it. Ziauddin Barani, who served at the courts of Muhammad bin Tughlaq and Firuz Shah Tughlaq, wrote two works the syllabus cares about — the Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi, a narrative history, and the Fatawa-i-Jahandari, printed here as Fatwa-e-Janhadari, which is not a chronicle at all but a treatise on the principles of government, a book of political advice on how a sultan should rule. Khwaja Abu Malik Isami wrote the Futuh-us-Salatin in 1350, a verse history of the Muslim rulers of India composed in the Deccan and dedicated to Bahman Shah, the founder of the Bahmani kingdom — which gives this apparently north-Indian list a direct Deccan connection worth remembering for a Maharashtra paper. Ahmad Yadgar's Tarikh-i-Salatin-i-Afghana, printed here as Tariq-e-Salatin Afgana, is a history of the Afghan sultans, that is of the Lodi and Sur rulers, and so belongs to the end of the Sultanate period rather than to its middle. Two things are worth noticing about the printed page. The English column drops the 'kh' from Tarikh and transposes letters in Jahandari, while the Marathi column prints both correctly, so a candidate reading only the English is matching against damaged titles. And the answer to the whole item is available from one pair, which is why scanning the options for your strongest recall beats reading them in order.

• (2)(a) - (i), (b) - (ii), (c) - (iii), (d) - (iv) — The tidy straight-down permutation, wrong on every pair. It gives Barani the Futuh-us-Salatin, Isami the Rihla, Ibn Battuta the history of the Afghan sultans and Ahmad Yadgar the Fatawa-i-Jahandari. The third pair is the absurd one and the fastest kill: Ibn Battuta was a Moroccan traveller of the fourteenth century who left India before the Afghan dynasties existed, so a history of the Lodi and Sur sultans cannot be his. Options that run (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) in order are a standing feature of matching questions and are marked more often than they deserve, because the eye reads order as correctness.
• (3)(a) - (ii), (b) - (iii), (c) - (iv), (d) - (i) — Also wrong throughout. Barani is given the Rihla, Isami the Afghan history, Ibn Battuta the Fatawa-i-Jahandari and Ahmad Yadgar the Futuh-us-Salatin. The first pair alone disposes of it, since the Rihla is a travel narrative by a foreign visitor and Barani was a court official at Delhi writing about the sultans he served. A useful check on any option in this area is the type of work: a traveller's account, a court chronicle, a treatise of political advice and a dynastic history are four different kinds of book, and an option that hands a genre to the wrong kind of author is wrong without any need to recall the title.
• (4)(a) - (iii), (b) - (iv), (c) - (i), (d) - (ii) — Every pair displaced again: Barani takes the Afghan history, Isami the Fatawa-i-Jahandari, Ibn Battuta the Futuh-us-Salatin and Ahmad Yadgar the Rihla. Two of these are chronologically impossible. Barani wrote in the middle of the fourteenth century, well before the Lodis, and Ahmad Yadgar wrote of the Afghan sultans and cannot be the fourteenth-century Moroccan traveller. Anchoring a matching column in time before matching it by title is the discipline that makes this option collapse without any specialised knowledge — three of the four names belong to the fourteenth century and one does not.

The Delhi Sultanate is known almost entirely through Persian writing, and the syllabus expects a candidate to distinguish the kinds of writing rather than merely list the titles. Court chronicles form the largest group: Minhaj-us-Siraj's Tabaqat-i-Nasiri for the early sultans, Amir Khusrau's verse histories, Ziauddin Barani's Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi, Shams-i-Siraj Afif's continuation of the same title, and Yahya Sirhindi's Tarikh-i-Mubarak Shahi. A second kind is the treatise of political advice, of which Barani's Fatawa-i-Jahandari is the classic instance — a statement of how a sultan ought to govern, not a record of what happened. A third is the travel account, dominated by Ibn Battuta's Rihla, which is valuable precisely because an outsider notices what a court historian takes for granted: prices, roads, the postal system, court ceremonial and the sultan's temperament. A fourth is dynastic history written afterwards, such as Ahmad Yadgar's account of the Afghan sultans. Isami's Futuh-us-Salatin belongs to a fifth category, verse history written outside Delhi, and its dedication to Bahman Shah ties the north Indian story to the founding of the Bahmani kingdom in the Deccan.

Two techniques answer this item, and the second is worth more than the first. The technique of the moment is to find the pair you cannot get wrong — Ibn Battuta and the Rihla — and scan the four options for it, because only one of them contains it and no further work is needed. The technique of the year is to classify the column by genre before matching. A travel account, a court chronicle, a treatise of political advice and a later dynastic history are four different kinds of book, written by four different kinds of person for four different purposes, and once the column is sorted that way most wrong options announce themselves. A third habit is chronological: three of the four authors here belong to the fourteenth century and one writes about the Afghan sultans of the fifteenth and sixteenth, so any option that gives a fourteenth-century figure the Afghan history is impossible. Finally, note the state of the printed titles. The English column prints Tarikh as 'Tariq' and Jahandari as 'Janhadari', while the Marathi column has both right, which is a standing reason on this booklet to read the Marathi names even if you are answering in English.

• Ziauddin Barani served at the courts of Muhammad bin Tughlaq and Firuz Shah Tughlaq and wrote both the Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi, a narrative history, and the Fatawa-i-Jahandari, a treatise on the principles of government rather than a chronicle of events.
• Ibn Battuta, the Moroccan traveller, arrived in India in the 1330s, was appointed qazi of Delhi by Muhammad bin Tughlaq and was later despatched as the Sultan's envoy towards China; his account is the Rihla, the book of the journey.
• Khwaja Abu Malik Isami composed the Futuh-us-Salatin in 1350, a verse history of the Muslim rulers of India written in the Deccan and dedicated to Bahman Shah, the founder of the Bahmani kingdom — the Deccan link in an otherwise Delhi-centred list.
• Ahmad Yadgar's Tarikh-i-Salatin-i-Afghana is a history of the Afghan sultans, that is of the Lodi and Sur rulers, and therefore belongs to the closing phase of the Sultanate rather than to the fourteenth century of the other three authors.
• The principal Persian sources for the Sultanate divide into court chronicles such as the Tabaqat-i-Nasiri and the Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi, treatises of political advice, travel accounts, and later dynastic histories — a classification that answers most matching questions in this area without recall of individual titles.

• Marking the straight-down (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) permutation because it looks orderly; it is wrong on every pair here and is one of the commonest distractor shapes in matching questions
• Treating the Fatawa-i-Jahandari as a chronicle — it is Barani's treatise on how a sultan ought to govern, and confusing it with his Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi is the standard error about this author
• Ignoring chronology: a fourteenth-century writer cannot be the author of a history of the Afghan sultans, which disposes of two options here before any title is recalled
• Reading only the English column, which prints Tarikh as 'Tariq' and Jahandari as 'Janhadari' while the Marathi column has both correct

MPSC asks the Sultanate almost entirely through its sources — author-and-work matching, drawn from a pool of perhaps a dozen pairs that recurs across editions — and it will usually include one name with a Deccan connection, as Isami is here, because the Bahmani kingdom is where the Sultanate story enters Maharashtra's own history. UPSC asks the same period for institutions and evaluation: the iqta system, the market controls of Alauddin Khalji, the reasoning behind Muhammad bin Tughlaq's projects, and what a particular source reveals about the state. The shared ground is the list of chronicles; the difference is that MPSC wants the pairing and UPSC wants to know what the chronicle is evidence for. Learning each source with a one-line note on its genre and its bias serves both, and the genre note is what makes the matching items fast.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Fatawa-i-Jahandari, composed by Ziauddin Barani, is best described as which one of the following kinds of work ?

  • (a)A narrative chronicle of the reign of Firuz Shah Tughlaq
  • (b)A treatise setting out the principles on which a sultan ought to govern
  • (c)A traveller's account of the cities and roads of the Sultanate
  • (d)A verse history of the Muslim rulers of India composed in the Deccan

  Answer(b) A treatise setting out the principles on which a sultan ought to govern — a work of political advice rather than a record of events. Barani's narrative history is the separate Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi; the traveller's account is Ibn Battuta's Rihla; and the verse history composed in the Deccan is Isami's Futuh-us-Salatin, dedicated to the founder of the Bahmani kingdom.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Isami's Futuh-us-Salatin, a verse history of the Muslim rulers of India completed in 1350, was dedicated to which of the following rulers ?

  • (a)Muhammad bin Tughlaq
  • (b)Firuz Shah Tughlaq
  • (c)Bahman Shah of the Bahmani kingdom
  • (d)Alauddin Khalji

  Answer(c) Bahman Shah of the Bahmani kingdom — Isami wrote in the Deccan and dedicated the work to the founder of the newly independent Bahmani state, which is why the book is important evidence for the break of the Deccan from Delhi in the middle of the fourteenth century. Muhammad bin Tughlaq was the ruler against whose authority that break occurred.