Identify the wrong pairs.
(a) Abdul Samad - Famous painter
(b) Takhte Taus - Peacock throne
(c) Prince Azam Shah - Bahamani ruler
(d) Bibi ka Makbara - Memorial of Dilras Bano

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — option (1), 'Only (c)'. Note first what the stem is asking: the word 'wrong' is printed in bold, so the item wants the pairs that are INCORRECT, and every statement you can vouch for has to be left out of the answer rather than put into it. Taking the four printed pairs in turn: (a) Abdul Samad – Famous painter is a correct pair, because Khwaja Abdus Samad was a Persian master painter who came to India in Humayun's time and headed the imperial atelier under Akbar, where the vast illustrated Hamzanama was produced; he was honoured with the title Shirin Qalam, 'sweet pen', and later held administrative office as well. (b) Takhte Taus – Peacock throne is a correct pair, since taus is simply the Persian word for peacock: the Takht-i-Taus was the jewelled throne commissioned by Shah Jahan, and it was carried off by Nadir Shah after the sack of Delhi in 1739. (d) Bibi ka Makbara – Memorial of Dilras Bano is a correct pair: the mausoleum at Aurangabad, now Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, was raised in memory of Dilras Banu Begum, Aurangzeb's wife, who bore the title Rabia-ud-Daurani, and its resemblance to the Taj Mahal has earned it the name 'Taj of the Deccan'. That leaves (c) Prince Azam Shah – Bahamani ruler, and it is plainly wrong: Muhammad Azam Shah was a Mughal prince, the son of Aurangzeb, who briefly claimed the throne on his father's death in 1707 and was defeated by his brother at Jajau. He has nothing to do with the Bahmani sultanate, a fifteenth-century Deccan power founded by Alauddin Hasan Bahman Shah in 1347 with its capitals at Gulbarga and later Bidar. Only pair (c) is wrong, so option (1) is the answer. The question also contains its own cross-check: it was Azam Shah who built the Bibi ka Maqbara for his mother, so a candidate who is confident about (d) already knows that the man in (c) was a Mughal.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) This option condemns two pairs that are both correct. Abdul Samad genuinely was a painter — one of the two Persian masters, with Mir Sayyid Ali, who founded the Mughal atelier under Humayun and Akbar — and the Bibi ka Maqbara genuinely is the memorial of Dilras Banu Begum. Choosing it usually means the candidate has read the stem as asking for the CORRECT pairs and then reversed the answer imperfectly, or has failed to notice the bold 'wrong' altogether; it also misses that the only false statement in the set, (c), is not even included here.  (c) Takht-i-Taus is the Persian name of Shah Jahan's Peacock Throne — taus means peacock — and the Bibi ka Maqbara is Dilras Banu Begum's memorial, so both pairs in this option are correct and neither belongs in an answer to a 'wrong pairs' question. This option is aimed at a candidate who is unsure of the Persian word and suspects that a term that sounds unfamiliar must be the trap. It is worth remembering that MPSC often prints a transliterated Persian or Arabic term precisely to see whether the candidate knows its meaning rather than only its fame.  (d) This is the most attractive wrong answer, because it correctly identifies (c) as a false pair and then adds one pair too many. Statement (d) is true: the Bibi ka Maqbara at Aurangabad was built in memory of Dilras Banu Begum, titled Rabia-ud-Daurani. Anyone who picks this option has spotted the real error but has doubted the attribution of the tomb — perhaps because they associate the monument with Aurangzeb rather than with his wife, or with his son Azam Shah who commissioned it. In negative questions of this format, adding a true statement to the answer is as fatal as omitting the false one.

Concept: Three separate strands of medieval Indian history are being tested in one set of four lines, and the trap in each case is a category error rather than an unknown fact. Abdul Samad tests whether the candidate can place a name in the right profession — the Mughal atelier's founders were Persian painters recruited by Humayun during his exile. Takht-i-Taus tests whether a Persian term is understood rather than merely recognised. Prince Azam Shah tests whether Mughal princes and Deccan sultans are kept in separate compartments: the Bahmani sultanate of 1347–1527, with its capitals at Gulbarga and Bidar, precedes the Mughal presence in the Deccan by more than a century and belongs to a different dynastic world altogether, one whose fragments — Ahmadnagar, Bijapur, Golconda, Bidar, Berar — were what the Mughals eventually absorbed. Bibi ka Maqbara tests the ability to attach a monument to the person buried in it rather than to the emperor of the day.

State PCS 2024 Q8 — History PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q8 — History PYQ with Answer