Match List – I with List – II and select the correct answer from the code given below the lists.
List – I (Building)
A. Sultan garhi
B. Red Palace
C. Jamat Khana Masjid
D. Dhai Din Ka Jhopra
List – II

Question

Match List – I with List – II and select the correct answer from the code given below the lists.
List – I (Building)
A. Sultan garhi
B. Red Palace
C. Jamat Khana Masjid
D. Dhai Din Ka Jhopra
List – II (Builders)
1. Alauddin Khilji
2. Qutbuddin Aibak
3. Iltutmish
4. Balban
Code :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — C, A-3, B-4, C-1, D-2. Taking the four buildings in turn: SULTAN GHARI in Delhi was raised by ILTUTMISH in 1231 as the tomb of his eldest son, Prince Nasiruddin Mahmud, and is reckoned the first monumental Islamic tomb built in India (A-3). The RED PALACE, the Lal Mahal of Delhi, is attributed to BALBAN — the standard Delhi topographies, such as Hearn's The Seven Cities of Delhi, refer to it simply as 'the Red Palace of Balban' (B-4). The JAMAT KHANA MASJID at the dargah of Shaikh Nizamuddin Auliya in Delhi belongs to the reign of ALAUDDIN KHALJI: its central hall and dome were completed in 1312–13, built by his son Khizr Khan, who was a follower of the saint — so the pairing is right at the level of reign and dynastic patronage, with the son as the immediate builder (C-1). And the DHAI DIN KA JHOPRA at Ajmer was commissioned by QUTBUDDIN AIBAK in 1192 and completed by 1199, to a design by Abu Bakr of Herat; Iltutmish later added its celebrated screen of engrailed arches in 1213, but the building itself is Aibak's (D-2). One honest caveat: of the four attributions, the Red Palace is the thinnest in the surviving record — there is no modern monograph on it, and the Balban attribution rests on the older topographical literature rather than on an inscription.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) The near-miss. It gets Sultan Ghari–Iltutmish and Red Palace–Balban right, then swaps the last two: it gives the Jamat Khana Masjid to Qutbuddin Aibak, who died in 1210 — a full century before that mosque was built — and the Dhai Din ka Jhopra to Alauddin Khalji, whose reign (1296–1316) began roughly a century after the Ajmer mosque was finished. Both errors are chronologically impossible.  (b) Wrong at all four positions. It combines the inversion of (d) at the top — Sultan Ghari given to Balban and the Red Palace to Iltutmish — with the inversion of (a) at the bottom. Sultan Ghari is dated 1231, within Iltutmish's reign and decades before Balban took the throne in 1266, so the first pair alone rules this out.  (d) The mirror of (a): it gets the last two pairs right and inverts the first two, handing Sultan Ghari to Balban and the Red Palace to Iltutmish. Sultan Ghari carries a date of 1231 and was built for Iltutmish's own son, so it cannot belong to a sultan who ruled thirty-five years later.

Concept: These four buildings map the first century and a quarter of Indo-Islamic architecture in India, and each marks a step. Qutbuddin Aibak's generation (1190s) built fast and from spoil: at Ajmer, the Dhai Din ka Jhopra rose on the site of a Sanskrit college using material from dismantled temples, and its arches were corbelled — courses of stone stepped inward — because the true radiating arch was not yet in the masons' repertoire. Iltutmish's reign added two things: the screen of engrailed arches he set across the Ajmer prayer hall in 1213, and the idea of the monumental tomb, which Sultan Ghari introduced to India in 1231. By the Khalji period the true arch and true dome were fully naturalised, and the Jamat Khana Masjid at Nizamuddin shows the mature idiom — built as a mosque from the ground up rather than assembled from re-used parts.

State PCS 2022 Q44 — Art & Culture PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2022 Q44 — Art & Culture PYQ with Answer