Which of the following departments of Delhi Sultanate was reorganized by Balban?

Correct — B. Diwan-i-arz was the military department of the Delhi Sultanate, and rebuilding the army was Balban's central project.

He reorganised it under a separate ariz-i-mumalik, kept it out of the finance minister's control, and used it to muster, pay and inspect troops directly instead of leaving that to iqta holders.

The same instinct runs through the rest of his reign - a hard line against rebellion and a network of news-writers reporting straight to the sultan.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  Diwan-i-Mustakhraj — Diwan-i-mustakhraj belongs to Alauddin Khalji, a later dynasty. He set it up to recover arrears from revenue collectors, not to run the army.
• (c)
  Diwan-i-Ishtiaq — Diwan-i-Ishtiaq, as the paper spells it, names no department Balban is credited with. The sultanate's standing diwans were wizarat, arz, insha and risalat.
• (d)
  Diwan-i-Risalat — Historians read diwan-i-risalat differently - foreign correspondence for some, religious and charitable matters for others - but on no reading was it the military department.

The Delhi Sultanate ran on diwans, departments each under a named officer.

The four that recur are wizarat (finance, under the wazir), arz (military, under the ariz-i-mumalik), insha (royal correspondence) and risalat.

Later sultans added their own. Alauddin Khalji created diwan-i-mustakhraj for revenue arrears, and Firoz Shah Tughlaq created diwan-i-khairat for charity. So the safest way to answer these items is to fix each department to the ruler who created or remade it.

Key facts

• Diwan-i-arz was the military department of the Delhi Sultanate, headed by the ariz-i-mumalik.
• Balban reorganised the military department and kept it free of the finance minister's control.
• Diwan-i-mustakhraj was created by Alauddin Khalji to realise arrears of revenue.
• Balban ruled from 1266 to 1287 and enforced the court practices of sijda and paibos to raise the sultan's prestige.

Common traps

• Matching arz to land revenue because it sounds like arazi.
• Handing Alauddin Khalji's new departments to Balban when they belong to a later dynasty.
• Assuming every name beginning diwan-i- is a real department. One option here is not.

No directly related past PYQ was found.