Which one of the following works was written by Ziauddin Barani?
- (a)Tarikh-i-Mubarak Shahi
- (b)Fatawa-i-Jahandari
- (c)Zain-ul-Akhbar
- (d)Tarikh-i-Muhammadi
Correct — B, Fatawa-i-Jahandari.
Ziauddin Barani served in the court of Muhammad bin Tughlaq and wrote under Firoz Shah Tughlaq. He is known above all for two books: the narrative history Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi, and Fatawa-i-Jahandari, a treatise on how a sultan ought to rule.
Despite the word Fatawa, the second book is political counsel rather than a digest of court judgments. Barani casts it as advice attributed to Mahmud of Ghazni, borrowing a revered ruler's voice to press his own case for a rigidly Islamic, hierarchical kingship.
The thing to carry away is the pairing itself: Barani wrote both Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi and Fatawa-i-Jahandari. If a question strips away the famous title, the second one still has to be there.
- (a)Tarikh-i-Mubarak Shahi — This chronicle is the work of Yahya bin Ahmad Sirhindi, who named it for Mubarak Shah of the Sayyid dynasty and brought the account of Delhi down to the 1430s.
That places it about three-quarters of a century after Barani was writing. A history dedicated to a Sayyid sultan belongs to a later generation of chroniclers than the Tughlaq courtier who wrote Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi.
- (c)Zain-ul-Akhbar — This is the general history compiled by Abu Said Gardizi in the eleventh century in the Ghaznavid realm, valued as an early Persian source on the lands and peoples of Central Asia and India.
Its date sits about three centuries before Barani and outside the Delhi Sultanate chronicle tradition he belongs to, so the two cannot be the same hand.
- (d)Tarikh-i-Muhammadi — This is the Persian history completed in AD 1438 by Muhammad Bihamad Khani, whose family was established at Kalpi. Its most-used section covers Firoz Shah Tughlaq, his successors and the minor kingdoms from AD 1351 to AD 1438.
The shared subject matter makes the title easy to slide onto Barani. But Barani's own history closes in the opening years of Firoz Shah's reign, decades before 1438.
Medieval Indian history is reconstructed largely from Persian chronicles, and each chronicle is tied to a named author, a patron and a stretch of time. Knowing who wrote what is the basic key to using any of them.
Ziauddin Barani sits at the centre of that tradition. He wrote as an insider of the Tughlaq court, and he produced two different kinds of book: a narrative history of the sultans, and a work of political theory.
Barani is read both as a source and as an argument. His narrative supplies much of what is known about Balban, the Khaljis and the early Tughlaqs, while Fatawa-i-Jahandari sets out the kind of state he wanted the sultanate to be.
That is why one name carries two very different titles, and why an attribution question can be built around either of them.
- Ziauddin Barani served under Muhammad bin Tughlaq and completed his history in the reign of Firoz Shah Tughlaq, after whom it is named.
- Barani's Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi takes up the narrative from the accession of Balban, continuing from where Minhaj-us-Siraj's Tabaqat-i-Nasiri stops.
- Fatawa-i-Jahandari is a treatise of political counsel on kingship, presented as advice attributed to Mahmud of Ghazni.
- A second, separate Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi was written by Shams-i-Siraj Afif and deals with the reign of Firoz Shah Tughlaq.
- Tarikh-i-Mubarak Shahi was written by Yahya bin Ahmad Sirhindi and is named after Mubarak Shah of the Sayyid dynasty.
- Zain-ul-Akhbar was compiled by Abu Said Gardizi in the eleventh century in the Ghaznavid realm.
- Tarikh-i-Muhammadi was completed in AD 1438 by Muhammad Bihamad Khani; its most-used section runs from AD 1351 to AD 1438.
The two highlighted titles are Barani's; the other three were written by different authors, ranging from the eleventh-century Ghaznavid world to fifteenth-century north India.
- The title Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi belongs to a book by Barani and also to one by Shams-i-Siraj Afif. Attaching Afif's book to Barani, or the reverse, turns a remembered author into a wrong one.
- Barani's best-known title is Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi. When that title is absent from the options, as here, the second work has to be retrieved on its own.
- The word Fatawa suggests a compilation of legal rulings, which can make the correct option look like the work of a jurist rather than of a court historian.
- Two options here open with Tarikh-i-, and Barani's own famous title also opens that way. Picking on the sound of the prefix rather than on the author lands on the wrong Tarikh.
- Many Sultanate chronicles are named for a patron rather than their author — Tarikh-i-Mubarak Shahi for Mubarak Shah, Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi for Firoz Shah — so a title is not a signature. Others, such as Zain-ul-Akhbar, are simply descriptive.
The idea appears as a straight author-and-work pairing: a title is named and the author asked for, or an author is named and the work asked for. Match-the-pairs versions set four chroniclers against four titles at once.
Harder versions move past attribution to content — what kind of book Fatawa-i-Jahandari is, whose reign a chronicle covers, or which earlier work a given chronicle continues.
HPSC_2019_PRE_GSII_Q162019Same author, approached from the other side: that item pairs Ziauddin Barani with Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi inside a four-way match alongside Abul Fazl, Badauni and Abdul Hamid Lahori. The UKPSC item drops the matching frame and asks for Barani's other title, so a candidate who stored only the Firoz Shahi pairing is not carried through.
UKPSC_2021_PRE_GSI_Q1442021The same paper slot of the same commission in an earlier year, and the same habit of holding a title together with its facts, but the unknown differs. That item names Rammohan Roy's 'Gift to Monotheists' and asks for its language; this one names an author and asks for his work, from the Sultanate rather than the nineteenth century.
RPSC_2016_MAINS_PaperI_Q32016Overlaps on the subject — Persian works produced at an Indian Muslim court — but differs in period and in format. It is a mains short-answer on Persian writing under Akbar, where this is a one-title attribution from the Tughlaq period; Barani answers this item and not that one.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Which historian's Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi opens with the accession of Balban and continues the narrative of the Tabaqat-i-Nasiri?
- (a)Minhaj-us-Siraj
- (b)Ziauddin Barani
- (c)Shams-i-Siraj Afif
- (d)Amir Khusrau
Answerb — Barani's Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi begins at Balban's accession and is written as a continuation of the Tabaqat-i-Nasiri, carrying the account into Firoz Shah Tughlaq's reign.(a) Minhaj-us-Siraj wrote the Tabaqat-i-Nasiri itself, the work being continued, not its sequel. (c) Shams-i-Siraj Afif wrote a separate Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi devoted to Firoz Shah Tughlaq's own reign.
(d) Amir Khusrau was a poet associated with the Khalji and early Tughlaq courts, known for works such as Khazain-ul-Futuh.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Zain-ul-Akhbar, an eleventh-century Persian general history, was compiled by
- (a)Abu Said Gardizi
- (b)Yahya bin Ahmad Sirhindi
- (c)Ziauddin Barani
- (d)Muhammad Bihamad Khani
Answera — Zain-ul-Akhbar was compiled by Abu Said Gardizi in the Ghaznavid realm in the eleventh century.(b) Yahya bin Ahmad Sirhindi wrote Tarikh-i-Mubarak Shahi, named for the Sayyid sultan Mubarak Shah. (c) Ziauddin Barani wrote Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi and Fatawa-i-Jahandari at the Tughlaq court.
(d) Muhammad Bihamad Khani completed Tarikh-i-Muhammadi in AD 1438, three to four centuries after Gardizi.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Fatawa-i-Jahandari is best described as
- (a)a digest of judicial rulings compiled for the qazis of the Delhi Sultanate
- (b)a treatise on the ideals of kingship, framed as counsel attributed to Mahmud of Ghazni
- (c)a court chronicle of the reign of Firoz Shah Tughlaq
- (d)a manual of revenue administration prepared under Alauddin Khalji
Answerb — Barani's Fatawa-i-Jahandari argues how a sultan ought to govern, and puts that argument in the mouth of Mahmud of Ghazni as advice to his sons.(a) takes the word Fatawa at face value; the book sets out political ideals rather than reporting the rulings of qazis. (c) describes a chronicle — Shams-i-Siraj Afif's Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi covers that reign; Barani's book of the same name reaches only its first few years.
(d) Alauddin Khalji's market and revenue measures are known largely from Barani's history, not from this treatise, which is about kingship rather than administration manuals.