UPPSC 2019 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 131 of 150

Correct — C, Tughlaqnama — Ibn Battuta. This is the mismatched pair. The Tughlaq Nama is a Persian masnavi written by Amir Khusrau, the poet of Delhi who served a line of Sultans from Balban's court onwards; it is his last historical masnavi (his last work proper is generally taken to be Nihayat ul-Kamal, 1325), composed to celebrate Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq's overthrow of Khusrau Khan in 1320 and the founding of the Tughlaq dynasty. Ibn Battuta was not a court poet at all — he was a Moroccan traveller from Tangier who reached Delhi in the 1330s, was appointed qazi of Delhi by Muhammad bin Tughlaq, and was later sent by that Sultan as an envoy towards China. What he left behind is the Rihla, the travel account he dictated after returning to Morocco, formally titled Tuhfat-un-Nuzzar fi Ghara'ib-il-Amsar wa Aja'ib-il-Asfar. He is therefore linked to the Tughlaqs as an eyewitness, not as the author of the Tughlaqnama — and it is that half-truth the question is built on.

• (a)Tabaqat-i-Nasiri — Minhaj-us-Siraj-Juzjani — Correctly matched, so it is not the answer. Minhaj-us-Siraj Juzjani, who rose to be the chief qazi at Delhi, wrote the Tabaqat-i-Nasiri as a general history running down to about 1260 and dedicated it to Sultan Nasiruddin Mahmud — from whom it takes its name. It is the single most important contemporary source for the Ilbari or 'Slave' Sultans, including Iltutmish and Raziyya.
• (b)Tarikh-i-Firozshahi — Shams-i-Siraj-Afif — Correctly matched, so it is not the answer — and it is the option most students wrongly attack, because they remember that Ziauddin Barani also wrote a Tarikh-i-Firozshahi. Two separate works carry that title: Barani's, which closes in the opening years of Firoz Shah Tughlaq's reign, and Shams-i-Siraj Afif's, which is the fuller account of that reign. Pairing the title with Afif is therefore perfectly legitimate.
• (d)Humayunnama — Gulbadan Begam — Correctly matched, so it is not the answer. Gulbadan Begam was a daughter of Babur and a half-sister of Humayun, and she wrote her account of Humayun's reign — the Humayun-nama, also called Ahwal-i-Humayun Badshah — at Akbar's request, so that the material could feed into Abul Fazl's Akbarnama. It is the only surviving history of the period written by a woman of the Mughal household.

Medieval Indian history is reconstructed largely from Persian-language texts, and the exam expects you to hold the text and its author together as one unit. Those texts fall into recognisable families: court chronicles commissioned or patronised by rulers (Tabaqat-i-Nasiri, the two Tarikh-i-Firozshahis, Padshahnama), literary or poetic works by court poets (Amir Khusrau's Tughlaq Nama, Qiran-us-Sadain, Khazain-ul-Futuh), memoirs and family histories written from inside the household (Baburnama, Humayun-nama, Jahangir's Tuzuk), and outsiders' travel accounts (Al-Biruni's Kitab-ul-Hind, Ibn Battuta's Rihla). Recognising which family a title belongs to is usually enough to spot a wrong pairing.

In a 'which pair is NOT correctly matched' question, do not try to confirm all four pairs — hunt for the one that crosses a family boundary. Here, three pairs stay inside their family: a qazi-historian with his chronicle, a court historian with a reign-history, a princess with a household memoir. Only option (c) puts a foreign traveller's name on a Persian court poem written to glorify a dynasty's founder — a traveller who wrote in Arabic and wrote about his journeys. That is the crossing, and that is the answer. The trap works because Ibn Battuta genuinely belongs to the Tughlaq period and is genuinely a source for it, so his name does not feel out of place beside the word 'Tughlaq'.

• Tughlaq Nama — a Persian masnavi by Amir Khusrau on Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq's victory over Khusrau Khan in 1320; it is Khusrau's last historical masnavi; his final work is generally taken to be Nihayat ul-Kamal (1325).
• Ibn Battuta, a traveller from Tangier in Morocco, served Muhammad bin Tughlaq as qazi of Delhi and wrote the Rihla (Tuhfat-un-Nuzzar), an Arabic travel account — not a Tughlaq court chronicle.
• Tabaqat-i-Nasiri by Minhaj-us-Siraj Juzjani is a general history down to about 1260, dedicated to Sultan Nasiruddin Mahmud, and the chief source for the Ilbari Sultans.
• Two different authors wrote a Tarikh-i-Firozshahi — Ziauddin Barani and Shams-i-Siraj Afif; Afif's is the fuller account of Firoz Shah Tughlaq's reign.
• The Humayun-nama was written by Gulbadan Begam, Babur's daughter, at Akbar's request, and is the only history of the era written by a Mughal royal woman.

• Assuming a title with 'Firozshahi' in it belongs to only one author — both Barani and Afif wrote a Tarikh-i-Firozshahi.
• Reading 'Ibn Battuta' plus 'Tughlaq' as a match because he lived under Muhammad bin Tughlaq; being a source for a reign is not the same as writing a named court text.
• Confusing the Humayun-nama of Gulbadan Begam with Khwandamir's Qanun-i-Humayuni or with Jauhar Aftabchi's Tazkirat-ul-Waqiat, which also deal with Humayun.

UPPSC asks this area as a straight book–author pairing, usually as a 'NOT correctly matched' item or a match-the-lists set. UPSC prefers to come at the same material sideways — describing what a person did ('who was Abdul Hamid Lahori?') or asking you to place texts and travellers in chronological order — so learn each text with its author, its patron and its approximate date.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Arabic travel account 'Tuhfat-un-Nuzzar fi Ghara'ib-il-Amsar wa Aja'ib-il-Asfar', better known as the Rihla, was written by

  • (a)Al-Biruni
  • (b)Ibn Battuta
  • (c)Abdur Razzaq
  • (d)Amir Khusrau

  Answer(b) Ibn Battuta — the Moroccan traveller who served Muhammad bin Tughlaq as qazi of Delhi dictated the Rihla after returning home; Al-Biruni wrote the Kitab-ul-Hind, Abdur Razzaq left an account of Vijayanagara, and Amir Khusrau was a Persian poet at the Delhi court.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following pairs of text and author is correctly matched?

  • (a)Fatawa-i-Jahandari — Shams-i-Siraj Afif
  • (b)Kitab-ul-Hind — Ibn Battuta
  • (c)Padshahnama — Abdul Hamid Lahori
  • (d)Akbarnama — Badauni

  Answer(c) Padshahnama — Abdul Hamid Lahori, the official historian of Shah Jahan's reign. The Fatawa-i-Jahandari is Ziauddin Barani's, the Kitab-ul-Hind is Al-Biruni's, and the Akbarnama is Abul Fazl's (Badauni wrote the Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh).