Consider the following events of the reign of Aurangzeb and arrange them in chronological order : 1. Battle of Deorai 2. Defeat of Shuja near Banaras 3. Battle of Samugarh 4. Victory at Dharmat Select the correct answer from the code given below. Code :
- (a)1, 3, 4 and 2
- (b)4, 2, 1 and 3
- (c)2, 4, 3 and 1
- (d)3, 4, 2 and 1
Correct — C, 2, 4, 3 and 1 — the defeat of Shuja near Banaras, then Dharmat, then Samugarh, then Deorai. All four belong to the Mughal war of succession that broke out when Shah Jahan fell ill in September 1657, and they run inside about fifteen months. (2) SHAH SHUJA was defeated near Banaras in FEBRUARY 1658, in the engagement usually called the battle of Bahadurpur; the imperial force that beat him was commanded by Dara Shikoh's son Sulaiman Shikoh, with Raja Jai Singh and Dilir Khan. (4) DHARMAT, near Ujjain, followed in APRIL 1658: Aurangzeb and Murad Baksh destroyed the army sent against them under Jaswant Singh of Marwar, and the road to Agra lay open. (3) SAMUGARH, some sixteen kilometres east of Agra, came in LATE MAY 1658 and was the decisive battle of the whole war — Dara Shikoh was routed and fled, and Shah Jahan was shortly confined in Agra Fort. (1) DEORAI, near Ajmer, was Dara's last stand, in the SPRING OF 1659 — a full year later; he was captured soon afterwards, paraded through Delhi and executed on 30 August 1659. Sources differ on the exact Deorai dates, some giving March 1659 and many standard histories 12-14 April 1659, so it is safest to hold it as 'spring 1659'; either way it is unambiguously the last of the four, which is all the question needs.
- (a)1, 3, 4 and 2 — Opens with Deorai, which was in fact the LAST of the four events — Dara Shikoh's final defeat in 1659, a year after Samugarh. It also places Dharmat after Samugarh, reversing the two 1658 battles.
- (b)4, 2, 1 and 3 — Starts with Dharmat, but Shuja's defeat near Banaras came about two months earlier, in February 1658. It then compounds the error by putting Deorai (1659) before Samugarh (May 1658).
- (d)3, 4, 2 and 1 — Gets Deorai last, correctly, but opens with Samugarh. Dharmat in April 1658 preceded Samugarh in late May 1658 — indeed it was the victory at Dharmat that let Aurangzeb march on Agra and fight Samugarh at all.
Shah Jahan's illness in September 1657 set his four sons against one another: Dara Shikoh, the eldest and the designated heir, based at Agra; Shuja in Bengal; Aurangzeb in the Deccan; and Murad Baksh in Gujarat. Aurangzeb's strategy was to ally with Murad, deal with each rival separately, and take Agra. The sequence of battles is therefore not random — it is the order in which the threats were removed: Shuja from the east first, then the imperial army in the west at Dharmat, then Dara himself at Samugarh, and finally Dara's remnant at Deorai.
The trap in this item is the assumption that Deorai, a name most candidates meet only in this context, belongs early in the story. It does not: it is the epilogue. The reliable anchor is Samugarh — the decisive battle, late May 1658 — with Dharmat a month before it and Deorai a year after it. Fix Samugarh as the pivot and the sequence orders itself. Note also that the paper's phrase 'events of the reign of Aurangzeb' is loose: all four took place before his formal accession was secure, during the war that produced that reign.
- Shah Shuja was defeated near Banaras in February 1658, at the battle usually named Bahadurpur; the imperial command was Sulaiman Shikoh's, with Raja Jai Singh and Dilir Khan.
- The battle of Dharmat, near Ujjain, was fought in April 1658 — Aurangzeb and Murad Baksh against the army under Jaswant Singh of Marwar.
- Samugarh, east of Agra, was fought in late May 1658 and decided the war: Dara Shikoh was routed and Shah Jahan was soon confined in Agra Fort.
- Deorai, near Ajmer, was Dara Shikoh's last stand in the spring of 1659 (sources give March or April); he was captured shortly afterwards and executed on 30 August 1659.
- Assuming Deorai came early because it is an unfamiliar name. It is the last of the four, a year after Samugarh.
- Placing Samugarh before Dharmat. Dharmat (April 1658) opened the road to Agra; Samugarh (late May 1658) closed the war.
- Printing a single confident date for Deorai. Sources differ between March and April 1659 — the ordering is unaffected, but the exact date is not settled.
Both commissions love Mughal battle chronology, but UPPSC almost always asks it as a four-item sequence code, mixing famous battles with obscure ones so that a candidate who knows only the famous ones can still eliminate. UPSC prefers a single battle asked directly — who fought whom, or in which year.
The battle of Dharmat was fought between
- (a) Muhammad Gori and Jai Chand
- (b) Babar and the Afghans
- (c) Aurangzeb and Dara Shikoh
- (d) Ahmad Shah Durrani and the Marathas
Answer(c) Aurangzeb and Dara Shikoh
One of the very four events in this UPPSC sequence, asked by UPSC on its own. Attempting it first fixes Dharmat as a war-of-succession battle between Aurangzeb's camp and Dara's, which is exactly the association a candidate needs to place item 4 correctly here.
Arrange the following events in correct chronological order and select the correct answer from the code given below. 1. Battle of Kannauj 2. Battle of Daurah 3. Battle of Samugarh 4. Battle of Chausa Code :
- (a) 2, 4, 3, 1
- (b) 4, 2, 3, 1
- (c) 4, 2, 1, 3
- (d) 2, 4, 1, 3
Answer(d) 2, 4, 1, 3
Samugarh again, three years later, this time as the LATEST of four Mughal battles rather than the third of four. The commission clearly treats Samugarh as a fixed anchor date that candidates should carry — knowing it is late May 1658 solves both papers.
Arrange the following battles in chronological order and select the correct answer from the codes given below : I. Battle of Sarnal II. Battle of Bilgram III. Battle of Dharmat IV. Battle of Jajau Codes :
- (a) II, I, III, IV
- (b) II, III, IV, I
- (c) III, II, I, IV
- (d) III, I, II, IV
Answer(a) II, I, III, IV
Dharmat set inside a much longer Mughal span, from Bilgram in 1540 to Jajau in 1707. Taken with the 2025 item, it shows how UPPSC recycles a small stock of battle dates across papers — build the timeline once and it pays three times.
- practice — not a real PYQ
In the Mughal war of succession, the decisive battle in which Dara Shikoh was routed near Agra in 1658 was fought at
- (a)Dharmat
- (b)Samugarh
- (c)Khajwa
- (d)Deorai
Answer(b) Samugarh — fought east of Agra in late May 1658. Dharmat preceded it in April 1658, Khajwa was a later engagement against Shuja, and Deorai in 1659 was Dara's final defeat.
- practice — not a real PYQ
At the Battle of Dharmat in April 1658, Aurangzeb and Murad Baksh defeated an army commanded by
- (a)Jaswant Singh of Marwar
- (b)Sulaiman Shikoh
- (c)Mir Jumla
- (d)Shaista Khan
Answer(a) Jaswant Singh of Marwar — the force sent from Agra to stop the princes' northward march. Sulaiman Shikoh, Dara's son, was meanwhile campaigning in the east against Shuja.