The Delhi Sultanate: five dynasties, 1206 to 1526

• Statement 1 is incorrect. The first Mongol appearance on India's frontier came far earlier, during the reign of Iltutmish, when Chingiz Khan pursued the fleeing Khwarazmian prince Jalal ud din Mangabarni to the banks of the Indus in 1221. The statement trades on the coincidence of the name Jalal ud din, and Iltutmish's refusal of shelter to Mangabarni, which spared Delhi a Mongol reckoning, is one of the better known episodes of Sultanate history.
• Statement 2 is correct. Mongol pressure reached its height under Ala ud din Khalji, and the assault led by Targhi in 1303 reached Delhi and invested the city while the Sultan was returning from Chittor, confining him in the unfinished fort at Siri; the experience drove his subsequent reorganisation of the army and frontier and his market control measures.
• Statement 3 is treated as incorrect by the key. The Mongol incursion under Tarmashirin during Muhammad bin Tughlaq's reign was bought off rather than allowed to detach territory, and no lasting or even temporary cession of the north west to the Mongols is recorded for his reign. Only statement 2 stands, giving (b); options (a) and (c) accept the misdated first invasion, and (d) rests on statement 3 alone.

The term means the cap wearers, from the Persian kulah for a conical cap, and it was applied to the Sayyids, those claiming descent from the Prophet, who were distinguished in the Sultanate period by the headgear they wore as a mark of that lineage and of the deference owed to it.

• Option (d) is therefore correct.
• Option (a) is wrong because Arab merchants formed a commercial community identified by trade and by the ports they worked from rather than by a distinguishing cap.
• Option (b) is wrong although it is the most tempting distractor, since the Qalandars were wandering, often deliberately unorthodox Sufi mendicants whose appearance and shaven heads were themselves a statement, but they are not the group the term denotes.
• Option (c) is wrong because calligraphists constituted a craft and scribal profession, not a status group marked by dress. The item is difficult because the term appears only in the more detailed treatments of Sultanate social history and no elimination route exists.

• Statement 1 is correct: Chengiz Khan pursued Jalaluddin Mangbarni of Khwarezm to the Indus in 1221, during Iltutmish's reign, and Iltutmish prudently declined to shelter the fugitive, sparing Delhi a Mongol invasion.
• Statement 2 is incorrect: Taimur's invasion occurred in 1398 to 1399 under Nasiruddin Mahmud Shah, the last Tughluq ruler, not under Muhammad bin Tughluq, who died in 1351.
• Statement 3 is incorrect: Vasco da Gama reached Calicut in 1498, during the reign of Narasimha Raya II of the Saluva line and the rise of the Tuluvas, whereas Deva Raya II of the Sangama dynasty died around 1446, half a century earlier. Hence (a). All three statements are of the same design, pairing an external event with a supposed contemporary Indian ruler, so the reliable method is to date the two halves separately and compare.

• Statement 1 is correct. Amil was the officer in charge of revenue collection at the local level under the Delhi Sultanate, working under the diwan i wizarat, and the term continued in use into the Mughal period.
• Statement 2 is incorrect. The iqta was not indigenous or ancient. It was a West Asian institution of assignment of revenue in lieu of service, developed under the Abbasids and the Seljuqs and brought into India by Iltutmish, who is credited with organising the iqta system here.
• Statement 3 is incorrect. Mir Bakshi was a Mughal office, the head of the military department responsible for the mansabdari muster, recruitment and payment, and it took shape under Akbar. Under the Khaljis the corresponding military establishment was headed by the ariz i mumalik, an office that Alauddin Khalji used vigorously for the branding of horses and descriptive rolls of soldiers. Since only statement 1 holds, the official answer (a) follows. The reliable elimination is statement 3, since a candidate who associates Mir Bakshi with the Mughal mansabdari system can discard options (c) and (d) immediately, and statement 2 then decides between (a) and (b).

• Statement 1 is incorrect. Gunpowder and firearms were known and used in the subcontinent well before 1526: cannon and handguns appear in the Bahmani and Vijayanagara wars and in Gujarat and Malwa through the fifteenth century, and Babur's advantage at Panipat lay not in introducing gunpowder but in the tactical system he brought from Central Asia, the tulughma flanking manoeuvre combined with the araba, carts chained together to shield field artillery served by Ustad Ali Quli and Mustafa Rumi.
• Statement 2 is incorrect. The true arch and the dome entered Indian building with the Turkish conquest at the end of the twelfth century; the Qutb complex, the Alai Darwaza of 1311 and the tombs of the Tughlaqs and Lodis all precede Babur by two to three centuries.
• Statement 3 is correct. Babur was a Timurid in the male line, descended from Timur through Miran Shah and from Chingiz Khan through his mother, and his victory established the Timurid house in India, which is why the dynasty called itself Gurkani and only outsiders called it Mughal. The official answer (b) follows. Elimination route: the Lodi and Sayyid tombs standing in Delhi are enough to reject statement 2, which removes options (a) and (d), and the pre Panipat use of artillery removes (c). The governing principle is that a question crediting a founder with introducing what his predecessors already had is usually testing continuity against rupture.