Sultanate, Mughals and Regional Powers

• Option (c) is correct. The Ibadat Khana, the house of worship, was built at Fatehpur Sikri in 1575 and was the venue at which Akbar convened discussions on religion. Initially the debates were confined to Sunni ulama, but from 1578 they were opened to Shias, Sufis, Hindus, Jains, Zoroastrians and the Jesuit fathers from Goa, and it was the acrimony of the Sunni theologians among themselves, recorded with evident distaste by Badauni, that is generally credited with pushing Akbar towards the doctrine of sulh-i-kul, universal peace. The mahzar or so-called infallibility decree of 1579 and the Tauhid-i-Ilahi of 1582 followed from this trajectory, and the debates themselves were discontinued in 1582.
• Option (d) is the closest distractor and is wrong in two respects: the participants were scholars and divines rather than nobles, and Akbar presided rather than merely providing a room.
• Option (a) is incorrect: the congregational mosque at Fatehpur Sikri is the Jama Masjid, entered through the Buland Darwaza.
• Option (b) is incorrect: a private prayer chamber is a personal oratory and would defeat the entire purpose of a hall built for public disputation.

• 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.

• Statement 1 is incorrect. A jagir was assigned to a mansabdar in lieu of cash salary for military and administrative service under the mansabdari system, not specifically in lieu of judicial and police duties. The second half of the statement is closer to the mark, since zamindars held hereditary revenue rights and were principally revenue intermediaries, but the jagirdar half misdescribes the institution, so the statement fails as a whole.
• Statement 2 is incorrect and in fact inverts the true position. Jagirs were expressly non-hereditary and transferable, and Akbar's practice of frequent transfer of jagirs was designed precisely to prevent a jagirdar from striking local roots. Zamindari rights, by contrast, were heritable and saleable proprietary rights in the soil. Since both statements fail, the official answer (d) follows. The governing principle, and the cleanest elimination route in the exam hall, is that jagir equals assignment of revenue in lieu of service and is therefore temporary and transferable, whereas zamindari equals a hereditary proprietary right. A candidate who holds that single contrast can see that statement 2 is reversed and reach (d) without needing to adjudicate statement 1 in detail.

• 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 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 2 is correct and is the one the official key accepts: the Wodeyars of Mysore began as feudatories of Vijayanagara and asserted independence after the collapse of that empire following Talikota in 1565, so the Mysore Kingdom did emerge out of Vijayanagara.
• Statement 3 is incorrect: Rohilkhand was carved out by Afghan Rohilla settlers in the Katehar region under Ali Muhammad Khan in the 1720s and 1730s, well before Ahmad Shah Durrani's invasions began in 1748, so it was not formed out of territory he occupied.
• Statement 1 is treated as incorrect by the official key, on the view that the Nizamat of Arcot derived from Mughal authority over the Carnatic rather than emerging out of Hyderabad State as such. This is the contestable point, since the Nawab of Arcot was in practice appointed by and subordinate to the Nizam of Hyderabad, and the relationship of subordination is precisely what the later Carnatic Wars turned on.

Hence (b) per the key.

• 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.