Books & Authors Quiz: Urdu and Persian Literature in India

The correct answer is C, Turkish. Babur wrote his memoirs in Chagatai Turkish, the language of his homeland in Central Asia, and the book is admired for its plain, observant prose about the men, fruits, animals and rivers of the countries he passed through. Option A is wrong for the language of composition although it is the language of the famous translation, made for the Mughal court, in which form the work is known as the Baburnama; the question asks in which language it was written. Option B is wrong because Arabic was the language of religious scholarship rather than of Mughal memoirs, and the well known Arabic work on India is Al Biruni's Kitab-ul-Hind. Option D is wrong because Urdu took shape long after Babur's death in 1530.

The correct answer is C, Persian. Babur's memoir was written in Chagatai Turkish and was translated into Persian in Akbar's time by Abdur Rahim Khan-i-Khanan, one of the nine jewels of the court, so that the book could be read by the Persian speaking nobility of the empire. Option A is wrong because Turkish is the language of the original and not of the translation, and the two halves of this fact are deliberately set against each other in exam papers. Option B is wrong because there was no Arabic version of the work in the Mughal court. Option D is wrong because Urdu as a literary language developed much later, and translations of the memoir into it belong to the modern period. Remember the pair: written in Turkish, translated into Persian.

The correct answer is C, Gulbadan Begum. She was a daughter of Babur and a sister of Humayun, and she wrote her account of the family at the request of her nephew Akbar, who wanted material for the Akbarnama. Her book is valued because it describes the household and the women of the court from inside, a view that the formal chronicles never give. Option A is wrong because Humayun left no memoir of his own; his reign is known through his sister and through servants of the court. Option B is wrong because Akbar was unlettered and had others write for him, Abul Fazl above all. Option D is wrong because Babur wrote about himself in the Tuzuk-i-Baburi and died before the events of his son's reign.

The correct answer is A, Mutamid Khan. He was an officer of Jahangir's court who continued the record of the reign after the emperor stopped writing his own memoir, and his Iqbalnama-i-Jahangiri is one of the main Persian sources for the period. Option B is wrong because Inayat Khan belongs to the next reign and is associated with the Shahjahan Nama. Option C is wrong because Abdur Rahim Khan-i-Khanan, a poet and noble of Akbar's court, is remembered for translating Babur's memoir into Persian and for his Hindi couplets, not for a life of Jahangir. Option D is wrong because Abul Fazl wrote the Akbarnama and the Ain-i-Akbari and was killed in 1602, while Jahangir's reign began in 1605. The safe habit here is to learn each Mughal chronicle with the reign it covers, because the names of these officers sound alike and papers set them against one another.

The correct answer is D, Aurangzeb. This is one of the striking facts of Mughal cultural history: the emperor who withdrew court patronage from musical performance presided over a reign in which the largest number of Persian treatises on Indian classical music was written, as scholars turned from the court to the book. Option A is wrong because Shah Jahan, though a patron of music and himself a trained singer, did not see this volume of writing on the subject. Option B is wrong because Jahangir's court is remembered for painting above all other arts. Option C is wrong because Akbar's reign is famous for Tansen and for performance rather than for a body of musical scholarship. The point examiners want is the contrast between the emperor's own austerity and the scholarship of his age.

The correct answer is A, Amir Khusrau. Khusrau served a line of Sultans at Delhi, was a disciple of the Sufi saint Nizamuddin Auliya, and was given the title Tuti-e-Hind, the parrot of India. Khazain-ul-Futuh, also called Tarikh-i-Alai, records the campaigns of Alauddin Khalji, and his Qiran-us-Sadain and Nuh Sipihr belong to the same body of work. Option B is wrong because Ziauddin Barani wrote the Tarikh-i-Firozshahi and the Fatwa-i-Jahandari in the reign of Firoz Shah Tughlaq. Option C is wrong because Minhaj-us-Siraj wrote the Tabaqat-i-Nasiri, which ends in the time of Balban. Option D is wrong because Ibn Battuta was a Moroccan traveller whose Rehla describes the court of Muhammad bin Tughlaq from the eyes of an outsider. Learn each Sultanate chronicle with its author and its ruler, because the four names in this question appear together in paper after paper.

The correct answer is B, Abul Fazl. He was a minister and a close friend of Akbar and wrote the Akbarnama, of which the Ain-i-Akbari forms the third volume, setting out the departments of state, the revenue of the provinces, the ranks of the nobility, the coins, the crops and the customs of the country. Option A is wrong because Abdul Qadir Badauni wrote the Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh, a history of the same reign but written in private and sharply critical of the emperor's religious policy. Option C is wrong because Faizi, the brother of Abul Fazl, was the poet laureate of the court and not the author of this work. Option D is wrong because Raja Todar Mal was the revenue minister whose system the Ain describes, not its writer.

The correct answer is C, Ziauddin Barani. Barani lived at the court of Muhammad bin Tughlaq and wrote in the reign of Firoz Shah Tughlaq. His Tarikh-i-Firozshahi is a history of the Sultanate from Balban onwards and his Fatwa-i-Jahandari sets out his own idea of how a Muslim ruler ought to govern, which makes him the most opinionated of the Sultanate historians. Option A is wrong because Isami wrote the Futuh-us-Salatin in the Deccan, a verse history of the Sultans. Option B is wrong because Shams-i-Siraj Afif wrote a later work of the same name, on Firoz Shah alone, and the shared title is the trap in this question. Option D is wrong because Amir Khusrau was a poet whose histories cover the Khalji age.

The correct answer is A, Razmnama. Akbar set up a translation department in which Sanskrit works were rendered into Persian, and the Mahabharata was translated there as the Razmnama, a name that means the book of war. Option B is wrong because Sirr-i-Akbar is the Persian translation of the Upanishads made under Dara Shikoh, the eldest son of Shah Jahan, three generations later. Option C is wrong because Anwar-i-Suhaili is a Persian version of the Panchatantra fables and belongs to a different line of translation. Option D is wrong because Majma-ul-Bahrain, the mingling of two oceans, is Dara Shikoh's own study of what Hindu and Muslim mysticism have in common. Keep Akbar with the Razmnama and Dara Shikoh with the other two names. Questions on the translation department are common, so it is worth remembering that Akbar ordered the Sanskrit epics and Dara Shikoh the Upanishads.

The correct answer is A, Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah. The ruler of Golconda who founded the city of Hyderabad wrote verse in Dakhani, the southern form of the language, and the collection that survives under his name is counted as the first complete diwan in it, which is why the earliest chapter of Urdu literature belongs to the Deccan and not to Delhi. Option B is wrong because Mirza Ghalib belongs to the nineteenth century Delhi of Bahadur Shah Zafar. Option C is wrong because Mir Taqi Mir, honoured as Khuda-e-Sukhan, wrote in the eighteenth century, long after the Deccan beginnings. Option D is wrong because Altaf Hussain Hali, the author of the Musaddas, is a poet of the reform movement of the late nineteenth century.

The correct answer is A, Muhammad Iqbal. He wrote the poem in Urdu early in the twentieth century as a song in praise of the land, and it was later set to music and became one of the best loved patriotic songs of the country. Iqbal also wrote Bang-e-Dara in Urdu and Asrar-e-Khudi in Persian, and he is one of the few poets of the subcontinent to have written major work in both languages. Option B is wrong because Faiz Ahmed Faiz is a later poet, known for poems such as Mujhse Pehli Si Mohabbat. Option C is wrong because Josh Malihabadi is remembered as the poet of revolution. Option D is wrong because Firaq Gorakhpuri, who received the Jnanpith award in 1969, is known for the ghazal and for Gul-e-Naghma.

The correct answer is A, Premchand. The Progressive Writers' Association held its first conference at Lucknow in 1936 and Premchand, who had begun his career writing in Urdu under the name Nawab Rai before turning to Hindi, presided over it and delivered its opening address. The movement turned writers in Urdu and in other Indian languages towards poverty, caste, freedom and social reform. Option B is wrong because Manto, though the greatest short story writer to come out of that circle, was a young man in 1936 and did not preside over it. Option C is wrong because Ismat Chughtai, the author of Lihaaf, also belonged to the generation that followed. Option D is wrong because Qurratulain Hyder, who received the Jnanpith award in 1989, began writing later still.