The city of Vijayanagara was founded in 1336 by:

The correct answer is B, Sawai Jai Singh II. The Kachhwaha ruler of Amber shifted his capital from the hills down to the plain in 1727 and had the new city laid out by Vidyadhar Bhattacharya on a grid of nine rectangular blocks with wide straight streets, which makes Jaipur the first planned city of modern India; the same king built the Jantar Mantar observatories at Jaipur, Delhi, Ujjain, Mathura and Varanasi. Option A is wrong because Maharana Udai Singh II of Mewar founded Udaipur in 1559 after Chittor fell to Akbar. Option C is wrong because Rao Jodha of the Rathores founded Jodhpur in 1459 and built the Mehrangarh fort. Option D is wrong because Rawal Jaisal of the Bhati Rajputs founded Jaisalmer in 1156. All four are Rajput founders, which is exactly why they are put together as options.

The correct answer is B, Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah. The fifth ruler of the Qutb Shahi dynasty of Golconda founded the new city on the Musi in 1591 because the fortress of Golconda had grown too crowded, and he built the Charminar at its centre; accounts of the founding also mention the name Bhagyanagar. Option A is wrong because Sultan Quli Qutb Shah, the founder of the dynasty, ruled from Golconda in the early sixteenth century and built no new city. Option C is wrong because Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah founded the Asaf Jahi line, the Nizams, in the eighteenth century and made Hyderabad his capital, but the city was already more than a century old. Option D is wrong because the Adil Shahis ruled from Bijapur, a separate Deccan sultanate.

The correct answer is C, Akbar. He began the city near Agra in 1571, named it the city of victory after his success in Gujarat, and filled it with the Buland Darwaza, the Panch Mahal, the Diwan-i-Khas and the tomb of Shaikh Salim Chishti; the court left it within about fifteen years, by tradition because its water supply failed. Option A is wrong because Babur built chiefly gardens and mosques and founded no city. Option B is wrong because Humayun began Dinpanah at Delhi, a city his reign was too short to complete. Option D is wrong because Shah Jahan built Shahjahanabad, the walled Old Delhi with the Red Fort and the Jama Masjid, from 1639, and candidates who confuse the two Mughal cities lose an easy mark.

The correct answer is A, Ahmad Shah I of Gujarat, who founded the city on the Sabarmati in 1411 and gave it his own name; the Jama Masjid, the Teen Darwaza and the Bhadra fort belong to his time. Option B is wrong because Mahmud Begada, a later and more famous sultan of the same Gujarat line, founded Champaner and shifted his capital there. Option C is wrong because Sikandar Lodi founded Agra in 1504, a city of the Delhi Sultanate and not of Gujarat. Option D is wrong because Alauddin Khalji built Siri in Delhi and sent his armies into the Deccan, but founded nothing in Gujarat. Learning each sultan with his own province keeps these options apart, since all four belong to roughly the same period.

The correct answer is B, Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq, the founder of the Tughlaq dynasty, who built the massive sloping walls of Tughlaqabad in the early fourteenth century and whose own tomb stands just outside it. Option A is wrong because his son Muhammad bin Tughlaq built Jahanpanah, the city of refuge, and is better remembered for shifting his capital to Daulatabad in the Deccan. Option C is wrong because Firoz Shah Tughlaq built Firozabad, with the fortress now called Firoz Shah Kotla, and brought an Ashokan pillar there. Option D is wrong because Iltutmish of the Slave dynasty worked in the Mehrauli area, completing the Qutb Minar that Qutbuddin Aibak had begun. The seven cities should be memorised with their builders in order. The safest way to hold the seven cities is as a chain: Mehrauli under Aibak and Iltutmish, Siri under Alauddin Khalji, Tughlaqabad under Ghiyasuddin, Jahanpanah under Muhammad bin Tughlaq, Firozabad under Firoz Shah, Dinpanah under Humayun and Shahjahanabad under Shah Jahan.