The poem Tarana-e-Hindi, popularly known by its opening line Sare Jahan se Achha, was written by whom?

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.