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Q.Match Column I with Column II and choose the correct option : Column I (Traveller) 1. Abu'l Fazl 2. Ibn Battuta 3. Al-Biruni 4. Francois Bernier Column II (Books authored)

(i) Travels in the Mughal Empire
(ii) Kitab-ul-Hind
(iii) Rihla
(iv) Ain-i-Akbari Options : (A) 1-(iv), 2-(iii), 3-(ii), 4-(i) (B) 1-(iii), 2-(ii), 3-(i), 4-(iv) (C) 1-(ii), 2-(i), 3-(iv), 4-(iii) (D) 1-(i), 2-(iii), 3-(ii), 4-(iv)
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Each medieval traveller left a distinctive chronicle: Abu'l Fazl wrote the Ain-i-Akbari, Ibn Battuta the Rihla, Al-Biruni the Kitab-ul-Hind, and François Bernier Travels in the Mughal Empire.

The question asks us to pair four important travellers with the books they authored—a straightforward matching exercise, but one that reveals the richness of historical documentation across centuries. Each of these figures came to the Indian subcontinent (or wrote about it) at different moments, and their works became foundational sources for understanding medieval Indian society, politics, and culture.

Abu'l Fazl was a courtier and close confidant of the Mughal emperor Akbar in the late sixteenth century. He authored the Akbarnama, a detailed chronicle of Akbar's reign, and its third volume is the famous Ain-i-Akbari—a comprehensive administrative report that catalogues everything from the structure of Akbar's empire to revenue figures, military organization, and even cultural practices. The Ain is not a travelogue but an encyclopedic record, written by someone embedded in the Mughal court.

Ibn Battuta, a Moroccan traveller of the fourteenth century, spent years wandering across Asia and Africa. He arrived in India during the reign of Muhammad bin Tughlaq and served as a qazi in Delhi. His account, the Rihla (literally "The Journey"), is a vivid travelogue that describes the Delhi Sultanate, its court intrigues, the Sultan's eccentricities, and the social life of the time. The Rihla is personal, anecdotal, and full of the wonder of a traveller encountering new worlds.

Al-Biruni was an eleventh-century Persian scholar who accompanied Mahmud of Ghazni's expeditions into the subcontinent. Unlike a casual traveller, Al-Biruni was a polymath—astronomer, mathematician, and keen observer. His Kitab-ul-Hind (Book of India) is a scholarly study of Indian religion, philosophy, science, and customs, written with a comparative lens. He learned Sanskrit, read Indian texts, and approached his subject with intellectual rigor rather than mere curiosity. …

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