NCERT Solutions Class 12 History Chapter 5 Through the Eyes of Travellers

Concept used. The Kitab-ul-Hind is the famous account of India written by Al-Biruni, the eleventh-century scholar from Khwarizm (present-day Uzbekistan) who came to Ghazni as a hostage of Sultan Mahmud and there developed an interest in India.

The main features of the text are these:

1. Language and style. It was written in Arabic, and is described as simple and lucid. It is a voluminous text.
2. Range of subjects. It is divided into 80 chapters on subjects such as religion and philosophy, festivals, astronomy, alchemy, manners and customs, social life, weights and measures, iconography, laws and metrology.
3. A distinctive structure. Generally (though not always), each chapter follows the same plan: it begins with a question, follows it with a description based on Sanskritic traditions, and ends with a comparison with other cultures. Some scholars link this almost geometric, precise structure to Al-Biruni's mathematical training.
4. Sources and intended reach. For his information he depended almost entirely on Sanskrit texts of the Brahmanas, quoting the Vedas, the Puranas, the Bhagavad Gita, the Manusmriti and Patanjali. He probably meant the work for peoples living along the frontiers of the subcontinent.

The Kitab-ul-Hind is Al-Biruni's voluminous Arabic account of India, divided into 80 chapters on religion, philosophy, astronomy, customs, social life, laws and metrology. Most chapters open with a question, describe the topic from Sanskritic traditions, and end with a comparison with other cultures. He relied mainly on Brahmanical Sanskrit texts and wrote chiefly for people back home along the subcontinent's frontiers.

Concept used. The question asks how the two travellers' points of view were alike and how they differed. Both were outsiders describing India, but they wrote from very different intellectual traditions, and that shaped what they noticed.

What they share (compare): Both were foreigners who recorded Indian society for people back home, both were struck by what was unfamiliar, and both worked partly through comparison with what they already knew.

How they differ (contrast):

1. Ibn Battuta wrote with excitement and wonder. For him, novelty was a virtue. He described whatever struck him as new, the coconut, the paan, busy cities, the postal system, to impress people back home with marvellous, distant yet accessible worlds. His tone is one of curiosity and delight.
2. Bernier wrote to criticise and to warn. He constantly compared India with Europe, and almost always judged India inferior. His account works on a model of binary opposition, in which India is the inverse of Europe, and he ranked the differences so that India seemed backward.
3. Different purposes. Ibn Battuta dictated his Rihla to entertain and edify; Bernier wrote to influence French policy-makers and the intelligentsia, dedicating his major work to King Louis XIV.

So although both were outsiders comparing India with the familiar, Ibn Battuta celebrated the unfamiliar while Bernier used the contrast to portray a "degenerate" East.

Both were foreigners who recorded Indian society through comparison. But Ibn Battuta wrote with wonder, highlighting the unfamiliar (coconut, paan, cities, postal system) to impress people back home, while Bernier wrote critically, using a model of binary opposition to show India as inferior to Europe and to warn European policy-makers. Wonder versus criticism is the key difference.

Concept used. The question asks what Bernier said about Indian towns and cities, and how far his picture was accurate. His account is in two layers: his own biased view, and the more complex reality that historians read out of it.

Bernier's own picture (the "camp towns"):

1. He described Mughal cities as camp towns, meaning towns that owed their existence and survival to the imperial camp.
2. He believed these towns sprang up when the imperial court moved in and rapidly declined when it moved out, so they had no firm social or economic foundations of their own and depended on imperial patronage.
3. This fitted his larger image of a "degenerate" India with no real, self-sustaining urban life.

The reality his account hides:

1. In the seventeenth century about 15 per cent of the population lived in towns, on average higher than the urban share of Western Europe at the same time.
2. There were many kinds of towns: manufacturing towns, trading towns, port-towns, sacred centres and pilgrimage towns, an index of the prosperity of merchants and professionals, not of imperial whim.
3. Towns held organised merchant bodies (the mahajans, led by the sheth, and in Ahmedabad the nagarsheth) and professional classes, physicians, teachers, lawyers, painters, architects, calligraphers, many of whom did not depend on the court at all.

So Bernier's "camp town" picture was an oversimplification that played down a genuinely rich and varied urban life.

Bernier called Mughal cities "camp towns" that rose and fell with the imperial court, with no foundations of their own. But this was oversimplified: about 15% of people lived in towns (higher than Western Europe), and there were manufacturing, trading, port, sacred and pilgrimage towns supported by organised merchants (mahajans, nagarsheth) and professionals, showing a varied, self-sustaining urban life.

Concept used. The question asks what Ibn Battuta's Rihla tells us about slavery in fourteenth-century India. His account is rich because he saw slaves at work in many roles and treated their sale as normal.

The evidence he provides:

1. Slaves were openly bought and sold. They were sold in markets like any other commodity and were regularly exchanged as gifts. Ibn Battuta himself bought "horses, camels and slaves" in Sind as gifts for Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlaq, and gave the governor of Multan "a slave and horse" with raisins and almonds.
2. Slaves were given as rewards. The Sultan, pleased with a preacher's sermon, gave him "a hundred thousand tankas and two hundred slaves", showing how casually slaves changed hands among the elite.
3. There was differentiation among slaves. Some female slaves were skilled in music and dance; Ibn Battuta enjoyed their performance at the wedding of the Sultan's sister. Others were used as spies to keep watch on the nobles (Source 15).
4. Slaves did domestic and porter labour. They were generally used for domestic work and were indispensable for carrying men and women on palanquins or dola.
5. Female slaves were cheap and common. The price of female slaves for domestic labour was very low, so most families who could afford it kept one or two.

Ibn Battuta shows slaves were openly sold in markets and given as gifts (he bought slaves as presents for the Sultan, who once gave a preacher 200 slaves). There was clear differentiation: some female slaves were trained in music and dance, others spied on nobles, and many did domestic work or carried people on palanquins. Female slaves were very cheap, so most well-off families kept one or two.

Concept used. The question asks which features of sati, the burning of a widow on her husband's pyre, Bernier noticed and described. European travellers often used the treatment of women to mark the difference between East and West, so Bernier described sati in detail.

The elements that drew his attention:

1. Willing death versus forced death. Bernier noted that while some women seemed to embrace death cheerfully, others were forced to die. This contrast struck him most.
2. The youth of the victim. In his most poignant account, at Lahore he saw "a most beautiful young widow" sacrificed who could not, he thought, have been more than twelve years of age, a child.
3. The victim's terror and unwillingness. The girl "appeared more dead than alive" as she approached the pit; she trembled and wept bitterly, and her agony, he said, could not be described.
4. The use of force by others. Three or four Brahmanas, helped by an old woman holding her by the arm, forced the unwilling victim towards the spot, seated her on the wood, and tied her hands and feet so she could not run away, before she was burnt alive.
5. His own horror. Bernier found it difficult to repress his feelings and to stop them bursting into "clamorous and unavailing rage".

Bernier was struck by the contrast between women who embraced death cheerfully and those forced to die. His Lahore account fixes on a child widow of about twelve who trembled and wept, was forced toward the pit by three or four Brahmanas and an old woman, had her hands and feet tied so she could not flee, and was burnt alive. He recorded it with horror, since Europeans saw the treatment of women as a marker of difference.

Concept used. The question asks how Al-Biruni explained the Indian caste system to those reading his book, and how far he accepted or questioned it. He tried to understand it through comparison, leaned on Brahmanical texts, yet rejected one of its core ideas.

How he tried to understand caste:

1. He looked for parallels in other societies. He noted that ancient Persia recognised four social categories: knights and princes; monks, fire-priests and lawyers; physicians, astronomers and other scientists; and finally peasants and artisans. By this he suggested that social divisions were not unique to India.
2. He set caste against Islamic equality. He pointed out that within Islam all men were considered equal, differing only in their observance of piety, a clear contrast with the hierarchy of caste.
3. He relied on Brahmanical sources. His description rested on normative Sanskrit texts, the Vedas, Puranas, Bhagavad Gita, Manusmriti and Patanjali, which laid down the rules from the Brahmanas' point of view. He described the four varnas as the books of the Hindus did (Source 5).

Where he disagreed:

1. He rejected the idea of pollution. Although he accepted the Brahmanical account, he disapproved of the notion of pollution. He argued that everything which falls into impurity strives and succeeds in regaining purity, the sun cleanses the air, salt keeps the sea-water from spoiling, so the idea of permanent social pollution was contrary to the laws of nature.

The limits of his account. Because he depended on Sanskrit normative texts, his picture was more rigid than real life. The categories called antyaja ("born outside the system") were socially oppressed yet included in economic networks, providing cheap labour, a flexibility his text-based description missed.

Al-Biruni understood caste by comparison: he found four-fold divisions in ancient Persia, argued social division was not unique to India, and contrasted it with Islamic equality. He described the four varnas from Brahmanical Sanskrit texts, but rejected the idea of pollution as contrary to the laws of nature. His text-based account was more rigid than real life, where antyaja groups, though oppressed, were part of economic networks.

Concept used. The question asks you to judge how useful Ibn Battuta's Rihla is for reconstructing life in fourteenth-century Indian cities. The answer is yes, it is very useful, and you must give reasons.

Yes, his account is useful. The reasons:

1. He describes the cities directly. He found cities densely populated and prosperous, full of opportunities for those with drive, resources and skills. He called Delhi a vast city with the largest population in India, and said Daulatabad easily rivalled it in size.
2. He pictures the markets and culture. Cities had crowded streets and bright, colourful bazaars stacked with goods. Bazaars were not only places of trade but hubs of social and cultural life, most had a mosque and a temple, and some had spaces for dancers, musicians and singers (the Tarababad market in Daulatabad).
3. He records the urban economy. He noted that towns drew much of their wealth from the surplus of villages, that agriculture was productive (two crops a year), and that Indian textiles, fine muslins, silks, brocade and satin, were in great demand across Asia.
4. He describes infrastructure. He admired the efficient postal system (the horse-post uluq and the faster foot-post dawa) that carried news and goods at remarkable speed.

The limits to bear in mind. His aim was to highlight the unfamiliar and to entertain, so he stressed the wonderful and was not concerned to explain why towns prospered. Still, historians have used his vivid detail to reconstruct urban life, which makes the account genuinely valuable.

Yes, very useful. Ibn Battuta describes densely populated, prosperous cities (Delhi the largest, Daulatabad its rival), crowded bazaars that were hubs of culture, the wealth towns drew from village surplus, productive agriculture, booming textile trade, and an efficient postal system. The caution is that he wrote to highlight the unfamiliar and entertain rather than to analyse, so his picture is vivid but selective, yet historians still rely on it.

Concept used. The question asks how far Bernier's Travels in the Mughal Empire can be trusted to rebuild the picture of rural society. The honest answer is: to a limited extent, because his account is both useful and badly distorted.

What Bernier claimed about the countryside:

1. No private property in land. He held that the emperor owned all the land and distributed it among his nobles, the key difference, he thought, between India and Europe.
2. Ruinous consequences. Because landholders could not pass land to their children, they made no long-term investment; the result, he said, was the ruin of agriculture, oppression of the peasantry, and general decline, except for the ruling aristocracy.
3. No middle state. He saw only impoverished masses below a tiny, rich ruling class: "There is no middle state in India."

Why his account is unreliable:

1. The crown-ownership claim was false. No Mughal document says the state owned all the land. Abu'l Fazl described land revenue as "remunerations of sovereignty", a tax on the crop for protection given, not rent on land the ruler owned.
2. Rural society was actually differentiated. Far from an undifferentiated mass, the countryside held big zamindars with superior rights, a big peasant using hired labour for the market, a small peasant at subsistence, and "untouchable" landless labourers, a clear social spectrum.
3. His influence spread the error. His picture fed Montesquieu's "oriental despotism" and Marx's "Asiatic mode of production", both of which wrongly imagined stagnant, egalitarian villages under an all-owning state.

The extent, then. Bernier is useful as a detailed eyewitness who hints, despite himself, at a complex reality (fertile Bengal, prosperous merchants, busy artisans). But his central thesis is wrong, so historians must read him critically and correct him with Mughal records.

Only to a limited extent. Bernier claimed the emperor owned all land, that this ruined agriculture, and that there was "no middle state". Mughal records disprove this: Abu'l Fazl called revenue "remunerations of sovereignty", and rural society was clearly differentiated (zamindars, big and small peasants, landless labourers). His thesis fed Montesquieu and Marx. So he is a useful but biased eyewitness whom historians must read critically.

Concept used. This is a source-based essay. First list the crafts in the passage, then set them beside the chapter's other descriptions of artisanal activity (the karkhanas in Source 14 and the goods in Source 13).

Crafts mentioned in the passage:

• Making muskets (firearms).
• Making fowling-pieces (light guns for shooting birds).
• Making fine gold ornaments (goldsmithing).
• Paintings, admired for their beauty, softness and delicacy.

The passage stresses two things: Indian artisans worked with few tools and little formal training, yet they could imitate European goods so perfectly that copy and original were hard to tell apart.

Comparison with the chapter's account of artisans:

1. A much wider range of crafts. The imperial karkhanas (Source 14) housed embroiderers, goldsmiths, painters, varnishers in lacquer-work, joiners, turners, tailors, shoe-makers and makers of silk, brocade and fine muslins. Source 13 adds carpets, brocades, embroideries and gold and silver cloths. So goldsmithing and painting appear in both, but the chapter shows many more crafts.
2. The same high skill, judged differently. Both the excerpt and the chapter show genuine skill (the gold spoon of Fig. 5.12 is one example). But in the karkhana passage Bernier insists there was "little progress", that artisans had no incentive to improve because the state took the profits, whereas this excerpt frankly admires their excellence.
3. Bernier contradicts himself. His usual line is that Indian manufactures were in decline; yet here he praises muskets, gold work and paintings as the equal of Europe's. The chapter uses this tension to show his picture was an oversimplification.

The passage lists muskets, fowling-pieces, gold ornaments and paintings, praising artisans who imitate European goods perfectly with few tools. The chapter shows a far wider range in the karkhanas, embroiderers, goldsmiths, painters, varnishers, joiners, tailors, shoe-makers, makers of silk, brocade and muslin (Sources 13–14). Both show real skill, but elsewhere Bernier claims the crafts were in decline with "no progress", so this admiring excerpt contradicts his usual view.

Concept used. This is a map-work task. From the chapter you list the lands Ibn Battuta travelled to, mark them on a world outline, and then name the seas he would have crossed to reach them. Below is the guide for what to mark; on the actual map, locate each one.

Countries (and regions) visited by Ibn Battuta:

• Morocco (his homeland, Tangier) and north Africa; the East African coast.
• Arabia (Mecca), Syria, Iraq, Persia (Iran), Yemen and Oman in West Asia.
• Central Asia (and possibly Russia).
• The Indian subcontinent (he reached Sind in 1333, then Delhi, central India, the Malabar coast, Bengal and Assam).
• The Maldives and Sri Lanka.
• Sumatra and China (going as far as Beijing).

Seas he may have crossed:

1. The Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea, on his way between north Africa, Arabia and the pilgrimage to Mecca.
2. The Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf, reaching the East African coast, Oman, Yemen and the western coast of India.
3. The Indian Ocean, sailing to the Maldives and Sri Lanka.
4. The Bay of Bengal, reaching Bengal and Sumatra.
5. The South China Sea, on the voyage to the Chinese port of Zaytun (Quanzhou).

Mark Morocco and north Africa, the East African coast, Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Persia, Yemen, Oman, Central Asia (possibly Russia), the Indian subcontinent, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Sumatra and China. The seas he may have crossed include the Mediterranean, Red Sea, Arabian Sea, Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal and South China Sea.

Concept used. This is a fieldwork project. There is no single correct answer; you are marked on how carefully you interview a relative and how clearly you report what they noticed, the way the chapter's travellers reported the unfamiliar. The guide below shows how to plan it.

1. Choose your traveller and prepare questions. Pick one older relative who has travelled, and write down the five set questions in advance: where they went, how they travelled, how long it took, why they went, and what difficulties they faced. Add space to note their answers.
2. Conduct the interview and record the journey. Note the destination, the mode of travel (train, bus, plane, on foot), the duration, the purpose (work, pilgrimage, study, a wedding, escaping hardship) and the hazards (cost, illness, language trouble, getting lost).
3. List similarities and differences. Make two columns, "home" and "the place visited", and compare them on language, clothes, food, customs, buildings, roads, and the lives of men and women. This is exactly what Al-Biruni, Ibn Battuta and Bernier did, recording what struck them as different.
4. Write the report. Open with who you interviewed and why, give the journey details, then present the similarities and differences in your table, and close with what your relative found most surprising or unfamiliar.

Interview one older relative, recording where they went, how, how long, why, and what difficulties they faced. Then compare their home with the place they visited on language, clothes, food, customs, buildings, roads, and the lives of men and women, listing similarities and differences. Write this up as a report, highlighting what they found most unfamiliar, just as the chapter's travellers recorded the unusual.

Concept used. This is a research project. There is no single right answer; you are marked on how well you research one traveller, report his life and writings, and compare his description of society with the excerpts in this chapter. The guide below shows how to plan it.

1. Choose one traveller. Pick Al-Biruni, Ibn Battuta or Bernier, or another named in the chapter (such as Abdur Razzaq, Tavernier, Marco Polo or Peter Mundy). Choose one you can find reading material on.
2. Research his life and writings. Note where he came from, when and why he travelled, the lands he visited, and the book he left, the Kitab-ul-Hind, the Rihla, or Travels in the Mughal Empire.
3. Focus on how he described society. Pull out his account of caste, cities, slaves, sati, crafts, women, or rural life, whatever your traveller wrote about, and summarise his attitude (curious, comparative, critical).
4. Compare with the chapter's excerpts. Set your wider reading beside the sources quoted here. Does the fuller account match the excerpts, or add to them? For example, the chapter's Bernier excerpts on land and sati can be checked against more of his Travels.

Choose one traveller (Al-Biruni, Ibn Battuta, Bernier or another from the chapter), research his life, journeys and book, and focus on how he described society, his attitude and his main observations. Then compare this fuller picture with the excerpts quoted in the chapter, noting where the two agree and where the longer account adds to or complicates the textbook version.