Prompt: Evaluate the extent to which state building differed in the Ottoman Empire and the Mughal Empire in the period 1500-1800.
WORLD HISTORY SECTION II
Question 1 (Document-Based Question)
Suggested reading and writing time: 1 hour
It is suggested that you spend 15 minutes reading the documents and 45 minutes writing your response. Note: You may begin writing your response before the reading period is over.
Directions: Question 1 is based on the accompanying documents. The documents have been edited for the purpose of this exercise.
In your response you should do the following.
· Respond to the prompt with a historically defensible thesis or claim that establishes a line of reasoning.
· Describe a broader historical context relevant to the prompt.
· Support an argument in response to the prompt using at least six documents.
· Use at least one additional piece of specific historical evidence (beyond that found in the documents) relevant to an argument about the prompt.
· For at least three documents, explain how or why the document’s point of view, purpose, historical situation, and/or audience is relevant to an argument.
· Use evidence to corroborate, qualify, or modify an argument that addresses the prompt.
Document 1
Source: Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, Austrian Ambassador to Sultan Suleyman, letters sent to the Austrian Emperor, 1554 to 1562.
At Buda I made my first acquaintance with the Janissaries; this is the name by which the Turks call the infantry of the royal guard. The Turkish state has 12,000 of these troops when the corps is at its full strength. They scattered through every part of the empire, either to garrison the forts against the enemy, or to protect the Christians and Jews from the violence of the mob. There is no district with any considerable amount of population, no borough or city, which had not a detachment of Janissaries to protect the Christians, Jews, or other helpless people from outrage or wrong.
It was not till the year 1520 that Belgrade was taken. Suleyman, who had just ascended the throne, advanced against the city with powerful forces…We can now see clearly that Belgrade was the door to Hungary, and that it was not till this gate was forced that the tide of Turkish barbarianism burst into this unhappy country…The loss of Belgrade ought to be a warning to the Princes of Christendom that they, as they love their safety, should take the utmost possible care of their forts and strongholds.
Document 2
Source: An Ottoman miniature featuring Sultan Suleyman and his military attacking Vienna, Austria, from Suleymanname, a collection of miniatures commissioned by Suleyman, 1558.
Document 3
Source: Diwan-i-Aam, located at Fatehpur Sikri, Mughal Emperor Akbar’s palace, 1571.
The Diwan-i-Aam, or Hall of Private Audience, is where government officials and guests spoke with Emperor Akbar. Akbar was known for having more non-Muslims at his palace and in the government. It is here that Emperor Akbar had representatives of different faiths (Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Jesuit Christians) discuss their faiths while Akbar sat in the center.
Document 4
Source: John Richards, chart featuring the spending of Mughal taxes, “Fiscal States in Mughal and British India,” 2012.
IMPERIAL MUGHAL REVENUE AND EXPENDITURE, 1595-1596
Revenue in Dams (Mughal Copper Coins)
Million Dams
20.69
50.97
Sub-total
80.95
Cavalry and footsoldiers
Source: Mughal Emperor Jahangir, personal memoirs reflecting on a conversation on Hindus with his father, Akbar, 1605.
Having on one occasion asked my father the reason he had forbidden any one to prevent or intervene with the building of these haunts of idolatry [Hindu temples], and his relay was in the following terms: “My dear child,” said he, “I find myself a powerful monarch, the shadow of God upon earth. I have seen that he bestows the blessings of his gracious providence upon all his creatures without distinction. Ill should I discharge the duties of my exalted station, were I to withhold my compassion and indulgence from any of those entrusted to my charge. With all of the human race, with all of God’s creatures, I am at peace; why should I permit myself, under any consideration, to be the cause of molestation or aggression to any one? Besides, are not five parts in six of mankind either Hindus or aliens to the faith; and were I to be governed by motives of the kind suggested in your inquiry, what alternative can I have but to put them all to death! I have thought it therefore my wisest plan to let these men alone. Neither is it to be forgotten, that the class of whom we are speaking… are usefully engaged, and have numerous instances arrived at the highest distinctions in the state, there being, indeed, to be found in this city men of every description, and of every religion on the face of the earth.”
Document 6
Source: Unknown author, a song in Greek Christian communities sung in memory of young boys taken by the Ottoman military as part of a “tax of blood”
Be damned, O Emperor, thrice be damned.
For the evil you have done and the evil you do.
You catch and shackle the old and the arch priests,
In order to take the children as janissaries.
Their parents weep, their sisters and brothers, too,
And I cry until it pains me;
As long as I live I shall cry,
For last year it was my son and this year my brother.
Document 7
Source: James Hilton, an English East India Company soldier at Bombay being attacked for fifteen months by a military ally of Emperor Aurangzeb, May 18, 1689.
This day [our Governor] having intelligence that the Enemy was at Mahim, ordered our [Indian soldiers] to go out and do what damage they could to the Enemy, who meet with the Enemy in the woods and had a very hot dispute for above an hour. When there came down from Mazagaon above four thousand men, who repulsed our people, coming to their assistance…In the time of the engagement, [Governor] ordered some of the Fort’s guns to be fired at their battery*; the Enemy fired from his Honor’s house at the [navy] ships, but not a gun at the Fort. We had Lieutenant Arthur Nangle mortally wounded and three English men more killed outright and several of the Militia and [Indian soldiers] wounded.
*a unit of gunpowder cannons positioned for attack