WORLD HISTORY SECTION II
Total Time—1 hour, 40 minutes
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.
Prompt: Evaluate the extent to which state building differed in the Ottoman Empire and the
Mughal Empire in the period 1500-1800.
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
Total Taxes Collected 99.01
Expenditures for Imperial Nobility
Salary of Mansabdars (government administrators) 20.69
Allowance for war elephants 9.29
Enlisted, heavily armed cavalry and regional troops 50.97
Sub-total 80.95
Expenditures for Central Military Establishment
Cavalry and footsoldiers 3.57
Animals and stables 4.85
Arsenal and armor 0.55
Sub-total 8.97
Total Expenditures 94.60
Document 5
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
