The mother tongue of the Mughals was:
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 1
The correct answer is Option (1) → Turkish
As the Mughals were Chaghtai Turks by origin, Turkish was their mother tongue; Persian became the leading language of the court only under Akbar.
Note: This question is taken from the chapter ‘Kings and Chronicles’ which was there in the pre-rationalised NCERT and has been deleted from subsequent editions of NCERT, including the NCERT book (2026-27).
NCERT (Pre-rationalised): “2.1 From Turkish to Persian … Mughal court chronicles were written in Persian. Under the Sultans of Delhi it flourished as a language of the court and of literary writings, alongside north Indian languages, especially Hindavi and its regional variants. As the Mughals were Chaghtai Turks by origin, Turkish was their mother tongue. Their first ruler Babur wrote poetry and his memoirs in this language. It was Akbar who consciously set out to make Persian the leading language of the Mughal court.…” |