NCERT Solutions for Class 7th Social Science Chapter 16 The Khyber Pass (Fig. 4.3), painted by a British military officer in about 1847 — LET’S EXPLORE
Book page 100 Updated on2026-09-19
Q1.
Observe the sketch of the Khyber Pass (Fig. 4.3). What kind of terrain does it depict?
Answer
Bare, steep mountain country cut by one narrow valley floor. Look at what the painting actually shows:
High rocky ridges on both sides, rising steeply and closing in on each other — the picture is mostly rock and shadow, not sky.
Almost no vegetation — brown and grey slopes, scree and loose stone, no forest, no fields.
A single narrow, winding track along the valley bottom, pale and dusty like a dry riverbed. It is the only easy way through.
A small watchtower or fort perched high on a crag on the right, above the track, and tiny figures of men resting near the bottom — which tells you the scale: the cliffs are enormous, the people are specks.
This is a defile — a long, narrow passage between mountains. The chapter calls it “one of the main mountain passes through the Hindu Kush range”.
Why this one pass mattered so much: a mountain wall stops armies and caravans alike. Where a wall has a single gap, everything — invaders, traders, monks, ideas — must funnel through that gap. That is why the chapter says the Hindu Shāhis’ resistance “made a difference, since they controlled the Khyber Pass”: holding the gap meant holding the door to India.
Q2.
What advantages would it offer to an army trying to reach the Indus plains? But also, what dangers?
Answer
The advantage is that it is the one usable road; the danger is that it is the one usable road. Both come from the same fact.
For an invading army
Advantages
Dangers
The route itself
A ready-made way through the Hindu Kush — no need to climb peaks or find a new pass. Beyond it the ground opens straight onto the Indus plains, which is exactly what Mahmūd wanted: after Ānandapāla’s defeat “Mahmūd now had easy access to the Indus plains and beyond”
There is no alternative road. If the pass is held or blocked, the campaign stops before it starts
The shape of the ground
Narrow ground protects your flanks — the enemy cannot swing round and attack from the sides
The same narrowness means the army must move in a long thin column. It cannot form a battle line, and cavalry — Mahmūd’s great strength — cannot charge
The heights
Whoever gets a watchtower on a crag first can see the whole valley
An enemy on the ridges can roll rocks and shoot arrows down on you and you cannot reach him. Ambush is the classic danger of a defile
Supplies
A short, known route means a predictable march
Nothing grows there. Food, fodder and water must be carried; a slow column is easy to cut off from behind
Check it yourself: the same logic appears later in this very chapter. In Kāmarūpa in 1205, “the local population is said to have destroyed food and fodder, in effect starving the invading army,” and Bakhtiyār Khiljī “escaped with only a handful of his men”. Difficult ground plus a determined local population beats a big army.
Q3.
Thinking of the caravans of traders that passed through the Khyber Pass for many centuries, let’s ask the same questions about the advantages as well as dangers.
Answer
For traders the balance is the same, but the stakes are goods and lives rather than a campaign.
Advantages.
It is the shortest link between two rich worlds. The chapter says that “for at least 2,500 years, it was also a major trade route, connecting the Subcontinent to Central Asia and beyond”. Indian cotton, spices and sugar went out; horses, dried fruit, silver and Central Asian goods came in.
One known road means known halts. Caravans could count on the same watering points, camping grounds and toll posts year after year, and could travel together in large numbers for safety.
Whoever ruled the pass had a reason to protect it. A ruler earns nothing from a road no one dares use, so rulers policed it and taxed it.
It carried more than goods. It was “the route Buddhist scholars and monks travelled” — so ideas, texts, art styles and languages moved along it too.
Dangers.
Robbers. A loaded caravan in a narrow gorge, watched from above, is the easiest target there is.
The mountains themselves. Snow and cold in winter, landslides and flash floods in the gorge, no fodder for pack animals, and long stretches without water.
War closes the road. The very route that made traders rich was the one armies used. When the pass changed hands, trade stopped or paid a heavy toll.
Everything is in one place. Losing one caravan could mean losing a merchant’s whole capital, which is why merchants organised themselves into guilds — the same guilds that, elsewhere in this chapter, are strong enough to back Rājendra Chola’s naval expedition.
The idea worth carrying away: a pass is a chokepoint — a narrow place that everything must pass through. Chokepoints make both trade and invasion easier, and they make both easier to stop. That is why control of the Khyber Pass is discussed in the same breath as the fate of a kingdom.