QUES: By developing commercial centres and routes, encouraging people to extend the area of cultivated land in the country and international trade through its dominions, the state performed basic economic functions in the Empire. But in all this the financial and political interests of the state were dominant. Within the social and political system they were living in Ottoman administrators could not have comprehended or seen the desirability of the dynamics and principles of the capitalist and mercantile economies developing in Western Europe.

The development of what caused people to expand areas of cultivation in the Ottoman Empire?
What is the answer?
ANS: commercial centres and routes
QUES: The Umayyad Caliphate (Arabic: الخلافة الأموية‎, trans. Al-Khilāfat al-ʾumawiyya) was the second of the four major Islamic caliphates established after the death of Muhammad. This caliphate was centered on the Umayyad dynasty (Arabic: الأمويون‎, al-ʾUmawiyyūn, or بنو أمية, Banū ʾUmayya, "Sons of Umayya"), hailing from Mecca. The Umayyad family had first come to power under the third caliph, Uthman ibn Affan (r. 644–656), but the Umayyad regime was founded by Muawiya ibn Abi Sufyan, long-time governor of Syria, after the end of the First Muslim Civil War in 661 CE/41 AH. Syria remained the Umayyads' main power base thereafter, and Damascus was their capital. The Umayyads continued the Muslim conquests, incorporating the Caucasus, Transoxiana, Sindh, the Maghreb and the Iberian Peninsula (Al-Andalus) into the Muslim world. At its greatest extent, the Umayyad Caliphate covered 15 million km2 (5.79 million square miles), making it the largest empire (in terms of area - not in terms of population) the world had yet seen, and the fifth largest ever to exist.

Who was the third caliph?
What is the answer?
ANS: Uthman ibn Affan
QUES: Prizes are awarded on the results of trials (internal exams), GCSE and AS-levels. In addition, many subjects and activities have specially endowed prizes, several of which are awarded by visiting experts. The most prestigious is the Newcastle Scholarship, awarded on the strength of an examination, consisting of two papers in philosophical theology, moral theory and applied ethics. Also of note are the Gladstone Memorial Prize and the Coutts Prize, awarded on the results of trials and AS-level examinations in C; and the Huxley Prize, awarded for a project on a scientific subject. Other specialist prizes include the Newcastle Classical Prize; the Rosebery Exhibition for History; the Queen’s Prizes for French and German; the Duke of Newcastle’s Russian Prize; the Beddington Spanish Prize; the Strafford and Bowman Shakespeare Prizes; the Tomline and Russell Prizes in Mathematics; the Sotheby Prize for History of Art; the Waddington Prize for Theology and Philosophy; the Birley Prize for History; The Lower Boy Rosebery Prize and the Wilder Prize for Theology. Prizes are awarded too for excellence in such activities as painting, sculpture, ceramics, playing musical instruments, musical composition, declamation, silverwork, and design.

Are trials considered internal or external exams?
What is the answer?
ANS:
internal