Name two important cities built by the Abbasid caliphs.
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Answer:
The Indian rebellion was fed by resentments born of diverse perceptions,
including invasive British-style social reforms, harsh land taxes, summary
treatment of some rich landowners and princes, as well as scepticism about the
improvements brought about by British rule. Many Indians rose against the
British; however, many also fought for the British, and the majority remained
seemingly compliant to British rule.
After the outbreak of the mutiny in Meerut, the rebels quickly reached Delhi,
whose 81-year-old Mughal ruler, Bahadur Shah Zafar, was declared the
Emperor of Hindustan. Soon, the rebels had captured large tracts of the North-
Western Provinces and Awadh (Oudh). The East India Company's response
came rapidly as well. With help from reinforcements, Kanpur was retaken by
mid-July 1857 and Delhi by the end of September. However, it then took the
remainder of 1857 and the better part of 1858 for the rebellion to be suppressed
in Jhansi, Lucknow and especially the Awadh countryside. Other regions of
Company-controlled India—Bengal province, the Bombay Presidency and
the Madras Presidency—remained largely calm. In Punjab, the Sikh princes
crucially helped the British by providing both soldiers and support. The large
princely states, Hyderabad, Mysore, Travancore and Kashmir, as well as the
smaller ones of Rajputana, did not join the rebellion, serving the British.
The rebellion proved to be an important watershed in Indian and British
Empire history. It led to the dissolution of the East India Company and forced
the British to reorganize the army, the financial system and the administration in
India, through passage of the Government of India Act 1858. India was
thereafter administered directly by the British government in the new British
Raj. On 1st November 1858, Queen Victoria issued a proclamation to Indians,
which while lacking the authority of a constitutional provision, promised rights
similar to those of other British subjects. In the following decades, when
admission to these rights was not always forthcoming, Indians were to pointedly
refer to the Queen's proclamation in growing avowals of a new nationalism.