History entrance exam, 2015 E.C. (2023)

Cattle numbers in the Bale highlands grew from the 14th century until there was not enough grazing land left. Young Oromo men drove the herds south and west into the lowlands of the Middle Awash and the Ganale valleys to find pasture, and that search grew into the large movement that began around 1522.

Option D fails because political control over new land was a result of the movement, not the reason it started.

Textbook: History Grade 11, Unit 7 Politics, Economy and Society in Ethiopia and the Horn, section 7.5 Population Movements in the Ethiopian Region (page 193).

The Ottoman Turks seized the port of Massawa in 1557 and pushed inland to Debarwa, the centre of the Red Sea coastal province. That Turkish advance was the standing danger in Mereb Melash, the land beyond the Mereb River, throughout the 1570s. In 1578 the coastal governor Bahr Negash Yeshaq sided with the Turks; Sarsa Dengel defeated Yeshaq the next year but could never dislodge the Ottomans from the coast.

Option B fails because the na'ib of Arkiko was an Ottoman deputy of a later period.

Textbook: History Grade 11, Unit 8 Political, Social and Economic Processes in Ethiopia, section 8.2 Instability Versus Consolidation in the Christian Kingdom, 1559 to 1855 (page 218).

Under Iyasu I (r. 1682 to 1706) the traditional civil code, the Fitha Negest, was revised, land laws were amended, and taxes and customs dues were reorganised. Those reforms, plus his campaigns across the Abay to collect tribute, are why he is remembered as Iyasu the Great.

Option C fails because the Gonderine castle architecture began with Fasiledes, who founded the city about fifty years earlier.

Textbook: History Grade 11, Unit 8, section 8.2 Instability Versus Consolidation in the Christian Kingdom (page 218).

The Ching (Qing) were Manchu, that is outsiders, so they ruled through the Chinese machine they inherited. They kept the Confucian civil service examinations, the same ministries and the same law codes, so Han scholars could still win rank and office and had a reason to serve the new dynasty.

Option B fails because the Ching were forced to sign the Unequal Treaties after the Opium Wars, not to reject them.

Textbook: History Grade 9, Unit 4 The Middle Ages, section 4.2.3 Dynastic Cycle in China (page 72).

Charles I called the Short Parliament in April 1640 for one reason: he needed money to fight the Scots, who had risen against the prayer book he tried to force on them. Parliament refused to vote any tax until its own complaints were answered, so the king dissolved it after three weeks.

Option A fails because the quarrel of 1640 was about money for the Scottish war, not about the king's treaty making power.

The central belief of the Enlightenment was that human beings can improve their own condition by using reason. Thinkers such as Voltaire, Locke, Montesquieu and Rousseau argued that laws, government and society should be judged by reason and evidence rather than accepted because they were old or holy.

Option A fails because salvation through good works is a religious doctrine, and the Enlightenment moved away from that kind of question.

Textbook: History Grade 11, Unit 4 The Middle Ages, section 4.8 The Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment (page 113).