Sultans of the South: Arts of India's Deccan Courts, 1323–1687

Haidar, Navina Najat, and Marika Sardar, eds. (2011)

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Between the fourteenth and the seventeenth century, the Deccan plateau of south-central India was home to a series of important and highly cultured Muslim courts. Subtly blending elements from Iran, West Asia, and sometimes Europe, as well as southern and northern India, the arts produced under these sultanates are markedly different from those of the rest of India and especially from those created under Mughal patronage.

This publication, dedicated to the unique artistic output of the Deccan, is the result of a symposium held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2008. Updating prior research in this field, the essays in this volume respond to and challenge earlier perceptions of Deccani art by bringing to light previously unpublished paintings, investigating new works of literature, identifying otherwise unattributed carpets and textiles (including several in the Metropolitan Museum), and supplying fresh interpretations of rarely studied architectural monuments. Throughout, the Deccan's collections to the wider world are explored.

Special features of the book are the illustration of all thirty-four paintings from a sixteenth-century copy of the poem the Pem Nem, and new photography by Amit Pasricha of the Ibrahim Rauza in Bijapur, with the first full transcription and translation of the tomb's inscriptions.

Table of contents

Foreword
Sheila R. Canby

Preface
Navina Najat Haidar

Note to the Reader

Maps

A Social and Historical Introduction to the Deccan, 1323–1687
Richard M. Eaton

Section 1: Painting and Literary Traditions

Farrukh Beg in the Deccan: An Update
Robert Skelton

The Kitab-i Nauras: Key to Bijapur's Golden Age
Navina Najat Haidar

The Pem Nem: A Sixteenth-Century Illustrated Romance from Bijapur
Deborah Hutton

Deccani Elements in Early Pahari Painting
John Seyller

The Courtly Gardens of 'Abdul's Ibrahim Nama
Ali Akbar Husain

The Multiple Worlds of Amin Khan: Crossing Persianate and Indic Cultural Boundaries in the Qutb Shahi Kingdom
Phillip B. Wagoner

Diabolic Fancies and Composite Animals: Persian Poetry and the Grotesques of Deccani and Mughal Painting
Michael Barry

Section 2: Carpets, Textiles, and Trade

Deccani Carpets: Creating a Corpus
Steven Cohen

The Attribution and Circulation of Flowering Tree and Medallion Design Deccani Embroideries
Yumiko Kamada

A Seventeenth-Century Kalamkari Hanging at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Marika Sardar

A Ruler and His Courtesans Celebrate Vasantotsava: Courtly and Divine Love in a Nayaka Kalamkari
John Guy

Section 3: Architecture, Fortifications, and Arms

Muhammad bin Tughluq and Temples of the Deccan, 1321–26
Richard M. Eaton

The Solah Khamba Mosque at Bidar as a Ceremonial Hall of the Bahmanis
Helen Philon

Fortifications and Gunpowder in the Deccan, 1368–1687
Klaus Rötzer

Swords in the Deccan in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: Their Manufacture and the Influence of European Imports
Robert Elgood

Section 4: The Ibrahim Rauza

Indic Themes in the Design and Decoration of the Ibrahim Rauza in Bijapur
George Michell

The Epigraphic Program of the Ibrahim Rauza in Bijapur
Bruce Wannell

The Inscriptions of the Ibrahim Rauza Tomb
Abdullah Ghouchani and Bruce Wannell

Schematic of the Ibrahim Rauza

Postscript: Continuities in the Deccan, from Ancient Times to the Sultanate Period
Kurt Behrendt

List of Rulers of the Deccan Sultanates
Bibliography
Photograph Credits

About the authors

Michael Barry is Lecturer in Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey.

Kurt Behrendt is Assistant Curator, Department of Asian Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Steven Cohen is an independent textile historian, London.

Richard M. Eaton is Professor of History, University of Arizona, Texas.

Robert Elgood is Research Fellow, Eastern European, Islamic, and Asian Arms, The Wallace Collection, London.

Abdullah Ghouchani is Epigrapher, Department of Islamic Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

John Guy is Florence and Herbert Irving Curator of South and Southeast Asian Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Navina Najat Haidar is Curator, Department of Islamic Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Ali Akbar Husain, Department of Architecture, Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi, Pakistan.

Deborah Hutton is Associate Professor of Art History, The College of New Jersey, Ewing, New Jersey.

Yumiko Kamada is Assistant Professor, Waseda Institute for Advanced Study, Waseda University, Tokyo.

George Michell is an independent scholar, London, and Honorary Professional Fellow, Faculty of Architecture, Building, and Planning, University of Melbourne.

Helen Philon is an independent scholar, formerly Curator of the Islamic Department, Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece.

Klaus Rötzer is an independent scholar, Paris.

Marika Sardar is Research Associate, Department of Islamic Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

John Seyller is Professor of Art and Art History, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont.

Robert Skelton is formerly Keeper of the Indian Department at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Phillip B. Wagoner is Professor of Art History and Archaeology, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut.

Bruce Wannell is an independent scholar.

Press reviews

Laura E. Parodi, Journal of The Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Volume 76/2 (2013)

"This is a volume every scholar interested in the arts and literature of India and Islam, in military history, textile history, or the Indian Ocean Trade, should peruse."

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