SULTANS OF THE SOUTH: ARTS OF INDIA'S DECCAN COURTS, 1323-1687

Edited by Navina Najat Haidar and Marika Sardar

Book: Sultans of the South: Arts of India's Deccan Courts, 1323-1687, edited by Navina Najat Haidar and Marika Sardar (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011). This book, 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the essays in this volume respond to and challenge earlier perceptions of Deccani art by bringing to light previously unpublished paintings, investigating new works of literature, identifying otherwise unattributed carpets and textiles (including several in the Metropolitan Museum), and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 little studied architectural monuments. Special features of the book are the illustration of all thirty-four paintings from a 16th-century copy of the poem the Pem Nem, and new photographs by Amit Pasricha of the Ibrahim Rauza in Bijapur, with the first full transcription and translation of the tomb’s inscriptions.

Table of Contents:

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

Section 1: Painting and Literary Traditions

Robert Skelton, Farrukh Beg in the Deccan: An Update

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

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

John Seyller, Deccani Elements in Early Pahari Painting

Ali Akbar Husain, The Courtly Gardens of ‘Abdul’s Ibrahim Nama

Phillip B. Wagoner, The Multiple Worlds of Amin Khan: Crossing Cultural Boundaries in the Qutb Shahi Kingdom and Appendix: Telugu Literature of the Qutb Shahi Period

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

Section 2: Carpets, Textiles, and Trade

Steven Cohen, Deccani Carpets: Creating a Corpus

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

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

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

Section 3: Architecture, Fortifications, and Arms

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

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

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

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

Section 4: The Ibrahim Rauza

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

Bruce Wannell, The Epigraphic Program of the Ibrahim Rauza in Bijapur

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

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