Sultans of the South is an exceptionally rich collection of essays on the arts of the Muslim courts of the Deccan (central India) during the medieval and early modern periods. With its publication, the study of Islamic art in the Deccan comes to full maturity after two other recent contributions: Silent Splendour: Palaces of the Deccan, 14th–19th Centuries, ed. Helen Philon (which I reviewed in BSOAS 74/2) and Garden and Landscape Practices in Precolonial India: Histories from the Deccan, ed. Daud Ali and Emma J. Flatt (reviewed by George Michell in BSOAS 75/3). The volume hosts eighteen essays, many of which were presented at the international symposium “The Art of India's Deccan Sultans”, convened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2008. The essays are carefully framed and contextualized in a preface (by Navina N. Haidar), a historical introduction (by Richard M. Eaton), and a postscript (by Kurt Behrendt). They are arranged into four sections: painting and literary traditions; carpets, textiles, and trade; architecture, fortifications, and arms; and the Ibrahim Rawza (the tomb of Ibrahim Adil Shah II (r. 1580–1627), arguably the region's most impressive funerary complex). In the first section, Robert Skelton sheds additional light on the Deccani sojourn of Farrukh Beg – a painter who found employment in turn with members of the Safavid and Mughal family, and in Deccani as well as Mughal court ateliers; Navina N. Haidar discusses the Kitāb-i Nauras – a key literary text produced at the court of Ibrahim II; Deborah Hutton presents the illustrations (and peculiar visual conventions) of the Pem Nem, a romance with mystical overtones originating in the same court milieu; John Seyller discusses Deccani elements in early Pahari painting, showing how the circulation of Deccani works and artists affected other pictorial schools of India; Ali A. Husain engages with the garden aesthetic found in a poetic praise of Ibrahim II; Phillip B. Wagoner further fleshes out the figure of the intellectual and patron Amin Khan (a Golconda nobleman he had previously discussed in Garden and Landscape Practices); and Michael Barry suggests a link between the iconography of certain demonic figures and a section in Nizami's Khamsa – one of the great classics of Persian literature. In the second section, Steven Cohen breaks new ground by outlining criteria for the identification of Deccani carpets (often confused with north Indian or Iranian ones of the same period); Yumiko Kamada convincingly establishes a Deccani provenance for a series of embroidered designs previously thought to come from Gujarat; Marika Sardar reconstructs the appearance of a once-huge textile wall ornament, whose surviving fragments are dispersed in various collections; and John Guy discusses a painted textile (kalamkārī) originating in a Nayak milieu, decorated with amorous/religious dalliances. In the third section, Richard M. Eaton discusses the early (north Indian) conquerors’ attitude towards Deccani temples; Helen Philon suggests that the Solah Khamba, a mosque within the palace compound in Bidar, was in fact originally a ceremonial hall; Klaus Rötzer presents an impressive technical discussion of fortifications and gunpowder; and Robert Elgood discusses Deccani swords in their complex relationship to European imports. The fourth and last section is devoted entirely to the Ibrahim Rawza (as explained in the preface, this section was originally conceived as an independent volume), with George Michell discussing Indic themes in its decoration, Bruce Wannell focusing on its epigraphic programme, and Wannell and Abdullah Ghouchani presenting the inscriptions in detail.
Many of the essays take individual works of art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art as their point of departure. The crisp, compact yet scholarly and informative formulation of the essays, combined with the plethora of full-colour illustrations (an average of more than two per page), makes the volume appealing and intriguing. The choice to present previously unpublished materials in full – including the epigraphic cycle of the Ibrahim Rawza and all of the Pem Nem's thirty-four illustrations – certainly deserves praise, though some of the pictures are inevitably small.
If a limit can be envisaged at all, it is in the very variety of subjects and the authors' equally varied backgrounds: the history and society of the Deccan are well in focus in some essays, while others are purely art-historical inquiries. Not all of the essays speak to one another, or resonate with a common theme. Even without the incorporation of the section on the Ibrahim Rawza, the volume – reflecting a persistent problem in Deccani art studies – displays a bias towards Bijapur during the great yet brief florescence patronized by Ibrahim Adil Shah II. The focus on the Muslim courts (the “Sultans” of the title) additionally results in a complete exclusion of the visual culture produced at the court of Vijayanagara (a few more words could have been expended explaining this choice). After a due mention in Eaton's impeccable historical outline, Vijayanagara is only sporadically referenced in other essays; consequently, Guy's discussion of an embroidered textile produced in Nayaka milieus comes rather abruptly and surprisingly: the Nayakas (Vijayanagara's successors) are not even included in the “List of rulers” appended to the volume.
This said, having attended the symposium, I cannot but congratulate the editors for assembling such an impressive collection of essays in print, greatly enhancing their academic significance. 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.
