Illuminates the centrality of courtliness in the political and cultural life of the Deccan in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The Deccan sultans left a grand architectural and artistic legacy. They commissioned palaces, mosques, gardens and tombs as well as decorative paintings and coins. Of these sultanates, the Nizam Shahs (r. 1490-1636) were particularly significant, being one of the first to emerge from the crumbling edifice of the Bahmani Empire (c. 1347-1527). Yet their rich material record remains largely unstudied in the scholarly literature, obscuring their cultural and historical importance. This book provides the first analysis of the architecture of the Nizam Shahs. Pushkar Sohoni examines the critical relationship between architectural production, courtly practice and royal authority in a period when the aspirations and politics of the kingdom were articulated through architectural expression. Based on new primary research from key sites including the urban settlements of Ahmadnagar, Daulatabad, Aurangabad, Junnar and the port city of Chaul, Sohoni sheds light on broader Islamicate ideas of kingship and shows how this was embodied by material artefacts such as buildings and sites, paintings, gardens, guns and coins. As well as offering a vivid depiction of sixteenth-century South Asia, this book revises understanding of the cultural importance of the Nizam Shahs and their place in the Indian Ocean world. It will be a vital primary resource for scholars researching the history of the medieval and early modern Deccan and relevant for those working in Art History, Islamic Studies, South Asian Studies and Archaeology.

In this fascinating account of one of the least known parts of South Asia, Eaton recounts the history of the Deccan plateau in southern India from the fourteenth century to the rise of European colonialism. He does so, vividly, through the lives of eight Indians who lived at different times during this period, and who each represented something particular about the Deccan. In the first chapter, for example, the author describes the demise of the regional kingdom through the life of a maharaja. In the second, a Sufi sheikh illustrates Muslim piety and state authority. Other characters include a merchant, a general, a slave, a poet, a bandit and a female pawnbroker. Their stories are woven together into a rich narrative tapestry, which illumines the most important social processes of the Deccan across four centuries. This is a much-needed book by the most highly regarded scholar in the field.

The vast Deccan plateau of south-central India stretches from the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the region was home to several major Muslim kingdoms and became a nexus of international trade — most notably in diamonds and textiles, through which the sultanates attained remarkable wealth. The opulent art of the Deccan courts, invigorated by cultural connections to the Middle East, Africa, and Europe, developed an otherworldly character distinct from that of the contemporary Mughal north: in painting, a poetic lyricism and audacious use of color; in the decorative arts, lively creations of inlaid metalware and painted and dyed textiles; and in architecture, a somber grandeur still visible today in breathtaking monuments throughout the plateau. The first book to fully explore the history and legacy of these kingdoms, Sultans of Deccan India elucidates the predominant themes in Deccani art—the region’s diverse spiritual traditions, its exchanges with the outside world, and the powerful styles of expression that evolved under court patronage—with fresh insights and new scholarship. Alongside the discussion of the art, lively, engaging essays by some of the field’s leading scholars offer perspectives on the cycles of victory and conquest as dynasties competed with one another, vied with Vijayanagara, a great empire to the south, and finally succumbed to the Mughals from the north. Featuring some 200 of the finest works from the Deccan sultanates, as well as spectacular site photographs and informative maps, this magnificently illustrated catalogue provides the most comprehensive examination of this world to date and constitutes a pioneering resource for specialists and general readers alike.

The Muslim kingdoms of the Deccan plateau flourished from the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries. During this period, the Deccan sultans built palaces, mosques and tombs, and patronised artists who produced paintings and decorative objects. Many of these buildings and works of art still survive as testimony to the sophisticated techniques of their craftsmen. This volume is the first to offer an overall survey of these architectural and artistic traditions and to place them within their historical context. The links which existed between the Deccan and the Middle East, for example, are discernible in Deccani architecture and paintings, and a remarkable collection of photographs, many of which have never been published before, testify to these influences. The book will be a source of inspiration to all those interested in the rich and diverse culture of India, as well as to those concerned with the artistic heritage of the Middle East.

In the early 1400s, Iranian elites began migrating to the Deccan plateau of southern India. Lured to the region for many reasons, these poets, traders, statesmen, and artists of all kinds left an indelible mark on the Islamic sultanates that ruled the Deccan until the late seventeenth century. The result was the creation of a robust transregional Persianate network linking such distant cities as Bidar and Shiraz, Bijapur and Isfahan, and Golconda and Mashhad. Iran and the Deccan explores the circulation of art, culture, and talent between Iran and the Deccan over a three-hundred-year period. Its interdisciplinary contributions consider the factors that prompted migration, the physical and intellectual poles of connectivity between the two regions, and processes of adaptation and response. Placing the Deccan at the center of Indo-Persian and early modern global history, Iran and the Deccan reveals how mobility, liminality, and cultural translation nuance the traditional methods and boundaries of the humanities.

Focusing on the Deccan Sultanates of 16th- and 17th-century central India, Local States in an Imperial World promotes the idea that some polities of the time were not aspiring to be empires. Instead of the universalist and hierarchical vision typical of the language of empire, the sultanates presented another brand of state - one that prefers negotiation, flexibility and plurality of languages, religions and cultures. Building on theories of early modernity, empire, cosmopolitanism and vernaculars, Roy Fischel considers the components that shaped state and society: people, identities and idioms. He presents a frame for understanding the Deccan Sultanates as a rare case of the early modern non-imperial state, shedding light both on the region and on the imperial world surrounding it.

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw the establishment of the new Safavid regime in Iran. Along with reuniting the Persian lands under one rule, the Safavids initiated the radical transformation of the religious landscape by introducing Imami Shi'ism as the official state faith and in this as in other ways, laying the foundations of Iran's modern identity. In this book, leading scholars of Iranian history, culture and politics examine the meaning of the idea of Iran in the Safavid period by examining contemporary experiences of both insiders and outsiders, asking how modern scholarship defines the distinctive features of the age. While sometimes viewed as a period of decline from the high points of classical Persian literature and the visual arts of preceding centuries, the chapters of this book demonstrate that the Safavid era was nevertheless a period of great literary and artistic activity in the realms of both secular and theological endeavour. With the establishment of comparable polities across western, southern and central Asia at broadly the same time, the book explores some of the literary and political interactions with Iran's Ottoman, Mughal and Uzbek neighbours. As the volume and frequency of European merchants and diplomats visiting Safavid Persia increased, especially in the seventeenth century, and as more Iranians recorded their own travel experiences to surrounding Muslim lands, the Safavid period is the first in which we can document and explore the contours of Iran's place in an expanding world, and gain insights into how Iranians saw themselves and others saw them.

From the author of the Samuel Johnson prize-shortlisted ‘Return of a King’, the romantic and ultimately tragic tale of a passionate love affair that transcended all the cultural, religious and political boundaries of its time.