Sultans of the South Arts of India's Deccan Courts, 1323-1687 Navina Najat Haidar, Marika Sardar

Between the 14th and the 17th centuries, 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, southern India, and northern India, the arts produced under these sultanates are markedly different from those of the rest of India and especially from those produced under Mughal patronage.

This publication, a result of a 2008 symposium held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, investigates the unique output of the Deccan in the fields of painting, literature, architecture, arms, textiles, and carpets. Special features of the book are the illustration of all thirty-four paintings from a 16th-century copy of the poem the Pem Nem, images of several paintings and textiles that have only recently been discovered or identified, and new photographs of the Ibrahim Rauza monument in Bijapur, with a full transcription and translation of the tomb's inscriptions.

Navina Najat Haidar is associate curator and Marika Sardar is a research associate, both in the Department of Islamic Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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