William Dalrymple examines the seventeenth-century Indian ruler, Sultan Ibrahim, and his obsession with art. In many ways his reign ushered in a renaissance,”[b]ringing together Hindu and Muslim traditions in an atmosphere of heterodox learning, and uniting Persians, Africans, and Europeans in a cosmopolitan artistic meritocracy, Ibrahim presided over a freethinking court in which art was a defining passion. For Ibrahim was literally obsessed with the power of art. In his poems he dwells on its ability to bring people together, and on the way that art, and particularly music, acted on the body and was capable of moving an individual to tears, or ecstasy, or a deep melancholic sadness.”

Read Dalrymple’s interesting review of Deborah Hutton and Rebecca Tucker’s The Visual World of Muslim India, and the “Sultans of Deccan India, 1500-1700: Opulence and Fantasy” (exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, April 20–July 26, 2015) here:

The Renaissance of the Sultans by William Dalrymple | The New York Review of Books.

“Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, lent by Howard Hodgkin
Sultan Ibrahim ‘Adil Shah II in Procession; painting by the school of ‘Ali Riza, Bijapur, early seventeenth century”