Firuzabad: Palace City of the Deccan.

AuthorDehejia, Vidya

By George Michell and Richard Eaton. Oxford Studies in Islamic Art, 8. Oxford: (for the Board of the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford), 1992. Pp. 102, numerous black-and-white plates. $65.

Studies of Islamic art in India have tended to focus either on the architecture and painting of the Mughals or, less often, on the earlier Islamic sultanates of the Delhi region. Deccani art, by and large, has been marginalized; the first book on Deccani painting was published in 1983, while a volume dedicated to the architecture of the Islamic Deccan is yet to appear. This slim monograph, the eighth in a series entitled Oxford Studies in Islamic Art, is a welcome addition to our knowledge of Deccani history and art. With the site study conducted under the supervision of architectural historian George Michell, and with Richard Eaton's investigation of Persian sources, this monograph, in four sections, is a model of its type.

The ruined city of Firuzabad on the Bhima river, 17 miles south of the official Bahmani capital of Gulbarga, is known only to a few ardent archaeologists. Built by a single idiosyncratic monarch, Sultan Firuz Shah Bahmani (reigned 1397-1422), as his new palace city, and ignored after his death, the vicissitudes of the city faintly foreshadow the fate of Akbar's better known Fatehpur Sikri. In his analysis of the Persian sources for the history of Firuz Shah's reign, Eaton remarks that too much reliance has been placed on the account of Firishta, written between 1606 and 1611. Firishta speaks of Firuz Shah's desire "to possess the facility of language as lovely as fairies and as adorned as peacocks," and of the villas he conferred upon the different women of his harem, housing together those who spoke the same language, ranging from Persian, Turkish, and Russian on the one hand to Bengali, Gujarati, Telegu, and Kanarese on the other. Eaton suggests, however, that it would be a mistake to consider the city "merely as a royal language lab or a multi-ethnic play-pen." References in other historical sources that Eaton has unearthed, together with the plan of the city and the nature of its monuments, are shown to contradict such a vision.

The account of Tabatabai, composed between 1592 and 1596, suggests a city constructed for military purposes, to serve as a rallying point for the sultan's armies en route to battle the Hindu Vijayanagar empire, and as a resting point on their return journey. Firuz Shah fought a total of 24...

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