Description
Book SynopsisMughal rulers were legendary connoisseurs of the arts, whose patronage attracted poets, artists, and scholars from all parts of the world. Sunil Sharma explores the rise and decline of Persian court poetry in India and the invention of an enduring idea of a literary paradise, perfectly exemplified by the valley of Kashmir.
Trade ReviewSunil Sharma’s
Mughal Arcadia draws on Persian poetry produced in India to evoke a world that is now as lost and strange as Atlantis or Shangri-La. The Persian poets presented India as a land of wonders and riches, a pastoral paradise. As I read on, an impossible longing came over me—to visit seventeenth century Kashmir and see for myself what the poets described and the miniaturists painted: the spring festivals, harem processions, falcon hunts, well-watered gardens with their fruit trees, Sufis, nightingales, wild dogs, and cities devoted to love and poetry… This exploration of a hitherto largely neglected subject is based on remarkably wide reading and is a credit to scholarship. -- Robert Irwin, author of
The Arabian Nights: A Companion and
Wonders Will Never CeaseIt is the fragrance of pure Mughal sophistication which wafts through this erudite book. In elegant and eloquent detail, Sharma tells of the Mughal imperial family’s love for nature…
Mughal Arcadia’s singularity is that, calling on [Sharma’s] ample scholarly knowledge of Indo-Persian poetry and culture, it offers an account of Mughal history for the non-specialist, including the Mughal love for tended and unspoiled bountiful nature. -- Christine van Ruymbeke * Times Literary Supplement *
A celebration and deeply learned account of Persian poetry in Mughal India, this book traces how the idea of Hindustan in the Iranian imagination encountered the actuality of the place and ultimately transformed the literary and aesthetic landscape of the subcontinent.
Mughal Arcadia is attractively written, with enthusiasm and erudition, and will delight anyone interested in the magnificent Indo-Persian culture it commemorates. -- Dick Davis, translator of
Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of ShirazPersian poets have historically referred to the valley of Kashmir as a ‘second paradise.’ Thanks to Sunil Sharma’s fascinating account of the Mughal court’s love of Persian poets and poetry and its openness to artistic multiculturalism, we understand the full breadth of that paradise. -- Sholeh Wolpé, poet and translator of
The Conference of the Birds by Attar
Sharma…takes us on a whirlwind tour of a hefty slice of the nearly forgotten universe of Mughal Persian poetry. The book is a delight. One emerges from it impressed by the beauty and complexity of Mughal poetry and even more impressed by Sharma’s deft reading skills and ability to translate this tradition for 21st century readers. -- Audrey Truschke * The Wire *
