Paper short abstract:

This presentation argues that the patronizing of the 15th century manuscript, the Ni'matnama, allowed Sultan Ghiyath Shahi to envision a world of sensory eclecticism that brought together disparate objects, material cultures and people to establish Sultanate authority in Medieval Malwa.

Paper long abstract:

The presentation examines Sultan Ghiyath Shahi's book of recipes the Ni'matnama patronized after he ascended the throne to Malwa in 1492. The manuscript depicts a rich courtly life of "pleasure, peace and plenty". It is the latter aspect of this description that has gained currency to explain the production of the manuscript and the Sultan's hedonism. This presentation, however, explores other possibilities that emanate out of the Ni'matnama, apart from the orientalizing tropes that have been associated with Medieval India in the popular imaginary. It argues that the Sultan envisioned a world of sensory eclecticism that brought together not only disparate objects and material cultures but also a wide variety of people to establish Sultanate authority in Malwa. In the painted genre, this eclecticism employed cross-culturation of Indic — Hindu-dominated — and Persian — Muslim-oriented — styles, by mixing Shirazi art with Indic art in the painted manuscripts of the Ni'matnama. This kind of cross-culturation is also present in the recipes that the Sultan lays out in the Ni'matnama. However, this cross-cultural eclecticism extends beyond the Indic-Persian binary, bringing forth a different kind of mixing, i.e. a mixing of people with the mixing of food, spices and smells. This unique eclecticism produced a sensorial regime that consolidated Ghiyath Shahi's authority in Malwa, that keeps at heart the visual and sensory aesthetics of imagining collectivities.