Fifty leaves that form the sumptuous Kevorkian Album, one of the world's greatest assemblages of Mughal art. -- Metropolitan Museum of Art website.

A dazzling celebration of the art and artists of late-Mughal Delhi Between 1707 and 1857, Delhi was a hotbed of political intrigue and power struggles the Mughal Empire was on the decline and the British East India Company was emerging as a formidable power. In 1857, these tensions would culminate in the Mutiny that led to the end of Mughal dominion and the beginning of the British Raj. But this turbulent epoch also witnessed a burst of artistic innovation and experimentation. Delhis artists were increasingly employed by Company officials as well as the Mughal and regional courts, and thus became adept at improvising with a variety of techniques, creating traditional miniatures while continually experimenting with new European styles. Art historians are only now coming to recognize the richness and ingenuity of the work created in this period. With insightful essays by distinguished scholars, Princes and Painters is a stunning visual document of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Delhi.

Books have been treasured for centuries in the Islamic world, as precious objects worthy of royal admiration. This was especially true in Muslim India, where generations of Mughal emperors commissioned and collected volumes of richly illuminated manuscripts and lavishly illustrated folios. They assembled workshops of the leading artists and calligraphers to produce the books that filled their extensive libraries. Today, those works remain a vibrant part of India's cultural and artistic history in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In this revised and expanded edition of his popular 1981 book, Dr Milo Beach presents the superb collection of Mughal painting in the Freer Gallery of Art. He adds many of the outstanding works that entered the collection with the opening of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in 1987. Together, the Freer and Sackler Galleries, the Smithsonian's museums of Asian art, have the distinction of being one of the world's leading repositories of Mughal art. An introductory essay examines the Mughal art of the book and traces the contributions of a succession of rulers in Muslim India. Brief artist biographies and an extensive bibliography complete this updated volume.

Oleg Grabar, On Catalogues, Exhibitions, and Complete Works ;Jonathan M. Bloom, The Mosque of the Qarafa in Cairo ;Leonor Fernandes, The Foundation of Baybars al-Jashankir: Its Waqf, History, and Architecture ;Howard Crane, Some Archaeological Notes on Turkish Sardis ;Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt, Siyah Qalem and Gong Kai: An Istanbul Album Painter and a Chinese Painter of the Mongolian Period ;Do gan Kuban, The Style of Sinan's Domed Structures ;Yasser Tabbaa, Bronze Shapes in Iranian Ceramics of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries ;Mehrdad Shokoohy and Natalie H. Shokoohy, The Architecture of Baha al-Din Tughrul in the Region of Bayana, Rajasthan ;Glenn D. Lowry, Humayun's Tomb: Form, Function, and Meaning in Early Mughal Architecture ;Peter Alford Andrews, The Generous Heart or the Mass of Clouds: The Court Tents of Shah Jahan ;Priscilla P. Soucek, Persian Artists in Mughal India: Influences and Transformations ;A.J. Lee, Islamic Star Patterns ;

Illustrations: Numerous B/w & Colour Illustrations Description: The present work is based on an extensive and critical study of the original Mughal paintings supported by contemporary historical literature and provides fresh perspective for the interpretation and analysis of the painter's art under the Mughals. After a brief discussion on painting in Islam the author goes on to expound the nature and role of pre-Mughal indigenous traditions in the making of Mughal style. Thereafter, the study turns towards the origin and development of Mughal painting from Humayun to Aurangzeb. Finally, the various influences--Persian, Chinese and European--have been examined. The author concludes that Mughal painting reflecte a non-mechanical fusion of the different cultures of Asia and Europe. It had never been a colonial expression of Persian painting. Despite the presence of a number of elements borrowed from foreign sources, it remained truly Indian from the very beginning. This richly illustrated volume carries finest treasures of Mughal court paintings.

Annemarie Schimmel has written extensively on India, Islam and poetry. In this comprehensive study she presents an overview of the cultural, economic, militaristic and artistic attributes of the great Mughal Empire from 1526 to 1857.