Sunil Sharma’s study of topographical poetry in early Mughal India (from the reign of Babur [1526–30] to Aurangzeb [1658–1707]), with a special focus on Shah Jahan’s time (1628–58), contains an introduction, four chapters, a conclusion, a glossary, an index and several illustrations. Over the years, Sunil Sharma has contributed in major ways to put the Persian literature of the subcontinent on the map of Anglophone scholarship. Starting with one of the earliest examples of Indo-Persian poets, Masʿud Saʿd Salmān (d. 1121–22) and “the poet of Sufis and Sultans” Amir Khosrow (d. 1325), he now offers an insightful study of topographical poetry, a major genre of Mughal literature, with a special attention given to Kashmir. The climate and location of Kashmir made it the meeting ground of the Iranian, Central Asian, and Indian Persianate worlds, and Mughal emperors chose it as a symbol of their beneficent rule. In this lucid and erudite work, Sharma caters to non-specialist readers by carefully introducing his main topic of research, while providing important syntheses and updates based on the most recent scholarship. The monograph also contains a wealth of original material analyzed in a richly contextualized way, combining close textual study with a concern for the sociology of writing and reading, and the relation between literature, visual arts, and architecture—a cross-disciplinarity that also appears in the dedication of the book to the historian of Mughal art and architecture Ebba Koch.

The Introduction opens with a verse by one of the last Indo-Persian poets, Sir Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938), which perfectly encapsulates the main themes of the books: “My body is a flower from the avenues of paradisiacal Kashmir. / My heart is from the holy shrine in the Hijaz and my song from Shiraz” (tan-am gol-i ze kheyābān-e jannat-e Kashmīr / del az harim-e Hejāz o navā ze Shirāz ast).Footnote ¹ In this verse, Iqbal defines his poetic self through the cultural geography of the Islamicate and Persianate worlds, in which Kashmir stands as a centrally located and idealized place. In order to bring the reader to the historical moment when the image of “paradisiacal Kashmir” crystalized in the Indo-Persian imaginary, Sharma introduces the main features of the Persianate world and how Persian functioned as a lingua franca from the Balkans to Bengal (Introduction). He defines Mughal literary culture and the ways in which Hindustan was (re)discovered by Safavid and Mughal literati, which prompted a “rhetoric of newness” that resonated throughout the Persianate world (Chapters 1 and 2). In Chapter 3, the author narrows down the focus on topographical poetry and the poetic description of the successive capitals of the Mughal Empire (Agra, Lahore, and Delhi). This topographical literature provides a frame to understand the fad around poetry on Kashmir. The vast corpus of poetry on Kashmir was thus the result of this new trend of descriptive poetry, but it also contrasted with other poems in significant ways. Kashmir was not another capital, but a place of leisure, and later on a spiritual retreat, for members of the Mughal imperial family and dignitaries. As Sharma discusses it in several places in his book (e.g. pp. 132–43), the “road to Kashmir” was part of the typical poetic description of the region and its remoteness and inaccessibility gave it an otherworldly dimension that no capital city or provincial urban center could ever have. It was at the same time the ideal picture of the pax mughalica (pp. 84, 112) while being outside of the worldly domain of Hindustan.

The book’s focus is on the early Mughal period and Shah Jahan’s times, but Sharma is careful to set this period within the larger history of Persian in the subcontinent. After giving an outline of the beginnings of Persian literature in the Sultanate period, he keeps pointing out the presence of Amir Khosrow as a model for Safavid and Mughal poets in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. In many ways, Amir Khosrow set standards for the process of innovation inspired by the discovery of Hindustan, its natural, cultural, and linguistic diversity. Khosrow was an innovative poet who found his place in the wider canon of classical Persian literature while experimenting with genres and forms (e.g. pp. 19, 61, 94). Experiments that did not always create new trends but established precedents of innovative creative processes for later poets. With the exception of some obvious cases of influence of his language and poetic images (e.g. pp. 157–9), rather than a specific style it is a spirit of formal innovation when creating a poetry of place that runs throughout the corpus of prose and poetry that Sharma reads with us.

Sharma suggests that Mughal poetry could be divided into two periods: from Babur’s conquest of Hindustan in 1526 to the shift of the capital from Delhi to the Deccan by Aurangzeb in Aurangabad in 1681. This periodization is motivated by the project of the book to connect space and literary production, but it also makes a larger argument about the fundamental changes that took place in the role of Persian poetry at the Mughal court after Shah Jahan’s reign. Sharma does not seem to reiterate the idea of a cultural decline, but rather his attention is on the reconfiguration of literary and linguistic practices that took place in the last decades of the seventeenth century. By Aurangzeb’s time, poetry did not need the institution of the court to be composed, recited, and reproduced. Moreover, Persianate literary forms had reached beyond Persian itself and had prompted new trends in vernacular languages, as was the case with Urdu, the new vernacular lingua franca of northern India (see for instance the introductory comments on multilingualism, pp. 44–52, but also the many references to Hindavi and Sanskrit literature in the other chapters).

Another way to look at the periodization offered by Sharma has to do with the specific case of Kashmir and the various ways in which imperial patronage shaped its actual landscape and poetic representation. At first, Kashmir seems to have been praised primarily for its natural charm and recognized as the paradise on earth symbolizing the peaceful rule of the emperor as “gardener” in the Mughal form of pastoral imagery (see Chapter 4, “Mughal Pastoral,” pp. 125–32). With Jahangir and especially Shah Jahan, the emperors and governors further shaped the landscape through architectural patronage and the creation of gardens. Sharma’s study of Zafar Khān as a patron and poet himself is probably the most original contribution to the book (pp. 143–55). In the same section in Chapter 4, the author pulls together the thematic threads of the book by looking at Zafar Khān’s poetic output. His figure as a successful Mughal administrator, patron, and poet is compared and contrasted with that of ʿAbd al-Rahim Khānkhānān (pp. 143–54), the main difference being the multilingualism of Rahim as opposed to the monolingualism of Zafar Khān, both as patrons and poets, and the main point of convergence being the attachment to the places they administered that is visible in their architectural and literary patronage. The case of Zafar Khān is also particularly interesting because of an illustrated autograph manuscript of his masnavis that Sharma analyzes in both their literary and visual aspects. The masnavis describe Hindustan, the capital Agra, the road to Kashmir and “Zafar Khān’s Kashmir.” When relating the contents of these masnavis, Sharma highlights parallels between topographical themes and the poetry discussed in the previous chapters; such as the survey of urban characters in Kalim’s Agra poem or Rahim’s Nagarśobhā, or the ethnographic tone of Babur echoed in Zafar Khān’s description of Kashmiri gardens. At the end of one of his masnavis, Zafar Khān actually acknowledges his indebtedness to Zohuri, “the first early Indo-Persian poet to write a poem on a topographical theme” (p. 150; see also p. 94). This section ends with an invitation to further explore “the personalities and literary activities of other Mughal administrators.” Indeed, Sharma is offering us a useful template for the study of poetry and patronage across media and artistic forms in Mughal regional centers.

Under Shah Jahan, Kashmir became a spiritual retreat for the imperial family. Prince Dārā and his sister Jahānārā Begum chose this place for their mystical pursuits. It is also during this period that, in addition to imperial representations, we see the formation of a regional Persianate literary culture, which partly continues imperial trends and emphasizes the spiritual character of the land. The period is characterized by the works of Sufis such as Mullā Shāh, Dārā and Jahānārā’s spiritual master, whose poetry is discussed in Chapter 4, and less mundane, more secluded literati such as the poets Ghani Kashmiri (1668–69) and Nāser ʿAli Serhendi (d. 1697). I may note in passing that a discussion of the poetry of Ghani and Nāser ʿAli would have been a useful addition to the book. With the end of imperial trips to Kashmir under Aurangzeb’s rule, Kashmir once again became a remote place, a mere trope of paradise on earth, and its Persianate culture remained alive but at a regional level, thus confirming the tendency already observed in Shah Jahan’s time with the limited reception of Zafar Khān and Mullā Shāh’s works (p. 165).

Once again, the specific trajectory of Kashmir parallels the fate of Hindustan in the imaginary of the Persianate world. The Conclusion of the book explores the return from experiential topographical literature to exotic tropes, which were also very productive sources of inspiration but tell us something of the fragmented state of the Persianate world already in the late seventeenth century, much before the irreversible breakdown of this cultural domain almost two centuries later. In Sharma’s study Kashmir is a synecdoche for Hindustan (p. 176): it actually occupied a central place in the official imperial discourse and, as a literary theme and place where Persian poetry was produced, it reflects phenomena that are observed at a larger scale in South Asia and the Persianate world. After demonstrating the process that turned Kashmir back into a distant trope in Aurangzeb’s time, the author moves to Safavid Iran and, forgetting Kashmir for a moment, looks at the trope of the Indian woman in general and the sati in particular. The conclusion of both parts of the final chapter again shows how Kashmir reflects the perception of Hindustan as a whole as both the region and the fading empire are relegated to exotic tropes, removed from the experiential world of poets.

Sharma’s prose is lucid and engaging, and the translations are clear and flowing. Probably due to editorial constraints, the transliterated Persian and Hindavi texts are rendered in a simplified transcription that is not always very convenient to decipher. Readers who can read the original will have to think for a moment to reconstruct the original text behind the transcription. But we can be grateful for at least having access to the Persian text, especially in cases where the original is not available in printed form. Considering the dearth of translations of Mughal Persian poetry, a small appendix with translations of complete ghazals discussed in the book or excerpts of Zafar Khān’s masnavis would have been useful. The author often refers to the lack of available studies and translation in English about the poetry of this period, and this book will undoubtedly prompt new projects that will fill out this lacuna.

I have noted a minor omission on page 85, where the following verse by Tālib is not present in the translation: chu vasf-e Kashmir mikonam farz ast / keh shuyam in dahān-e talkh rā be-shekar o shir. As a humble contribution to the completeness of Sharma’s work, here is a possible translation: “As I set out to describe Kashmir I must / wash this bitter mouth with sugar and milk.”

On page 84, Sharma quotes the following verse by Tālib: “yak-i bāgh-i’st izad-sāz-e kuhi / ke meʿmār-e bahār-ash kardeh taʿmīr,” which he translates: “the mountainous region is a garden made by God that is renovated by the architect of its spring.” I would transliterate this verse as follows: “yak-i bāgh-i’st izad-sāz kuh-i / keh meʿmār-e bahār-ash kardeh taʿmīr,” and translate it: “It is a garden, a mountain built by God / that Spring, the architect, made habitable.” I read izad-sāz kuh-i as an indeterminate reversed compound without the ezāfa (= yak kuh-e izad-sāz); in meʿmār-e bahār the ezāfa creates a metaphorical compound “the architect that is Spring”; and more importantly the enclitic pronoun -ash (zamir-e shin) stands for Kashmir and it is the object (mafʿul) of kardeh taʿmīr, and not a genitive enclitic (“its” in Sharma’s translation).

Finally, I have a suggestion regarding the translation of a very significant verse by Kalim on page 110: gham-e maskan o fekr-e māvā nadāram / ʿajab nist gar dar deli jā nadāram. Sharma offers the following translation: “I have no sorrow of a home or worry about my place of origin / It’s not strange if I have no place in my heart.” He then comments: “In this line, he [Kalim] professes to be sated with life, perhaps mirroring his own contented state.” I would suggest a slightly different reading of this line, which reveals the poet’s masterful use of the trope of unrequited love combined with a more circumstantial comment about his self-perception as an émigré Iranian poet in Hindustan: “I don’t care for a home or any sort of refuge / it’s no wonder if none holds me dear in his heart.” Alternatively, the second mesraʿ could be translated: “it’s no wonder if I have no place in Delhi.” This pun relies on the absence of distinction between the yā-ye majhul (del-e > del-i “a heart,” stress on the last syllable) and yā-ye maʿruf (Deli “the city of Delhi,” stress on the first syllable), which occurred in Iran about a century before Kalim wrote his poem and which, to this day, constitutes a central difference between Indo-Persian and Iranian approaches to the phonology of the poetic language.

Sunil Sharma’s Mughal Arcadia offers path-breaking scholarship in an accessible style and lucid prose. The Introduction and Chapter 1 are ideal readings for any introductory course on Indo-Persian literature. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 deal more directly with topographical themes and constitute crucial contributions to the formation of new genres in the early modern period, while the concluding chapter draws significant conclusions about the literary economy of the Persianate world and the fragmentation of its cultural geography in the late seventeenth century. Mughal Arcadia is an innovative work of literary history that rings the caravan bell (bāng-e dar-ā) for future studies of Safavid and Mughal poetry and art.