Sultans of Delight: The Politics of Pleasure at the Mandu Sultanate

Abstract

What can a collection of recipes and advice reveal about its patrons and their world? Dwelling on this question, this paper examines the Niʻmatnāma – a Persian language lifestyle manual that was composed and illustrated for the Khalji Sultans, Ghiyath Shah and Nasir Shah, between 1495 and 1505 at the capital of the Malwa Sultanate, Mandu, or Shadiyabad (abode of joy), as it was better known. Comprising 196 folios (recto and verso) and 49 paintings, the Niʻmatnāma is a manual of encyclopaedic proportions. It records 519 recipes or codes of practice for preparing and consuming food dishes, beverages, medicinal and aphrodisiac concoctions, betel rolls, perfumes, oils, and pastes for the body. It also details the etiquette to be observed during different seasons, at hunts, before and after amorous encounters, and much more. The work portrays the patron sultans as not only the consumers but also as the masters of delights, under whose watchful eyes a wide range of ingredients and the labour of service providers were mobilised to curate sensory experiences that pleased the body and the mind. The paper immerses itself in this plentiful world where the figures of the patron sultans loom large and analyses the meaning embedded in their fashioning as connoisseurs of and authorities on niʻmat—a multivalent expression implying delight, joy, pleasure, bounty, and blessing. Doing so, it demonstrates how the Niʻmatnāma was framed as a document of power that furnished an alternative statement about political authority, one grounded in the promise of pleasure.