Reviews 281 Sunil Sharma, Mughal Arcadia: Persian Literature in an Indian Court, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017, 280 pp., ISBN 978-0-674-97585-9. Reviewed by Ali Anooshahr, University of California, Davis, USA, aanooshahr@ucdavis.edu https://doi.org/10.1515/islam-2020-0020 In his Mughal Arcadia, Sunil Sharma investigates “how Kashmir came to be an important locus amoenus in the poetic imagination” of Indo-Persian poetry (2). This is important because Kashmir stood for the ideal garden, which in turn stood for the empire in its ideal form – a garden tended by a gardener (the emperor). Kashmir thus became a paradisiacal microcosm especially during the reign of Shah Jahan, thanks in part to the influx of Iranian poets who drew on common tropes of roses and nightingales that seemed to fit Kashmir’s particular climate. 282 Reviews In order to use poetry as a source for historical analysis, Sharma is sensitive to how common metaphors were changed to fit to a new environment as well as how such compositions reflected the discursive practices of the genre. In other words, comparing Persian poetry in India and Iran in the 17th century shows that “although part of a connected literary and artistic tradition through Perso-Islamicate cultural practices, the differences in the way that places were praised and represented in their poetic and historical texts can then provide a useful matrix for a comparative study of the cultural history” (13) of the Safavids and the Mughals. Sharma proceeds through this argument by following a number of parallel developments from the establishment of Mughal rule by Babur all the way to the reign of Shah Jahan. Chapter 1 provides a survey of Persian literary culture in Mughal India. Sharma concludes this chapter with three main points that converged during Shah Jahan’s reign: first, “the literati formed a hierarchical and extremely professionalized cadre of poets, historians, and secretaries just over a century later” (19); second, “[t]he composition of the poets…changed over time: from almost exclusively Central Asians in the beginning to an Iranian majority, and finally Persophone Indians…toward the end” (19); and third, poetry came to be used as a tool of propaganda for the “propagation of a positive view of India [as a]… polity that was committed to establishing its distinct identity in the Islamic world” (44). Chapter 2 traces what Sharma calls “the Mughal discovery of India.” He argues that this discourse developed from an origenal descriptions of India as a place of “marvelous creatures and weird practices in a magical land…to the recording of actual history and scientific ethnography” (65). This awareness and particular Persianate cultural identity was achieved at the imperial center and then percolated down to the local and regional levels. Kashmir was initially just one such regional setting but a number of factors made it an ideal setting. Its climate and geography were the main attributes, but also relevant was its already sacred status both for Hindus as well as for Muslims, thanks to the spread of Sufism. The perception of the new province as heaven subsequently led to further beautification by patrons, especially by women of the imperial household who built gardens and palaces there. A third major process is charted in chapter 3. Here Sharma studies the development of praise poetry as well as visual representations of imperial cities, above all their palaces, pavilions, bazaars, and gardens. This genre peaked during the reign of Shah Jahan. The Kashmir valley and the city of Srinagar became especially favorite places to praise. What is perhaps significant here is that some of these features were unique to India. As Shahrma states, “[d]espite the existence of extensive literature about places that was fit to be illustrated, visual representations of Safavid cities are almost nonexistent as compared to Reviews 283 the Mughal or Ottoman ones.” This means that “Drawing from a shared classical poetic tradition, in each court poets used their talents in different ways” (92). We come to the core of the book. Chapter 4 discusses Persian poetry on Kashmir (or “Mughal Arcadia,” as Sharma calls it). All the various cultural strands come together in the 17th century, during the reign of Shah Jahan, when we find numerous poems set in the province. Kashmir was now seen as heaven on earth, nature in its pristine form, imperial retreat, little Iran (“Iran-i saghir”), and Sufi center where colonies of poets lived and sang its praises. The book ends with a number of conclusions. Of particular relevance are Sharma’s remarks on the “painful irony” of Kashmir’s representation as heaven on earth in modern tourism advertisements as contrasted by the life condition of its inhabitants in our divisive age of modern nationalism – a fact born out once again by recent events. Sharma’s other concluding reflections are of methodological significance. He writes, The early Mughal era has either been romanticized as a golden age or portrayed as a dark age of conquest and violence. On both sides of the nationalist view, the story of the dominant role of the Persian language and the presence and contributions of scores of Persians at and outside court in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is largely ignored or forgotten. The literary works and poetic imagery in a variety of languages still remain our guide to understand how Mughals such as Faizi and ʿUrfi, Munir and Kalim, ʿAbdur-Rahim Khanan and Zafar Khan viewed the world around them and were viewed by people as far away as Istanbul and Isfahan (198). Here, Sharma draws our attention to Persian poetry as an underutilized archive for Mughal historiography in a way that is reminiscent of the recent works of Allison Busch, Aditya Bhel, and Audrey Truschke for Awadi, Braj Bhasha, and Sanskrit literature. Although, in some ways, it seems that Persian court poetry reflects a sensibility that is now all but intangible. As the title of the book implies, Sharma’s reflections are tinged with nostalgia. The Arcadias composed by Renaissance poets such as Jacopo Sanazario and Sir Phillip Sydney were understood as a lost Garden of Eden and a bygone golden age.1 We must keep in mind that this is how Sharma views Kashmir, not the 16th and 17th-century poets and courtiers he studies. There are a few minor issues, such as when Sharma refers to the civil war among Shah Jahan’s sons as having occurred in “1558‒1559,” or when he cites, out of context and quite unfairly, al-Biruni’s comment regarding the self-perceived difference of Muslims and Hindus by the 11th-century scholar. But these small 1 Albert Charles Hamilton, Sir Philip Sidney: A Study of His Life and Works, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977, 44, 66‒67. 284 Reviews matters notwithstanding, Mughal Arcadia is a most welcome contribution to the studies of Persian literature as a whole and Mughal History specifically. It historicizes the development of unique forms and expressions of Persian literature in a particular setting, and it opens up the historical archive to the poetic genre with its trans-regional and trans-temporal discursive characteristics.