This book forms part of the New Cambridge History of India’s commendable effort to integrate art history into its historical concerns. It was preceded by three earlier volumes, Architecture of Mughal India (Catherine B. Asher), Mughal and Rajput Painting (Milo C. Beach), and Architecture and Art of Southern India by one of the authors of the present volume (George Michell). The volume amply fulfills the agenda of the Cambridge Histories laid down in the general Editor’s Preface, namely not only to “record an existing state of knowledge” but also “to focus interest on research” and to provide “stimulus to further work” (xviii). Both authors were well equipped to shoulder this task. Michell came to the architecture of the Deccan through his work on Vijayanagara, the Hindu kingdom that closely interacted on the political as well as on the cultural level with several of the Deccani sultanates, and he became familiar with the specific problems of the Islamic architecture of the Deccan by editing the 1986 Marg volume Islamic Heritage of the Deccan. Mark Zebrowski established himself as the leading authority on Deccani painting with his 1983 volume on this subject, which was based on his dissertation; he has also published...