This bibliography chapter presents an overview of historical framework, architecture as well as miniature painting and the fine arts of the Deccan. The Sultanate period is surveyed by Haig, Briggs, Venkataramana and Sherwani and Joshi, the last with excellent historical chapters by various authors concentrating on the different Sultanate kingdoms. Deccani palaces are described in Reuthe, still impressive for its clear photographs and accurate drawings. A few of these monuments are covered in Michell. Until the 1930s, the Deccani school of painting was hardly known, its great masterpieces usually described as Persian, Indo-Persian or Mughal. The study of miniature painting under the Marathas is still in its infancy, but sees Banerji and Doshi. Pioneer research on Deccani resist-dyed cottons is provided by Irwin and Brett. Deccani bronze vessels decorated with Arabic script, among the greatest masterpieces of Islamic metal work, have long been assigned to either Iran or North India.

Golconda art was always less humanistic than other Deccani schools, figures are closer to the glorious dolls of Safavid illustration and possess less mass and naturalistic expression than is usual in the arts of India. The earliest miniature paintings probably date from the reign of Ibrahim Qutb Shah, all in variants of Persian styles and not one equal to the masterpieces of the following reign. Aurangzeb's conquest of Bijapur and Golconda was not as inimical to the arts as is generally assumed. He was an orthodox Muslim, but his only overtly hostile act in regard to art was to command all figural murals to be erased in the Adil Shahi palace in Bijapur. There are close links between Deccani painting and the Rajasthani school of Bikaner, but the precise nature of the relationship has never been satisfactorily explored.

The briefest and most mysterious phase of Deccani painting occurred at the late sixteenth-century court of Ahmadnagar. Two portraits of the sultan of Ahmadnagar, both inscribed Nizam Shah, painted in about 1575, one in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, the other in the State Library, Rampur, encapsulate this new sophistication. At present, circumstantial evidence suggests a provenance but cannot prove it. The lyrical but uncomplicated style implies the work of a brilliant innovator working at a provincial centre far from the courtly atmosphere of the Ahmadnagar and Bijapur capitals. A related style of painting, usually with Hindu subject matter and ever increasing Mughal influence, continued throughout the seventeenth century in northern Deccani centres. The mystical temperament of Sultan Ibrahim Adil Shah II, the patron of the greatest of these works, gave a strong imprint to the production of the school.