The Ni'matnama Manuscript of the Sultans of Mandu ─ The Sultan's Book of Delights

The Ni'matnama is a late fifteenth-century book of the recipes of the eccentric Sultan of Mandu (Madhya Pradesh), Ghiyath Shahi, collected and added to by his son and successor, Nasir Shah. It contains recipes for cooking a variety of delicacies and epicurean delights, as well as providing remedies and aphrodisiacs for the Sultan and his court. It also includes important sections on the preparation of betel leaves as well as advice on the logistics of hunting expeditions and warfare. The text provides a remarkable and tantalizing account of rarified courtly life in a fifteenth-century Indian Sultanate region.

Norah M. Titley is one of the scholars in Britain specialising in the study of Persian language manuscripts and miniature paintings. She began her career in the British Museum's Department of Oriental Manuscripts in 1950 and retired as the British Library's curator of illustrated Persian manuscripts in 1983. Since retiring, she has worked intensively on translating the Ni'matnama.