More Than A Day As A Tiger

The legacy of Tipu Sultan and Haider Ali is as alive today as it was more than two centuries ago, when this father and son fought tirelessly against British imperialism in India. The most eloquent expression of their resistance is the large number of works that were made during their era in Mysore. Such was the respect that the British victors of the Anglo-Mysore Wars felt for the technical and aesthetic accomplishments of their adversaries, many of these masterworks have survived intact. The Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia has assembled the finest collection of such works that exists outside the UK. These stirring reminders of a lost Muslim kingdom in southern India are now on public display, in many cases for the first time since they were looted by the British from the ruins of Tipu Sultan’s fortress in Srirangapatna in 1799.