A little like an image embedded in a hologram, the African presence in the history and politics of India remains generally obscured from view. It is only when the parchment that is the past is taken in the hand and lightly moved, in the manner of a ‘beam of coherent light’ needed to train upon a hologram, that this presence reveals itself. Then names begin to emerge, some historical developments start to make sense, and the role of a number of emphatic figures can be seen in true perspective.

Malik Ambar (1546-1626), who played such a significant role in the history of the Deccan, and became eventually such a thorn in the flesh of the Mughals, is one such emphatic figure. The entire career of this extraordinary man, his meteoric rise, appears especially startling because it seems to run against all perceived notions of the role and status of slaves.

At that time, Mughal forces, fired by Akbar’s ambitious plans to bring the south also under his control, were knocking at the very portals of the Deccan, as it were. A relatively weak king on the Ahmednagar throne, bitter rivalries at the court where factionalism was rife, Abysinnians constantly flexing their muscles, an enemy at the gates: it was a nearly perfect ground in which a man like Malik Ambar – the name was given to him by a former master, and the title by a Bijapur Sultan whom he served for a short while – a powerfully built man with a brilliant mind and the abilities of a great military tactician could rise quickly to power.

Now from Peshwa, or chief counsellor, he had become regent, father-in-law, and virtual ruler of Ahmednagar. With a clear vision, he also launched great architectural projects, constructing or strengthening fortifications at vulnerable spots, building a church for Christians, raising noble monuments at Khirki which later came to be called Aurangabad, and endowing the town with a sophisticated water-supply system.

The Mughals, meanwhile, chafed. Especially Jahangir (1605-1627) under whose skin Malik Ambar succeeded in getting. The emperor, it seems, was obsessed with Ambar, whose outstanding military skills he could understand but could not bring himself to acknowledge, given his own exalted position as ruler of what was then perhaps the world’s mightiest empire. In his Memoirs he referred to Ambar several times, but always in angry, almost abusive terms: "Ambar, that black wretch", "Ambar of dark fate", that "crafty, ill-starred one", and so on.

The event never came about of course, but looking at the painting must have given the emperor great satisfaction. For woven into it are subtle references and remarkably flattering allusions. While on the hapless head of Ambar an owl sits and then falls along the pike as the arrow goes through the open mouth of the black general, a bird of paradise descends from the heavens and heads towards the emperor’s crown placed on a tall golden structure at right, as if to add its own feather to it; the globe masterfully held under his delicately shod feet by the emperor — in a clear reference to his name, Jahangir, "Seizer of the World" — rests on the back of a bull who, in turn, stands upon a large, outsized fish, allusions to ancient Hindu myths: the saving of the earth by Matsya, the universe resting upon the noble bull called Dharma; from the sky above, from behind clouds, little cherubs descend, bearing divine weapons for the emperor, as it were.

Jahangir, in this elaborate allegory, is clearly meant to be seen as symbolising the forces of goodness and light while Ambar those of darkness and evil. It is doubtful if the whole matter would have been seen like this by a Deccani painter working for Malik Ambar. But then nothing approaching this has survived from there.