Human beings may excel at making things, but destroying them is equally a specialty. The second skill has given the history of art many tantalizing mysteries, remnants of cultures whose achievement is unmistakable yet fragmentary, limited by extensive losses resulting from accident, neglect or war.

One such mystery is examined in “Sultans of Deccan India, 1500-1700: Opulence and Fantasy,” a landmark exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This beautiful, sometimes heart-rending show is the most comprehensive yet to focus on the cosmopolitan Muslim kingdoms that ruled the verdant Deccan Plateau of south-central India for nearly two centuries, fostering a turbulent golden age.