A Mughal Songbook: Art, Music and Empire, a rare manuscript created in Lucknow between 1787 and 1788 for Sophia Elizabeth Plowden, will open on September 8 at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. The manuscript contains 77 songs in Persian, Urdu, classical Hindi, and Punjabi, with 67 of these still present in the illustrated album. The work includes 39 detached leaves, each linking lyrics to visual representations of musicians, singers, dancers, courtesans, and other artists. The texts are written in Persian nasta‘liq script, a flowing and elegant calligraphy style, regardless of the language used. One page features a ghazal—a type of poetic form—in rekhta, a form of Urdu poetry, attributed to Asaf al-Dawla, alongside a Punjabi tappah, a short lyrical poem, written in ink with opaque colors and gold on paper. The manuscript was created in Lucknow, which was the capital of the region known as Awadh and an important hub of courtly culture. Sophia Elizabeth Plowden (1751–1834) lived in Lucknow with her husband Richard Chicheley Plowden, an officer of the East India Company, from 1777 to 1790. She attended court gatherings, listened to performances, and collected the songs that were played there. The work of musicologist Katherine Butler Schofield has enabled these lyrics to be connected to melodies recorded in European musical notation, helping to restore part of the history of these "Hindustani Airs"—Indian songs adapted and performed by British elites. Plowden herself noted the tunes she heard during performances using a European system of notation. Some of these melodies were later harmonized for the harpsichord and published in Calcutta in 1789 by William Hamilton Bird. The Fitzwilliam Museum situates the entire set within a period of transition between the Mughal Empire and the rapidly expanding East India Company network. The artistic exchange is not portrayed as a simple or spaceless interaction: by the end of the 18th century, the East India Company had already become a major territorial and military power in India, especially after its takeover of Bengal. The exhibition also places the songbook within this broader context, surrounding it with paintings, manuscripts, textiles, and music to evoke the visual and sonic culture of South Asia between roughly 1750 and 1850. The object itself preserves a significant bibliographic uniqueness. These 39 leaves are not merely illustrations of a repertoire: words, calligraphy, and paintings form an ensemble where text, image, and music interact with each other. The Fitzwilliam Museum classifies the manuscript, known as MS 380, among illuminated manuscripts and notes that it contains 39 miniatures spread across two boxes, along with a volume of music. The exhibition is free to attend, requires no reservation, and will remain open until March 7, 2027.