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. The some 200 objects here include extraordinary examples of metalwork, textiles, calligraphy, jewels, carved stone and, most significantly, around 70 — or about one-third — of the known miniature paintings from this period of Deccani history, among them a very high percentage of masterpieces.

“Sultans of Deccan India” is rife with rare works from collections in Europe and India that are seldom seen together, especially in New York, and includes several new discoveries. Prominent among them is the magnetic “Portrait of a Ruler or Musician” (circa 1630), which features an elegantly attired dark-skinned man of noble mien and anxious expression with a seemingly withered hand. He sits in profile on a resolutely flat striped carpet against an equally flat dark blue background — a pillowy expanse that could be a cloudy night sky, a hillside landscape or a quilted tent. It matches the thick curtain that has been pulled back and tied to the picture’s edge, a wood structure or frame of ambiguous location.

The show has been organized by Navina Najat Haidar, the Met’s curator of Islamic art, and Marika Sardar, an associate curator at the San Diego Museum of Art, and it benefits greatly from an atmospheric installation whose density and sumptuous wall colors (salmon, deep violet, avocado, maroon) conjure courtly lavishness. Small, finely detailed treasures abound in a profusion that can initially daunt. But pick up one of the available magnifying glasses and plunge in. Concentration is rewarded, and encouraged: the show’s many paintings are installed in small groups on bookended walls that tilt inward, creating a comfortable lean-in intimacy.