Chach Nama
Chachnama | |
---|---|
Story of Chach | |
Original title | چچنامو |
Country | Arab-Sind War, history of Sindh |
Publication date | 7th–8th centuries |
Media type | Book |
Chach Nama (
The text, which purports to be a Persian translation by `Ali Kufi (13th-century) of an undated, original Arabic text, has long been considered to be the story of the early 8th-century conquests by the
Contents
The report contains an introductory chapter about the history of Sindh just before its conquest by the Arabs. The body of the work narrates the Arab inclusions into Sindh of the 7th-8th centuries AD.
Historical significance
As one of the only written sources about the Arab conquest of Sindh, and therefore the origins of Islam in India, the Chach Nama is a key historical text that has been co-opted by different interest groups for several centuries, and it has significant implications for modern imaginings about the place of Islam in South Asia. Accordingly, its implications are much disputed.[9]
According to Manan Ahmed Asif, the Chach Nama has been historically significant. It was a source of colonial understanding of the origins of Islam in the
Origins, authorship, and preservation
Translation of Arabic original
As we have it today, the Chach Nama is the work of ʿAlī b. Ḥāmid b. Abī Bakr Kūfī. He was writing in Persian, but claimed to be translating a book in Arabic, which he had discovered among the possessions of the ḳāḍī of Alōr, Ismāʿīl b. ʿAlī ... b. ʿUthmān al-Thaḳafī (who was appointed the first kādī of Alōr by Muhammad Kāsim after the conquest of the Sindh.[14])[6] According to Y. Friedmann,
a comparison between the Čač-Nāma and Arab historians such as Balādhurī [...] bears out the Arab provenance of those parts of the book that describe the battles leading to the conquest of Sind; Kūfī might well have used Madāʾinī’s Kitāb Thaghr al-Hind and Kitāb ʿUmmāl (or Aʿmāl) al-Hind [...] The Čač-Nāma seems to have preserved Madāʾinī’s tradition concerning India in a much fuller fashion than classical Arab histories. On the other hand, the book also comprises a considerable amount of material which probably reflects a local Indian historical tradition. The part dealing with the rise of the Čač dynasty (14-72), the story of Darōhar, Djaysinha and Djanki (229-234), and some traditions attributed to a Brahman called Rāmsiya (179) and to “some Brahman elders” (baʿḍī mashāyikh-i barāhima) (197; cf. also 20614) deserve to be mentioned in this context.[6]
The Chach Nama survived in the following key manuscripts: British Library Or. 1787; India Office, Ethé 435.[2]
Original work
According to
Accuracy
The Táríkh Maasúmí, and the Tuhfatulkirám are two other Muslim histories of the same period and, on occasion, give differing accounts of some details. Later Muslim chronicles like those by Nizamuddin Ahmad, Nurul Hakk, Firishta, and Masum Shah draw their account of the Arab conquest from the Chach Nama.[citation needed]
Some western scholars such as Peter Hardy, André Wink and Yohanan Friedmann, question the historical authenticity and political theory embedded in the Chach Nama because of its supposed geographical errors, glaring inconsistencies with alternate Persian and Arabic accounts of the Qasim story, and the missing Arabic tradition in it even though the text alleges to be a Persian translation of an Arabic original.[20][3][21]
Editions and Translations
- Elliot, H. M. and Dowson, John. (1867). Chach-Nama. In The History of India: As Told by its Own Historians - The Muhammadan Period, Volume 1, pp. 131–211. London: Trubner. (Description and partial translation.)
- The Chachnamah, An Ancient History of Sind, Giving the Hindu period down to the Arab Conquest. (1900). Translated from the Persian by Mirza Kalichbeg Fredunbeg. Karachi: Commissioners Press. (Online at: Persian Packhum)
- Makhdūm Amīr Aḥmad and Nabī Bakhsh Ḵhān Balōč, Fatḥ-Nāmayi Sind, Ḥaydarābād (Sind) 1966. (Sindī translation and commentary.)
- Nabi Bakhsh Khan Baloch, Chachnama (Islamabad, 1983). (Annotated critical edition.)
- Harish Chandra Talreja, Chachnamah Sindh Par Arabo Ke Hamale Ka Vritant (Udaipur, 2015). (Translated into Hindi from Sindhi and Persian)
See also
- Rajatrangini, similar treatise about Kashmir
References
- ^ Asif, A Book of Conquest (2016), p. 8–15.
- ^
- ^ a b Friedmann, The origins and significance of the Chach Nāma 1984.
- ^ a b c Asif, A Book of Conquest (2016), p. 4–15, 20
- ISBN 978-965-223-521-3
- ^ a b c Y. Friedmann, “Čač-Nāma”, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, ed. by P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, and W.P. Heinrichs (Leiden: Brill, 1981). Consulted online on 04 December 2016 DOI:10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_8436.
- ^ The Chachnamah, An Ancient History of Sind, Giving the Hindu period down to the Arab Conquest. (1900). Translated from the Persian by Mirza Kalichbeg Fredunbeg. Karachi: Commissioners Press.
- ^ Y. Friedmann, “Muḥammad b. al- Ḳāsim”, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, ed. by P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, and W.P. Heinrichs (Leiden: Brill, 1981). Consulted online on 04 December 2016 DOI:10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_8436.
- ^ E.g. Syed Nomanul Haq, 'Gujarati Sandals in Baghdad: Decolonising History' [review of Manan Ahmed Asif, A Book of Conquest: The Chachnama and Muslim Origins in South Asia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016)], Herald (19 November 2016), http://herald.dawn.com/news/1153594/gujarati-sandals-in-baghdad-decolonising-history.
- ^ Asif, A Book of Conquest (2016), p. 5–6: "this thirteenth-century Persian text became, in colonial understanding, a history of Muslim origins".
- ^ Asif, A Book of Conquest (2016), p. 3–6
- ^ Asif, A Book of Conquest (2016), p. 3–9
- ^ Asif, A Book of Conquest (2016), p. 8–9
- ^ History of Sind. Vol. II. (In two parts) Part II—Giving the Reigns of the Kalhórahs and the Tálpurs down to the British Conquest. Translated from Persian by Mirza Kalichbeg Fredunbeg, Chapter IV.
- ^ Asif, A Book of Conquest (2016), p. 14-15
- ^ Asif, A Book of Conquest 2016, pp. 38–44, 59–65.
- ^ Asif, A Book of Conquest 2016, pp. 26, 38–44, 59–65, 110–112.
- ^ Asif, A Book of Conquest 2016, pp. 38–44.
- ^ Asif, A Book of Conquest 2016, pp. 2–16, 40, 33–44.
- ISBN 978-0195772500, pages 111-117
- ISBN 978-0391041738, pages 192-196
Bibliography
- Asif, Manan Ahmed (2016). A Book of Conquest. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-97243-8.
- Friedmann, Yohann (1984), "The origins and significance of the Chach Nāma", Islam in Asia: South Asia, Magnes Press/Westview Press, pp. 23–37, ISBN 978-965-223-521-3
Further reading
- MacLean, D. N. (1990). "ČAČ-NĀMA". In ISBN 978-0-71009-129-1.
- Siddiqi, Iqtidar Husain (2010). Indo-Persian Historiography Up to the Thirteenth Century. Primus Books. pp. 30–. ISBN 978-81-908918-0-6.