A Book of Conquest The Chachnama and Muslim Origins in South Asia

14 INTRODUCTION This account takes up the first third of Chachnama and has three overarching themes: the basis of legitimacy for ...

INTRODUCTION 15 in the preface that he translated an older Arabic account of the Muslim campaigns of the eighth century into Per ...

16 INTRODUCTION actors in the text-no matter their textual or historical specificity- became the heroes and villains of the pres ...

INTRODUCTION 17 India. After all, it was from Uch that Qabacha sent governors to Diu in Gujarat; and it was to Uch that trade an ...

I8 INTRODUCTION of cities in the Levant.^33 Or we can imagine Edward Gibbon walking in Roman ruins in Italy and framing the ques ...

INTRODUCTION 19 These walks in Uch attuned me to stories connected to specific sites, to nature, and to landscape in particular. ...

20 INTRODUCTION the same frame. Elliot relied on translated excerpts from Chachnama as key evidence for the violence and depravi ...

INTRODUCTION 2I not fit the genre of conquest narrative, by examining it against the ear- liest Arabic conquest texts. Finally, ...

(^22) INTRODUCTION Origins are a seductive necessity for historians. We pay little heed to Marc Bloch's admonishment in 1941 tha ...

1 Frontier with the House of Gold IN MARCH 2ou, I went to Uch-a dusty, small town in southern Punjab from which the river Indus ...

24 FRONTIER WITH THE HOUSE OF GOLD List of sacral sites of Uch Sharif. (Photo© Manan Ahmed Asif.) honorific Jahangasht is "one w ...

FRONTIER WITH THE HOUSE OF GOLD 25 lises in Syria, Iraq, and Iran through nodes in the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. The persona ...

FRONTIER WITH THE HOUSE OF GOLD This chapter reopens that history to see how historical records from a variety of sources presen ...

FRONTIER WITH THE HOUSE OF GOLD 27 and North-South connections throughout the history of various civi- lizations. It is precisel ...

28 FRONTIER WITH THE HOUSE OF GOLD vastness of terrains that need coverage and to the political realities that have made inquisi ...

FRONTIER WITH THE HOUSE OF GOLD 29 written by an unknown sailor between 40 and 70 CE that survives in a single manuscript from t ...

FRONTIER WITH THE HOUSE OF GOLD From the seventh century to the ninth, the activities of merchants and pilgrims continue to shap ...

FRONTIER WITH THE HOUSE OF GOLD 33 emerged in the ninth century out of the the older sira texts, which de- scribed the life of t ...

34 FRONTIER WITH THE HOUSE OF GOLD primary source. Mada'ini is reported to have written his futuh from detailed firsthand accoun ...

FRONTIER WITH THE HOUSE OF GOLD 35 Chachnama. With that in mind, let us turn to his description of the military campaigns of Mus ...