A DEMON WITH RUBY EYES II7
Chachnama largely became a source for issues concerning conversion
or legal treatment of non-Muslims. Citing Chachnama, S. A. A. Rizvi
noted that "conversion to Islam by political pressure began with the
conquest of Sind and Multan by Muhammad bin Qasim," who was
"successful in persuading the Sind chieftains to embrace Islam."^23 In
contrast, in his major study of conversion under early Islam based on
Chachnama, Derryl Maclean argued that the earliest Muslim conquest
did not pressure the Buddhists ot Saivite community in Sind to con-
vert.^24 Such formulation remains the predominant understanding of
how to read Chachnama for the process of conversion in India after
Islam's arrival. However, I argue that we need to examine Chachnama
for the ways in which it, itself, understands this history of conversion,
of coexistence, and of political rule and accommodation in the thir-
teenth century. In fact, ,Chachnama offers only a single treatment of
conversion and is otherwise unconcerned with it.
It is significant that there is only one direct narrative of conversion
in Chachnama. It is a narrative of a single conversion, not a mass con-
version. In Chapter 3, I presented a debate between Muhammad bin
Qasim and his patron, Hajjaj, on the question of conversion. Hajjaj
guides Qasim to allow freedom for different sacral practices and to
focus only on the rival king and his submission to Qasim's political
power. This makes a reading of the only conversion narrated in
Chachnama significant as an assertion of political power. In this epi-
sode of conversion, the emissaries sent by Qasim to Dahar include a
Syrian noble and a slave from Daybul (moulai Debali) who "had em-
braced Islam on the hands of Muhammad bin Qasim.^1125 When the
emissaries reach Dahar, the convert now written as "owned by Islam"
(moulai Islam), refuses to give Dahar the greeting customary for a slave
toward his master. Dahar chides him for not acting according to the
"law of the land," to which he replies: "When I was a subject of your
law, I fulfilled the conditions of my slavery. Now that I am acquainted
with the fruits of Islam and my relationship is with the King of Islam,
I am no lon,ger liable for bowing my head to an unbeliever."^26
The framing of this conversion as a question of political subject-
hood demonstrates the ethics of the Chachnama, where sacral prac-
tices are tied explicitly to the political and to a just order. At no other
point does Chachnama narrate the making of new Muslims. What it