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

8 INTRODUCTION

texts and policies for Pakistan. Their work built on an earlier genera-
tion of Muslim historians and writers, such as Abdul Halim Sharar,
Syed Sulaiman Nadvi, and Nadvi's teacher Shibli Nau'mani, who fo-
cused on the early history of Islam in South Asia. These figurbs had
focused on early Islam for a variety of reasons, but a primary concern
was to respond to colonial histories of India. The arrival of the Mus-
lims in the eighth century, as conquerors, and their subsequent colo-
nization of India had been a dominant framework for British colonial
histories such that Vincent A. Smith, M. Elphinstone, H. M. Elliot, and
the early James Mill saw a clear temporal divide between indigenous/
Hindu India and foreign/Muslim India.
The thread that runs through this genealogy of transmissions is
Chachnama. For two hundred years, it has been read as a book of con-
quest, providing a narrative of Islam's arrival in India. For hundreds
of years, it has been understood to be a work of translation into Per-
sian around r226 CE, from an earlier eighth-century history written
in Arabic. Such interpretations o{ Chachnama underpin the special-
ized work done by generations of scholars-all of whom maintained
the primacy of Chacl]nama as a textual translation of an earlier his-
torical narrative. The consequence of this reading is.that Chachnama
is understood to be the primary account of the origins of Muslims in
India which contains the history of their rise to dominance.
The idea of Chachnama as the key origins text continues to hold
wide sway, and the origins narrative continues to provide justifications
for violent corrections. On February 25, 2006, a young Pakistani pro-
fessional in Connecticut, Faisal Shahzad, sent an email message under
the subject "My Beloved and Peaceful Ummah." He wrote,

17 year old Mohammad bin Qasam [sic] attacked the Sub-continent

Pak-o-Hind and defeated infidel ruler Raja Dahir because there came

to him news of a Muslim woman who was raped!!! and today our

beloved Prnphet (Katimum Nabieen Mohammad al-Ameen) PBUH

has been disrespected and disgraced in the whole world and we just

sit and watch with shame and sorrow and most of us don't even

care.^13

This email message surfaced after Shahzad's failed bombing· in

Times Square in early 2010. It clearly communicates Shahzad's re-