156 A CONQUEST OF PASTS
India to cite Chachnama was Muhammad Qasim Astrabadi (Firishta)'s
Gulsham-i Ibrahimi/Tar'ikh, written between 1606 and 1616.^8 As a
history of the regions of India commissioned by the sultan of Bijapur
in the Deccan (Ibrahim Adil Shah), Firishta's history would ~oon be-
come the most important text ever written on the Muslim past in
South Asia. Firishta prefaces his text with a summary of Mahabharata,
which he presents as a sacral and political history of India. He notes
the translation of years and places of birth but indicates that Muslim
accounts of the world had a different temporal regime.^9 From a history
of non-Muslim India, he transitions to the political rise of Muslims,
which he locates in Lahore, not Sind. It is thus Lahore, as a seat of Gha-
zanvid power, to which Firishta dedicates his first chapter. He only
notes that at some point in the tenth century, the descendants of Qa-
sim's campaign in Sind met the descendants of Arab campaigns in
Lahore.
The bulk of Firishta's history is divided first according to region and
then time, from th'e tenth century to ·his present. He covers each
region-Gujarat, Delhi, Deccan, Bengal, Kashmir, and so on-with ac-
counts of elite politics, courtly intrigue; love, and justice or injustice for
each year. Firishta considers Sind to be a region of limited consequence,
and he notes that its historical sources are scant.^10 It is in the eighth of
his nine chapters'that.Firishta covers Chachnama as a history of Sind.
Firishta notes first that the region had, since the time of Adam, been
in contact with Arabia and that many Brahmins visited Mecca before
and after the birth of.Islam.^11 The close contact meant that a signifi-
cant Muslim community existed in Sind before Hajjaj bin Yusuf sent
troops to the region in 712 CE. The majority of Firishta's account is
taken from Baladhuri. His history does not mention Chach but does
reproduce some of the stories from Chachnama. For example, Firishta
concludes with the account of Dahar's daughters and the death of
Qasim in a truncated form. However, he does not mention any detail
about their punishme,nt for causing Qasim's death. The history of
Sind, he concludes, is not contained in any reliable account after
Chachnama.
Firishta produces a series of genealogies for Muslims in India-
building from Mahabarata, to asserting trade and settlements from