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

(^22) INTRODUCTION
Origins are a seductive necessity for historians. We pay little heed
to Marc Bloch's admonishment in 1941 that "an origin is a beginning
which explains. Worse still, a beginning which is a complete explana-
tion. There lies the ambiguity, and there the danger!"^42 This book
against origins is a contextual reading of a medieval text that fore-
grounds the burden of unreading the afterlife of that text.