FRONTIER WITH THE HOUSE OF GOLDFrom the seventh century to the ninth, the activities of merchants
and pilgrims continue to shape this region as an Indian Ocean region,
with ships from China routinely sailing in the Red Sea, and Arab dhows
a common presence in the Malay islands.^28 A typical description of this
sea trade, including routes, sites, and communities, survives in the
anonymous Akhbar al-$in wa'l-Hind, dated in the mid-ninth century:
As for the places which they reach they relate that most of the Chi-
nese boats are loaded at Siraf and that the goods are carried to Siraf
from Basra, Oman and other ports .... Then from there the boats set
sail for al-Hind destined for Kulam Malay, and the journey from
Muscat to Kulam Malay (Quilon, Kerala), with moderate winds, is
one month.^29Sind as an Indian Ocean region was thus long connected with Arabia
(and farther afield). It contained settlements, trading connections, and
ports that predated the birth of Islam, and these connections continued
after the rise of Muslim political power in the region.
The region of Sind, as an adjacent geography, faced military cam-
paigns from the Muslim polity based in Medina, and later those in
Damascus and Baghdad. The various military campaigns, expeditions,
and settlements must also be properly contextualized to provide a fuller
picture of the eighth-century history invoked by Chachnama. In in-
voking this history myself, I am cognizant of the danger of re-creating
Chachnama's understanding of Muslim past by simply producing my
own temporally bound history of conquest. Hence, when in the fol-
lowing section I turn toward the history of Arab political and military
efforts in the region of Sind as reconstructed from mid-ninth century
Arabic histories, I do so with the understanding that these texts are
in themselves documents asserting political and social power and
that they cannot be read at face value as empirical, factual history. I
revisit them to detail the historical a:μd historiographic imagination
employed within Chachnama.
Writing ConquestTo trace this history of Muslim campaigns in Sind, I turn our focus to
the futuh ("opening," understpod as conquest) narratives. This genre