56 A FOUNDATION FOR HISTORY
from Arabic into Persian was thus a key part of the process of Persian-
ization. Alam notes a number of such texts leading up to the fourteenth
century period, including Bal'ami's (d. ca. 997) translation of Tabari's
universal history, Barani's (d. 1357) translation of the history of 'Ahbasid
vizier Barmak, and Tusi's (d. 1274) translation of Ibn Miskawa's book
on ethics.
Though these texts are commonly understood to be translations
(tarjuma), I follow A. C. S. Peacock in approaching them as transcre-
ations or commentarial interpretations. Peacock has shown that
Bal'ami cannot be claimed as a translation, though it is widely read as
such. Peacock demonstrates that Bal'ami reimagined and rewrote
Tabari's work under a "substantially different" method of writing his-
tory.14 In contrast to the Arabic text, Bal'ami's work focused on the pre-
Islamic prophets, made extensive interjections into the text with
Qur'anic verses, and reimagined events from a theological perspective
derived from surah 'Imran.^15 Bal'ami also emphasized prophecy and
dreams as drivers of historical action, which Peacock reads as a ges-
ture towards Shi'ite sensibilities but I am more inclined to see a per-
formance of an ethical paradigm.^16 Whatever the interpretation, it is
only after moving away from the fixity of "translation" that new ana-
lytics of the text emerge. For this reason, the text's claim as a transla-
tion requires parsing within the attendant social· functions of this
robust discourse.
How does Chachnama's claim of being a translated text fit into the
process described by Alam? The early thirteenth century in Uch is a
unique space to deepen this reading of Persianization because we can
colocate authors and texts through a transference of political power.
Broadly, three types of claims are evident in the network of Persian
texts surrounding the Chachnama: the Arab descent of the author, the
Arabic origins of the text, and the Arab descent of the patron of the
text. I argue that these claims are an assertion of the right to produce
texts, to interpret them, and to present them to an elite ruling class.
This elite class-itself diverse ethnically and linguistically-is also the
audience best endowed with skills to understand the moral and eth-
ical lessons in these textual productions.
The claim of Arab descent is frequent in the historical and poetic
writings from the thirteenth century. Numerous claims link a text or