A FOUNDATION FOR HISTORYhaqi's tradition of presenting accounts of the past as political theory
for the present.
By unmooring Chachnama from the overdetermined claims of lan-
guage and genre in the text, we can consider alternative understand-
ings for the text. Having built a textual context for Chachnama, in the
following section, I want to pivot toward space, highlighting how ge-
ography informs Chachnama as a political theory.
The Claim of Empty Space
Henry Cousens's work for the archaeological survey of India on "the
northern frontiers of Sind to the River Savitri" was done from 1891 to1893.^47 Out of this, he produced two significant reports: one on northern
Gujarat in 1903 and one on Sind in 1905. He begins his section on "Mu-
hammadan Buildings in Sind" thus: "Of Hindu remains in Sind, little
is to be found, owing to the havoc wrought by the Arab conquerors.
That such buildings did exist is plain from the great temple at Deval
[Daybul], which they destroyed, and the fragments built into the tomb
of Nindo at Thatha."^48 Here is the' cleanest distillation of the origins
narrative: the invocation of the conquest, the enumeration of the de-
struction in 712, and the condemnation of a foreign·Muslim presence.
Before proceeding to his findings from the archaeological survey,,
Cousens sets the ground with a textual history of this particular
past. "The most lucid account," he writes, "is to be found in the Chach
Namah which is a Persian translation of a work written by 'Ali son of
Muhammad Kufi in A.D. 1216" and which "was originally written
in Arabic very shortly after the events it records."^49 Cousens pro-
ceeds to present a detailed summary of Chachnama as a historical
account of the eighth century and as a preface to his discussion of
the excavations in the various sites in Sind (Bhanbhore, Brahman-
abad, Daybul).^50 His ten-page summary of the text details particu-
larly the section on Muhammad bin Qasim because it helps "iden-
tify some of. the ancient sites of Sind, whose traces are now very few
or are in great part obliterated."^51
Imperial archaeological excavations in Sind, tied to the Indus civi-
lization and to the Alexandrian conquest, were of primary importatfce