NOTES TO PAGES 12-18
(Delhi: Primus Books, 2012). My thanks to the anonymous reviewer for
alerting me to this essay.
- S. Bose and A. Jalal. Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy
(New York: Routledge, 2004), p. 20. i
- I use "Uch" throughout the book, although "Uch Sharif" is the more common
designation for the modern city in Pakistan.
- Chachnama, Azad Collection, Oriental Library, Punjab University. No. A:
PelII/77-
- Mirza Kalichbeg Fredunbeg, The Chachnamah, An Ancient History of Sind
(Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli, 1900).
- U. M. Daudpota, Fathnama-i Sind (Hyderabad Deccan: Majlis Maktutat-e
Farsia, 1939).
- N. A. Baloch, Fathnama-i Sind (Islamabad: Institute of Islamic History, Cul-
ture, and Civilization, 1982).
- I use "Muslim" here as a broader caUgory, understanding that it contains
heterogeneous groups-such as the various Shi'a denominations. I try,
throughout the text, to mark out the sectarian nomenclature where it is
important.
- I draw here on Ronald Inden and Daud Ali's extension of R. G. Collingwood.
See Ronald Inden, "Introtluction: From Philological to Dialogical Text," in
Querying the Medieval: Texts and the History of Practices in South Asia,
ed. Ronald Inden, Jonathan Walters, and Daud Ali (New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2000), pp. 3-28.
- At the same time, I am acutely aware that while I could understand the ma-
terial world imagined in Chachnama, I was not able to experience that world.
As a post-partitioned historian, my facility to move and circulate in the
world is restricted by the regimes of access and passport control. My current
immobility creates a barrier to access material or textual artifacts of the
past. It was only by listening fo stories of Gulf migrants and tracing the
stories of peripatetic tribes across Thar and Rajasthan deserts that I began
to see how to differently constitute the world of the text.
- See the opening woodcut showing a "native," Volney peering at a ruined city,
and the discussion in the chapter of C. F. Volney in Volney's Ruins; or, Med-
itation on the Revolutions of Empires (Boston: C. Gaylord, 1835).
- I find it apropos that Momigliano, when discussing Gibbon's contribution
to the historical method, notes it with an ambulatory verb: "at this point
Gibbon stepped in." In the essay, Momigliano retraces Gibbon's travel
through Turin, Milan, Genoa, Lucca, and Florence to point out that his in-
terest in the geographical dimension of the Roman empire and its decline
were linked to Gibbon's own travels among the ruins. See Arnaldo Momi-
gliano, "Gibbon's Contribution to Historical Method," Historia: Zeitschrift
fiir Alte Geschichte Bd. 2, H. 4 (1954), pp. 450-463. Momigliano's own rela-
tionship to thinking through space is present in the beginning of his other
essay on Gibbon-"! happen to be writing my piece on Gibbon in Spoleto."
See Arnaldo Momigliano, "Gibbon from an Italian Point of View," Daedalus
vol. 105, no. 3 (summer 1976), pp. 125-135.
