A FOUNDATION FOR HISTORYher with garments of exquisite language, justice, and wisdom. No
mighty rider took this horse into the grounds of clarity and the gar-
dens of loquaciousness. But when the hard accidents of the world
headed toward this weak one ['Ali Kufi], and the harshness ofithe
times anchored its sail in his chest, and all manner of difficulties as-
serted themselves, and everywhere he turned, he saw dangers and
treasons, then in that same condition, this man of incomplete intel-
lect chose to finish this book. Praise be to Allah, the God of All.^32
Kufi explicitly details the social function of his text-reflection for
justice, and wisdom for a troubled elite. He also endows the text with
the gravitas of tradition by linking it to this previous and popular Ar-
abic text.
For Chachnama and the other texts under discussion here,,the in-
vocation of Arab textual and biological past indicates continuities
with the past and a presentation of history for the purpose of political
theory. Removing Chachnama from the frame of translation allows
us to re-think the social function of the text. We can see that the
choice of the genre of the text, a conquest narrative, was a deliberate
choice by Kufi and that opens up a critical window into the early thir-
teenth century.
The Claim of Conquest
The early Muslim understanding of world qua frontier is primarily lo-
catable in the Arab conquest narratives-the genre being fathnama
futuh; literally "opening" and colloquially translated as "Books of Con-
quest." This genre emerged irom "Life of the Prophet" (sira) texts. The
accounts of the Prophet's military campaigns laid the foundation for
the development of conquest literature during the late first and early
second century of Islam.^33 The genre of futuh had both a historiographic
and a political function in early Islam. It asserted the inevitability of
the domination of Islam, and it bolstered the claims over the conquered
populations.^34 Fred Donner has argued that the conquest narratives
served the purpose of legitimization of political authority or genealog-
ical claims of supremacy and came along with a strategy of construc-
tion of garrison towns and forts where nomadic tribes were settled.^35