A Book of Conquest : The ‹i›Chachnama‹/i› and Muslim Origins in South Asia / Manan Ahmed Asif.
2016
BP173.7 .A854 2016
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Title
A Book of Conquest : The ‹i›Chachnama‹/i› and Muslim Origins in South Asia / Manan Ahmed Asif.
Author
Asif, Manan Ahmed, author.
ISBN
9780674972414
Published
Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2016]
Copyright
©2016
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource (230 p.) : 8 halftones, 1 map
Other Standard Identifiers
10.4159/9780674972414 doi
Call Number
BP173.7 .A854 2016
Dewey Decimal Classification
954.91/8021
Summary
The question of how Islam arrived in India remains markedly contentious in South Asian politics. Standard accounts center on the Umayyad Caliphate's incursions into Sind and littoral western India in the eighth century CE. In this telling, Muslims were a foreign presence among native Hindus, sowing the seeds of a mutual animosity that presaged the subcontinent's partition into Pakistan and India many centuries later. But in a compelling reexamination of the history of Islam in India, Manan Ahmed Asif directs attention to a thirteenth-century text that tells the story of Chach, the Brahmin ruler of Sind, and his kingdom's later conquest by the Muslim general Muhammad bin Qasim in 712 CE. The Chachnama has long been a touchstone of Indian history, yet it is seldom studied in its entirety. Asif offers a close and complete analysis of this important text, untangling its various registers and genres in order to reconstruct the political vision at its heart. Asif challenges the main tenets of the Chachnama's interpretation: that it is a translation of an earlier Arabic text and that it presents a history of conquest. Debunking both ideas, he demonstrates that the Chachnama was originally Persian and, far from advancing a narrative of imperial aggression, is a subtle and sophisticated work of political theory, one embedded in both the Indic and Islamic ethos. This social and intellectual history of the Chachnama is an important corrective to the divisions between Muslim and Hindu that so often define Pakistani and Indian politics today.
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Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
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text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Aug 2021)
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Table of Contents
Frontmatter
Contents
List of Illustrations
Note on Transliteration and Translation
Introduction
1. Frontier with the House of Gold
2. A Foundation for History
3. Dear Son, What Is the Matter with You?
4. A Demon with Ruby Eyes
5. The Half Smile
6. A Conquest of Pasts
Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
Acknowledgments
Index
Contents
List of Illustrations
Note on Transliteration and Translation
Introduction
1. Frontier with the House of Gold
2. A Foundation for History
3. Dear Son, What Is the Matter with You?
4. A Demon with Ruby Eyes
5. The Half Smile
6. A Conquest of Pasts
Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
Acknowledgments
Index