A book of conquest: the Chachnama and Muslim origins in South Asia
How did Islam come to India? Why is this question of such great significance to formations of political thought in South Asia? This book examines the longue dureé history--from the early thirteenth century to the twenty-first--of a particular text, Chachnama, written in Uch Sharif. The Book of Chach...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Print Book |
| Language: | English |
| Subito Delivery Service: | Order now. |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England
Harvard University Press
2016
|
| In: | Year: 2016 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Provinz Sind
/ Arabs
/ Conquest
/ History
B Asia / India / Islam / Historiography / History |
| Further subjects: | B
Islam
Historiography
South Asia
B Islam and politics (South Asia) B Islam Historiography B Islam (South Asia) Historiography B Islam and politics South Asia B Kūfī, ʻAlī ibn Ḥāmid active 13th century Chachnāmah (Kūfī, ʻAlī ibn Ḥāmid) B Kūfī, ʻAlī ibn Ḥāmid (active 13th century) Chachnāmah B Islam and politics B South Asia Politics and government B South Asia Politics and government South Asia B Politics and government |
| Online Access: |
Review Rezension (Verlag) |
| Summary: | How did Islam come to India? Why is this question of such great significance to formations of political thought in South Asia? This book examines the longue dureé history--from the early thirteenth century to the twenty-first--of a particular text, Chachnama, written in Uch Sharif. The Book of Chach (Chachnama) was written in 1226 CE and provided an account, in Persian, of the 712 CE conquest of Sind by the armies of Muhammad bin Qasim. This early regional history became the foundation for British colonial efforts to cast Muslim rule in India as one of despotic foreigners--a rule to be replaced by the benevolent British one. Asif explores an interconnected Indian Ocean geography which linked sailors, merchants, and literati across divisions of religion and polities. In Chachnama, we find one of the earliest articulation of a political theory that was demonstrably polyglossic, multivalent, and deeply embedded in both the Indic and the Islamic ethos. This examination of Chachnama informs a reconstruction of a intermingled political world at the heart of the text--a world that is subsequently recast by colonial historiography in terms of stark difference alone: Muslim invaders versus Hindu subjects. This work is a bold rearticulation of a medieval imagination that reconciled power and politics in ways that appear incongruous to our present day politics. It takes aim at the fundamental way in which the modern state of Pakistan imagines itself--as a polity ideologically founded in "712 A.D." by the "First Citizen" Muhammad bin Qasim, and has implications for our contemporary understanding of religious difference and theologically based nationalisms.-- |
|---|---|
| Item Description: | Includes bibliographical references and index |
| ISBN: | 0674660110 |