Chach Nama

Chach Nama (Sindhi: چچ نامو; Urdu: چچ نامہ; "Story of the Chach"), also known as the Fateh nama Sindh (Sindhi: فتح نامه سنڌ; "Story of the Conquest of Sindh"), and as Tareekh al-Hind wa a's-Sind (Arabic: تاريخ الهند والسند; "History of Hind and Sind"), is a historical source for the history of Sindh.

The text, which purports to be a Persian translation by `Ali Kufi (13th-century) of an undated, original Arabic text, has long been considered to be the story of the early 8th-century conquests by the Umayyad general Muhammad bin Qasim. The text is significant because it has been a source of colonial understanding of the origins of Islam and the Islamic conquests in the Indian subcontinent. It influenced the debate on the partition of British India and its narrative has been included in the state-sanctioned history textbooks of Pakistan. However, according to Manan Ahmed Asif, the text is in reality original, "not a work of translation". Asif asserts that the Chach Nama is a romantic work influenced by the 13th-century history, not a historical text of the 8th-century. Some Islamic scholars and modern historians question the credibility of some of the Chach Nama's reports.

The report contains an introductory chapter about the history of Sindh just before its conquest by the Arabs. The body of the work narrates the Arab inclusions into Sindh of the 7th-8th centuries AD. Thus it chronicles the Chacha dynasty's period, following the demise of the Rai dynasty and the ascent of Chach of Alor to the throne, down to the Arab conquest by Muhammad bin Qasim in early 8th century AD. The text concludes with 'an epilogue describing the tragic end of the Arab commander Muḥammad b. al-Ḳāsim and of the two daughters of Dāhir, the defeated king of Sindh.

As one of the only written sources about the Arab conquest of Sindh, and therefore the origins of Islam in India, the Chach Nama is a key historical text that has been co-opted by different interest groups for several centuries, and it has significant implications for modern imaginings about the place of Islam in South Asia. Accordingly, its implications are much disputed.

According to Manan Ahmed Asif, the Chach Nama has been historically significant. It was a source of colonial understanding of the origins of Islam in the Indian subcontinent through the Sindh region. The text has been one of the sources of historiography and religious antagonism during the British ruled Indian people's struggles to gain independence from the colonial British Empire. The text, states Asif, has been a source of a colonial construction of a long history of religious antagonism between Hindus and Muslims, and one of narratives of Muslim origins in South Asia by various twentieth-century historians and writers. It has been a part of state-sanctioned history textbooks of Pakistan.

As we have it today, the Chach Nama is the work of ʿAlī b. Ḥāmid b. Abī Bakr Kūfī. He was writing in Persian, but claimed to be translating a book in Arabic, which he had discovered among the possessions of the ḳāḍī of Alōr, Ismāʿīl b. ʿAlī ... b. ʿUthmān al-Thaḳafī (who was appointed the first kādī of Alōr by Muhammad Kāsim after the conquest of the Sindh.) According to Y. Friedmann,

a comparison between the Čač-Nāma and Arab historians such as Balādhurī [...] bears out the Arab provenance of those parts of the book that describe the battles leading to the conquest of Sind; Kūfī might well have used Madāʾinī’s Kitāb Thaghr al-Hind and Kitāb ʿUmmāl (or Aʿmāl) al-Hind [...] The Čač-Nāma seems to have preserved Madāʾinī’s tradition concerning India in a much fuller fashion than classical Arab histories. On the other hand, the book also comprises a considerable amount of material which probably reflects a local Indian historical tradition. The part dealing with the rise of the Čač dynasty (14-72), the story of Darōhar, Djaysinha and Djanki (229-234), and some traditions attributed to a Brahman called Rāmsiya (179) and to “some Brahman elders” (baʿḍī mashāyikh-i barāhima) (197; cf. also 206¹⁴) deserve to be mentioned in this context.

The Chach Nama survived in the following key manuscripts: British Library Or. 1787; India Office, Ethé 435.