Chachnama

''Chach Nama'' ( sd, چچ نامو; ur, چچ نامہ; "Story of the Chach"), also known as the ''Fateh nama Sindh'' ( sd, فتح نامه سنڌ; "Story of the conquest of Sindh"), and as ''Tareekh al-Hind wa a's-Sind'' ( ar, تاريخ الهند والسند; "History of India and Sindh"), is one of the main historical sources for the history of Sindh in the seventh to eighth centuries CE, written in Persian.

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". The ''Chach Nama'' is a romantic work influenced by the 13th-century history, not a historical text of the 8th-century, states Asif. Some Islamic scholars and modern historians question the credibility of some of the Chach Nama's reports.

Contents

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