THE LEGEND AND HISTORY OF RAJA CHACH

Islam Comes to India 15

Raja Chach Rai was a Brahmin who reigned as king of Sindh region of the Indian subcontinent in the mid-7th century CE. Chach expanded the kingdom of Sindh, and his successful efforts to subjugate surroundin monarchies and ethnic groups into an empire covering the entire Indus valley and beyond were recorded in the Chach Nama. 

During the time of Muhammed’s death, the regions of Makran and Sindh belonged to India culturally and politically; Muslims knew the area as the frontier of al-Hind. Though the tendency is to consider Indus as the Western border of India, people from Pliny the Elder (23 – 79 C.E) to Nicolo de Conti (1385 – 1469) thought that it was Gedrosia or Makran.
At this time Harsha (590 – 647 C.E.) was the ruler of Northern India; the Gupta empire had come to end following the invasion of the White Huns. While Harsha ruled over the Gangetic plain, Punjab, Gujarat, Bengal and Orissa, the other side of the modern border was ruled by the Hindu Rai dynasty with the capital in Alor (modern day Sukkur). 

Founded by Rai Dewaji in 485 C.E, just a decade after Rome fell to the Visigoths, the Rai kingdom extended all way from Kashmir to Makran and from the mountains of Kurdan to Karachi. Within this empire some parts of Makran was controlled by Persians and Indians alternatively. 

The Chinese traveler Xuanzang (Hsüan-tsang) visited the region during the time of the Rai dynasty. Makran at that time had a large Buddhist population; there were towns like Armabil which were ruled by Buddhists who were originally agents of the Rais. Xuanzang saw 80 Buddhist convents with 5000 monks, several hundred Deva temples and one temple of ‘Maheswara Deva’ which was richly adorned. 

Sindh too was part of al-Hind. This was a time when the Buddhist influence was strong, but was in the decline due to rise of Hinduism and the influence of the Gupta empire. By this time, according to Xuanzang , Buddhism in Sindh was in decline and Takshashila was in ruins. There was a Brahmin migration to Sindh and many cities were founded by them. Buddhists and Brahmins blended in a unique way without any dispute which the Arab invaders could exploit.

Chach Nama

Chach was a Brahmin who rose to a position of influence under Rai Sahiras II, king of Sindh and a member of the Rai dynasty. Chach was prime minister to the King, and retained influence after Rai Sahasi’s death. He became the lover of Chach’s widow, and their marriage enabled him to receive the kingship the date of which is normally put at 632 AD.

Chach enlisted his brother Chandar (also known as Chandra) to help him administer the kingdom. He then launched a campaign against a succession of autonomous regions; he defeated his opponents along the south bank of the River Beas, at Iskandah, and at Sikkah. He sacked Sikkah, killing 5,000 men and taking the remainder of its inhabitants prisoners. A significant number of these captives were enslaved, and much booty was taken. After this victory, which he appointed a thakur to govern from Multan, and used his army to settle boundary disputes with Kashmir. Chach also conquered Siwistan, but allowed its chief, Matta, to remain as his feudatory. 

Later, he expanded his rule into Buddhist regions across the Indus River. These efforts culminated in a battle at Brahmanabad, in which the region’s governor, Agham Lohana, was killed. Chach remained in Brahmanabad for a year to cement his authority there, and appointed Agham’s son Sarhand as his governor; Sarhand was also wed to Chach’s niece. Chach took Agham’s widow as his wife, as well. 

From Brahmanabad, he invaded Sassanid territory through the town of Armanbelah, marching from Turan to Kandahar. He exacted tribute from the latter before returning.
Upon his death, Chach was succeeded by his brother Chandar; Chandar is stated to have ruled for eight years, whereupon Dahir, Chach’s eldest son, inherited the throne. 

n 644, after the Muslim conquest of Sassanid Empire, the Rashidun army entered Makran and defeated Sindh’s army in the Battle of Rasil, annexing Makran (a traditional Persian territory under control of Rai dynasty at that time) and eastern Balochistan. Caliph Umar (634-644), however, for the time being, disapproved of any incursion beyond the Indus river and ordered his subordinates to consolidate their position west of Indus. 

Several places along the Sindhu River were named after Chach; among these are Chachpur, Chachar, Chachro, Chachgaon, Chach.

The Chachnama takes its name from Raja Chach of Sindh, whose son Dahar stood against the Arabs under Mohammad bin Qasim (MbQ). It comes down to us in its Sindhi, Urdu and English versions. In 1216, one Ali bin Mohammad Kufi, then being a resident of Uch in south Punjab, wishing to learn about the history of his adopted country sought out true sources.
His search brought Kufi to Bhakkar (the fort midstream between Sukkur and Rohri) where the Qazi, Ismail bin Ali of the tribe Sakifi became his mentor. Among his collection, the Qazi had a manuscript that he said was written by one of his ancestors and which detailed the account of Sindh at the time of the Arab invasion. Now, Sakifi was the tribe that MbQ also belonged to, so the Qazi was a descendent from the conqueror’s line. The book, therefore, was the version of the victor — something that we always tend to hold against history. 

Impressed by the book “adorned with jewels of wisdom and embellished with pearls of morality”, Ali Kufi resolved to translate it into Persian, then a better known language in Sindh than Arabic. Indeed, Kufi’s impetus may have been Qazi Ismail’s lament that the book being in its original Hijazi Arabic, its content was virtually unknown in Sindh. 

It was from Persian that the book came into English in 1900, by the learned pen of the remarkable Mirza Kalich Beg. The Chachnama opens with a very detailed account of the Rajput King, Sahasi Rai, and of a young Chach, a Brahman, joining his staff. The author’s source for this part was clearly native oral or written tradition, whereas the account of the invasion is from Arabic sources. 

Segueing again at the end, Ali Kufi reverts to local sources. He tells us how the virgin daughters of Raja Dahar upon being presented to Caliph Walid bin Abdul Malik misrepresent out of malice: that they have already spent time with MbQ. Upon this, the incensed caliph orders for the hero to have himself sewn in a fresh cowhide and dispatched back to the capital. He arrives dead and Walid gloats over the corpse. “The Caliph had a stick of green emerald in his hand at that time, and he placed it on the teeth of the dead body, and said, “O daughters of Rai Dahar, look how our orders are promptly obeyed by our officers …”’, the Chachnama tells us. 

This is clearly a Sindhi dramatisation of a different event. From Ahmed Al Bilazri’s Futuh-ul-Baladan we know that upon his return to Iraq, MbQ hardly received a hero’s welcome. His kinsman and mentor Hujaj bin Yusuf had fallen from favour and on the orders of Walid, MbQ was imprisoned where he succumbed to torture. Sifting between the two versions, one has to admit that it is nearly impossible to piece together the exact truth. Nevertheless, it is clear that owing to political rivalries, the young conqueror did not return home to accolades.
Now, the Chachnama has been billed variously, either as a romance or as authentic history. We know that Mir Masum Shah, the governor of Bhakkar (where Ali Kufi was tutored by the Qazi) during the reign of Akbar the Great, writing his famous Tarikh-e-Masumi in the early years of the 17th century, drew heavily from Kufi’s translation. Likewise, Ali Sher Qanea of Thatta for his Tuhfa-tul-Kiram, a century-and-a-half later. Modern researchers would not altogether dismiss the Chachnama as balderdash: it has to be looked at critically but it, nevertheless, is authentic in parts. 

Chachnama tells us the invasion of Sindh in 711 was the sixth. Five earlier attempts were routed with great loss of Arab life and investment. 

But Manan Ahmad Asif,historian at Columbia University,in his A Book of Conquest: The Chachnama and Muslim Origins in South Asia questions the historicity of Chachnama.His contentions are mainly that the Chachnama isn’t a book of conquest at all and that it isn’t part of the futuh narratives or, conquest stories that formed a genre of Arab literature. And because it isn’t one, the Chachnama can’t claim to explicate the campaigns of Mohammad bin Qasim. Following from this, Asif also states that the Chachnama isn’t a work composed in Arabic in the 8th century and then translated into Persian, four hundred years later, by Ali Kufi. Instead, Ali Kufi, wrote in Persian, using the literary tools of his time which included a claim to respectability by tracing a scholarly genealogy for oneself – usually from Arabic literature.He completed his work in 1226 CE.