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CHACH-NA′MA.

135

stances ’Usmán is mentioned as Sakifí, that is, of the same tribe as the conqueror himself.[1] The genealogies do not tally in every respect, and it is evident that in the later one some intermediate generations, as is frequently the case, are omitted; but still there is quite sufficient similarity to show descent from the same ancestor. The titles also of ancestor and descendant resemble each other most closely. The first Kází appointed to Alor is called Sadr al Imámia al Ajall al ’A′lim Burhánu-l Millat wau-d dín. The contemporary of the translation is called Maulana Kází al Imám al Ajall al ’A′lim al Bári’ Kamálu-l Millat wau-d dín. It is very strange that the translator takes no notice of this identity of pedigree, by which the value and authenticity of the work are so much increased; but it is probable that it did not occur to him, or such a circumstance could scarcely have escaped mention.
Notwithstanding that Elphinstone uses the expression “professes to be a translation,” which would imply a suspicion of the fact, there is no reason to doubt that the work is a translation of a genuine Arab history, written not very long after the conquest. There appears in it very little modern interpolation, and it is probable that those passages which contain anachronisms were the work of the original writer, and not of the translator. The placing a sentence of the Kuran in Ládí’s mouth—the Bismillah at the beginning of the letters of Sindian princes, the praises of Islám ascribed to Hindús, the use of the foreign names of Brahmanábád, which is explained to be a version of the native Bámanwáh, are all evidently the work of the original author.
It is to be regretted that there is no hope of recovering the Arabic work; for although the very meagre accounts of this important conquest by Abú-l Fida, Abú-l Faraj, Ibn Kutaiba, and Almakín lead us to expect little information from Arabic authorities; yet it might possibly contain other interesting matter

  1. The Sakif tribes (Thakif) were of great importance. They had their head quarters at Tayif, and were the guardians of the upper road to Yemen.—Sprenger’s Life of Muhammad, p. 7.