BPSC 70th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 87 of 143

Correct — C, Muhammad Ali Bin Abu Bakr Kufi. The Chachnama is the principal narrative source for the Arab conquest of Sindh — the campaign of Muhammad bin Qasim in 711 to 713 CE — and it takes its name from Chach of Alor, the Brahmin who founded the dynasty that Dahir, the ruler defeated by the Arabs, belonged to. The text is known today only in its Persian version, made around 1216 CE by Ali bin Hamid bin Abu Bakr Kufi, whom this option names in a variant form. He states in his own preface that he found an Arabic history of the conquest and rendered it into Persian, and he dedicated the work to Nasiruddin Qabacha, the ruler of Uch and Multan in the years after the collapse of the Ghurid empire. So the man, the language, the date and the patron all line up with option (c). Two refinements a careful student should carry. First, the Arabic original Kufi describes has never been found, and a strand of modern scholarship reads the Chachnama not as a translation at all but as an original thirteenth-century composition using the conquest as a frame for political argument — the received exam answer remains that Ali Kufi translated it, but the status of the 'original' is genuinely debated. Second, the name is written in several forms — Ali Kufi, Ali bin Hamid Kufi, Muhammad Ali bin Abu Bakr Kufi — and BPSC has used one of the longer variants, which is why matching the option to the man matters more than matching the exact string.

• (a)Nurrudin Muhammad Aufi — A real and well-chosen distractor, because Aufi belongs to the same moment and the same court — he wrote the Jawami-ul-Hikayat, a vast collection of anecdotes, and the Lubab-ul-Albab, the earliest surviving Persian anthology of poets, and he too worked under the patronage of Nasiruddin Qabacha before moving to Delhi. Same patron, same decade, different book.
• (b)Shams-i-Siraj — Shams-i-Siraj Afif belongs to the fourteenth century and wrote the Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi, an account of the reign of Firoz Shah Tughlaq — roughly a hundred and fifty years after the Chachnama and about the Delhi Sultanate rather than about Sindh. He is a chronicler, which is why the name feels right, but of the wrong period entirely.
• (d)More than one of the above — There is one Persian Chachnama and one man credited with producing it, so no two of the three names can both be correct. Apply the standing test for this option: it is available only when you can name at least two of the listed items that are simultaneously true. Here Aufi and Shams-i-Siraj are each associated with entirely different books, so nothing supports it.

The Arab conquest of Sindh is the earliest sustained Muslim presence in the subcontinent and sits awkwardly in the syllabus, because it is neither part of the Delhi Sultanate story nor of ancient India. Muhammad bin Qasim, a young commander sent by Hajjaj bin Yusuf, the governor of Iraq under the Umayyad caliph Al-Walid, moved against Sindh in 711 CE, took the port of Debal, and defeated and killed Raja Dahir near Rawar in 712; Multan fell soon after. Arab rule was consolidated only in Sindh and southern Punjab and did not expand further, which is why the episode is often described as a conquest without consequences for the rest of India in the short term — though it opened durable trade and scholarly contact, and Sindh became the route by which Indian astronomy and mathematics, including the decimal numerals, reached Baghdad. The Chachnama is the one connected narrative of these events, and its own history is instructive: written down in Persian five centuries later, in a Sindh ruled by a post-Ghurid Turkish governor who needed a usable account of how the region had been governed before.

Questions of this shape are answered by holding a small table of chronicler, work and reign, and the useful discipline is to store the three together as one unit rather than storing the names alone. For this period the essential rows are: Ali Kufi with the Persian Chachnama, about 1216, under Nasiruddin Qabacha; Nuruddin Muhammad Aufi with the Jawami-ul-Hikayat and the Lubab-ul-Albab, same patron and decade; Minhaj-us-Siraj with the Tabaqat-i-Nasiri under Iltutmish and Nasiruddin Mahmud; Ziauddin Barani and Shams-i-Siraj Afif each with a Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi in the Tughlaq period; and Abul Fazl with the Akbarnama and Abdul Hamid Lahori with the Padshahnama under the Mughals. Store the reign with the name and the wrong-century options fall away first, which on this question disposes of Shams-i-Siraj immediately. What is left is Aufi against Kufi, two men at the same court, and there the discriminator is the book: Aufi collected anecdotes and poets' lives, Kufi produced the history of Sindh's conquest. That is the whole question.

• The Chachnama is the principal narrative of the Arab conquest of Sindh, named after Chach of Alor, founder of the dynasty to which Raja Dahir belonged
• It survives only in the Persian version made around 1216 CE by Ali bin Hamid bin Abu Bakr Kufi, dedicated to Nasiruddin Qabacha, ruler of Uch and Multan
• The Arabic original Kufi claims to have translated has never been found, and some modern scholarship treats the work as an original thirteenth-century composition
• Muhammad bin Qasim invaded Sindh in 711 CE on the orders of Hajjaj bin Yusuf under the Umayyad caliph Al-Walid, took Debal, and defeated Raja Dahir in 712
• The distractors placed: Nuruddin Muhammad Aufi wrote the Jawami-ul-Hikayat and the Lubab-ul-Albab under the same patron; Shams-i-Siraj Afif wrote the Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi in the fourteenth century

• Choosing Shams-i-Siraj because the name sounds like a chronicler's — he belongs to the Tughlaq period, about 150 years later
• Confusing Aufi with Kufi; both wrote under Nasiruddin Qabacha in the same decade, but on entirely different subjects
• Marking 'More than one of the above' without being able to name two options that are simultaneously true

BPSC asks medieval historiography as a bare attribution — one text, three real authors and 'More than one of the above' — and chooses distractors from the same century or the same court so that vague familiarity is punished. UPSC asks the same body of knowledge by describing the man rather than naming the book: who was Abdul Hamid Lahori, which medieval writer refers to the discovery of America. Both reward the same table of chronicler, work and reign.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Chachnama chiefly narrates

  • (a)the campaigns of Mahmud of Ghazni in northern India
  • (b)the Arab conquest of Sindh under Muhammad bin Qasim
  • (c)the reign of Firoz Shah Tughlaq
  • (d)the founding of the Bahmani kingdom

  Answer(b) the Arab conquest of Sindh under Muhammad bin Qasim — the campaign of 711 to 713 CE against Raja Dahir, named for Chach of Alor, the founder of Dahir's dynasty.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi was written by

  • (a)Minhaj-us-Siraj
  • (b)Ali Kufi
  • (c)Ziauddin Barani and, separately, Shams-i-Siraj Afif
  • (d)Abul Fazl

  Answer(c) Ziauddin Barani and, separately, Shams-i-Siraj Afif — two distinct works of that name from the Tughlaq period; Minhaj-us-Siraj wrote the Tabaqat-i-Nasiri and Abul Fazl the Akbarnama.