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Arab originsEvery single Muslim in subcontinent believes s/he is of Arab descent or from an illustrious general or saint.

By Salm an Rashid

Publi shed: January 6, 2012

Ev ery single Muslim in th e subcontinent believes s/he is of Ar ab descent. If not direct Ara b descent, then the

illustrious ancestor h ad come from either Iran or Bukhar a. Interestingly , th e ancestor is alway s a great general

or a saint. Nev er ev er ha v e we heard an y one boasting of an in tellectual for a forebear. We hear of the progeny

of sav age r obber kings, but t her e is no one wh o claim sAbu Reha n A l-Ber unior Ibn Rushd as a distan t sire.

Arab origin is the fav our it e fiction of all subcontinenta l Mu slim s. Most cla im their ancestor a rriv ed in Sin dh

wit h the arm y under Mohammad bin Qasim (MbQ). But, I ha v e hear d of lineages reachin g back to Old

Testam ent prophets as well. An elderly Janjua (Rajput), from th e Salt Range told me of a forefather n am ed Ar,

a son of the Prophet Isaac. Ar , he said, was the ancestor of the r aces that spoke the Ar y an t ongu e!

Touted as a local intellectual, this worth y was unm indful of the fact that Ary an w as not a tr ibal name but a

linguistic classification. Neither could he tell me how the n am e Ar, not being in the Old Testam ent, ha d

reached him. He insisted this name headed his family tree and was, therefore tru e. The chart , wr itten on a

piece of ra ther newish paper had been, th e Janju a insisted, copied from an old orig inal. The origina l was of

course destroyed after th e copy wa s made.

The Arain s flaunt Salim al Raee as their father the clan being called after his surn am e. A great an d v aliant

general in the arm y of MbQ, this man w as from an agr icultur al family of Sy ria, so the Tarikh-e-Araiantells us.

Closer t o our times, the Ar ains are indeed acclaimed for t heir gr een th um b for w hich reason Shah Jehanrelocated a larg e bunch of them to mind the newly laid out Shalim ar Garden of Lahore. Today , they are a v ery

rich clan in Baghbanpura.

The Tarikhexpounds on th is fictional anc estors noble backgroundand coura ge in battle to the extent tha t he

alm ost out shines MbQ. But it does not giv e us any sour ce or r eference for t he r ubbish that sullies its pages.

Ther e are two aut hent ic histories of the Arab conquest of Sindh. Ah m ad Al Biladhur isFutuh ul Buladan

(writt en circa 86 0) and Hamid bin Ali Kufis Tarikh-e-Hindwa Sindh, tra nslated first into the Persian as

Fatehnama Sindhand th en into Sindhi as th e Chachnama(written circa 12 00).

There are dozens of names sprinkled across the pages of both works, but no mention is made of a blue-blooded

war rior ca lled Salim al Raee. Th ere are oth er histories besides these two works w hich also disr egar d th is name

for the only reason th at such a ma n nev er existed.

The Awa ns, similar ly , hav e a fictional an cestor called Qutb Shah from th e line of the last caliph of the Rightly -

Guided Caliphs. My friend Kaiser Tufail, an Arain , has ha d himself genetically tested from the US. He has no

tr ace of Ara b blood. His lin e comes from w ha t is now Uzbekistan and has lived from ear ly historic tim es in th e

subcontin ent. Th e rest of us of th is clan w ill see similar results should we go through t his exercise. Kaiser had

his son-in-law, an Awan , also tested. He, too, is singula rly clean of Arabgen es.

Most of us ar e the progeny of conv erts. In their need to escape the discrim inat ion of the so-called higher castes,

our an cestors conv erted to a religion tha t in th eory claim ed to profess hum an equa lity rega rdless of colour or

caste. I use the words in th eory because ev en as the Ar abs conv erted our ancestors to Islam, t hey

discrim inat ed against th em for being Hindis as we learn th is from Ibn Batu tas own pr ejudices. And he is not

alone.

Consequently , ev en after conv ersion, m y ancestors, poor agricu ltu rists, were looked down upon by t he Ara bsand ev en those who had conv erted earlier th e sam e way as they were by the Brahm ans when th ey professed

their V edic belief. Within a generat ion or tw o, th ose early conv erts began the gr eat lie of Arab an cestry to be

equal to other conv erts and the Arabs. This becam e univ ersal with tim e.

The challeng e then is for all t hose, Baloch, Pathan, Punjabi et al, who hav e inv ented illegitimate fathers for

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_bin_Qasimhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ab%C5%AB_Ray%E1%B8%A5%C4%81n_al-B%C4%ABr%C5%ABn%C4%ABhttp://tribune.com.pk/story/317619/arab-origins/http://tribune.com.pk/http://tribune.com.pk/http://tribune.com.pk/http://tribune.com.pk/http://tribune.com.pk/story/290251/pakhtuns/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_bin_Qasimhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ab%C5%AB_Ray%E1%B8%A5%C4%81n_al-B%C4%ABr%C5%ABn%C4%ABhttp://tribune.com.pk/author/827/salman-rashid/http://tribune.com.pk/story/317619/arab-origins/http://tribune.com.pk/

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ourselv es to get our selves tested and know th e bitter tru th .

Published in The Express Tribune, January 7th, 2012.

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