Roma

A NEW THEORY ON ROMANI HISTORY

Romano Vod'i, Czech Republic
Jan 10 2007

A new theory on Romani history based on ongoing research into recorded and factual evidence is being prepared by Ronald Lee and other scholars, including Ian Hancock, Marcel Cortiade and Adrian Marsh. Using language studies, blood groupings, DNA tests and the factual evidence in the writings of the period by Firdausi and other scholars at the Ghaznavid court of Mahmud and later, the Persians, Armenians, Turks and Greeks, the theory suggests that a group of Indians numbering in the thousands were taken out of India by Mahmud Ghazni in the early 11th century and incorporated as ethnic units, along with their camp followers, wives and families, to form contingents of Indian troops to serve in the Ghaznavid Emirate in Khurasan as ghazis and in the bodyguard of Mahmud and his successors.

The existence of such troops is well documented in contemporary histories of the Ghaznavids, as is their participation in the battles in Khurasan. The theory goes on to explain that in 1040, the Ghaznavid empire was overthrown by the Seljuks and that the Indian contingency, numbering around some 60,000, were either forced to fight for the Seljuks and spearhead their advance in their raids into Armenia, or fled to Armenia to escape them. In any event, the Indians ended up in Armenia and later, in the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm. These proto-Romanies remained in Anatolia for two to three hundred years and during that time they abandoned their military way of life and took up a nomadic lifestyle based on artisan work, trading, animal dealing and entertainment.

Gradually, small groups wandered westwards across the Bosporus to Constantinople and from there up into the Balkans to reach Central Europe by 1400, leaving local groups in all the regions they had passed through. Roma made their home in almost all countries of Europe...

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