yeah I've heard the Sidi people from India might've been from the Horn of Afrika...
not sure though, I gotta look into it
even the word Sidi sounds Habesha but we both know it has a totally different meaning lol
Yeah, I have notes on a lot of this for a blog and podcast I'm sort of working on but still need help figuring out..so some might be contradicting but here is what I have for those areas.. Always looking for more heads to help/discuss if anyones interested.
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INDIA
Records indicate that, by the early 13th century, Muslim rulers owned many African slaves, who came primarily from the Horn of Africa, especially Ethiopia. Ethiopian demand for luxury goods from the East generated a flourishing market in which Indian products were exchanged for gold, ivory, and human captives. Though the Christian rulers of Ethiopia forbade the exportation of Christian slaves to foreign countries, pagans and non-Christian prisoners of war or those caught in raids by slavers in the Sudan were sold.15 The first Portuguese travelers to reach Ethiopia recorded seeing Ethiopians dressed in fine Indian cloths exchanging slaves for goods that ―Moorish‖ merchants brought to market.16 Other travelers reported silks exchanged for fixed numbers of slaves.1
- Similarly, another term for Siddis, habshi (from Al-Habsh, the Arabic term for the area that is now Ethiopia or Eritrea), is held to be derived from the common name for the captains of the Ethiopian/Abyssinian ships that also first delivered Siddi slaves to the subcontinent.[
Ethiopia The presence of Ethiopians, or Abyssinians, across the Indian Ocean world appears early in the archival and archeological record. The anonymous first-century Greek author of the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea notes commercial contact between East Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and the Indian subcontinent. Trade, however, was often mixed with imperial expansion. During the fourth century armies from Ethiopia invaded the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula and occupied Yemen from 335 to 370. The Persian and Byzantine historians Muhammed ibn Jariri al-Tabari and Procopius of Caesarea indicate that between 532 and 535 the Ethiopian general Abraha al-Ashram, a Christian, seized the throne of the Himyarite kingdom and ruled as the king of Saba for some 35 years. His sons by a Yemeni woman ensured that an African presence in Arabia remained following his death in 570. The archeological record verifies that commercial contacts between Ethiopia and South Asia had been well established in the ancient world. Indian figurines were imported into Ethiopia as early as the third century BCE; and during the first century CE the Greek observer Pliny the Elder described Barygasa (Baruch) in Gujarat, on the western coast of India, as an Ethiopian town. More than 100 gold coins dating to approximately 230 found in Dabra Damo, northern Ethiopia, have been identified as Kushana (from the Kush region between Pakistan and Afghanistan). Many of the captives in Ethiopia were Oromo, who filled the markets at Gondar and Gallabar in the northwest. Oromo chiefs often acted as dealers, supplying Christian Oromo to Muslim markets. During the 16th century, a Dutch traveler noted that enslaved Christian Ethiopians could be recognized by the cross-shaped marks on their faces—burns made upon baptism to forever mark their religious identity, if not faith. Up to 500 Oromo were reportedly sold in a single day at Gallabar alone. Another observer, the Italian traveler Ludovico di Varthema—the first non-Muslim European to enter Mecca—noted at the turn of the 16th century how Ethiopian soldiers were taken by the "Moors" (i.e., Muslims) to Zeila on the Gulf of Aden and from there "carried into Persia, Arabia Felix [southern Arabia] and to Mecca, Cairo and into India." Some of these Ethiopians were paid mercenaries, but most were slave-soldiers being transported as a military force by Arabs to various parts of the Indian Ocean. Over the course of many centuries Ethiopians would appear repeatedly in the historical record. Some were quite notable: in the seventh century, Bilal ibn Rabah, the son of an enslaved Abyssinian woman and Islam's first muezzin (the person who calls Muslims to prayer); in the 14th century, Bava Gor, a merchant in the agate trade and a highly venerated Sufi pir (Muslim spiritual master); and in the early 17th century, Malik Ambar, a Muslim general in India's Deccan, under whose command were nearly 8,000 soldiers, including several thousand fellow Habshi. In 1530, during the Portuguese occupation, Sayf al-Mulk Miftah, the governor of Daman on the coast of Ahmednagar in western India, was described as an Ethiopian who commanded a force of 4,000 Habshi soldiers. In addition to serving in military roles, Ethiopians continued to trade directly with outlying ports in the Indian Ocean. In the 16th century, the Portuguese traveler Tomé Pires noted that Ethiopian merchants were trading as far away as Malacca in Malaysia. Ethiopians were also part of crews that crisscrossed the Indian Ocean. Some navigated between Hormuz in southern Iran and Goa and Bengal in India, while others sailed to Malaysia, and a few went to China and Japan with the Portuguese. Along the western coast of India, Ethiopians built a chain of fortifications, controlling sea access from Daman, in the north, down to the island of Janjira, south of Bombay. There, beginning in the early 17th century, Habshi sailors turned rulers established a royal lineage that reigned for nearly 300 years.
Western Arabia
Western Arabia Starting in pre-Islamic times, Arabs traded Africans at Mecca, the crossroad for many of the caravan routes in the Arabian Peninsula. Mecca—with Medina one of the two holiest sites for Muslims—was a major slave market, and it was where an emancipated Habshi, Bilal ibn Rabah, came to prominence. According to the Hadith (traditions of the Prophet and his Companions), among Muhammad's earliest converts was Bilal, the "son of an Abyssinian slave-girl," who became a trusted companion of the Prophet. Bilal Al-Habash (the Ethiopian), as he was also known, was described as tall and dark, with lean features. He was enslaved by Umayyah ibn Khalaf, who violently opposed Muhammad and his teachings of a single god. When Bilal converted, Ibn Khalaf tortured him in an effort to get him to recant his faith. Having heard of Bilal's tenacity, Abu Bakr (later Sunni Islam's first caliph) purchased and emancipated him. Muhammad asked Bilal, who was known to have a powerful, melodic voice, to serve as the community's first muezzin. Bilal, whose name is prevalent among Muslim men on the Horn of Africa, went on to fight alongside the Prophet in the most critical battles during the earliest days of Islam. He lived for a time in Basra, the major port city of southern Iraq, before returning to Arabia. The high esteem in which Muslims in the Indian Ocean world hold Bilal can be seen in the Persian Gulf, where musical performances by men and women of African descent pay homage to him. In Pakistan, songs of religious devotion—including by Muslims of non-African descent—praise him; and in Africa and Turkey muezzin guilds venerate the founder of their religious art form. Bilal's "song" continues to be heard across the entire ummah, the global Muslim community.
Ironically, enslaved Africans often wielded greater authority over free Muslims, particularly eunuchs who served in the courts at Mecca and Medina, some becoming keepers of the Kaaba (the site towards which all Muslims pray.) One of their primary roles was as intermediaries in harems, gatekeepers and communicators between the inside and outside worlds of these enclosed societies. But even with the kind of authority eunuchs, slave soldiers or administrators wielded, they remained in bondage and could not, for instance, perform the hajj on their own. Still, they expressed themselves in their own unique ways: African Muslims in Mecca were seen well into the 19th century celebrating their ancestry with performances that involved two or more people dancing with long sticks and moving as if in combat in a manner reminiscent of the AfroBrazilian capoeira.
During the late 19th century tens of thousands of African captives were shipped up the Red Sea for sale to other parts of the Middle East following the annual pilgrimages to Mecca. They were sold at Jeddah and Mecca, or were otherwise exchanged for goods, including steel weapons from Damascus, turquoise or carpets from Persia, or silks from China. The London-based AntiSlavery Reporter noted that up to 25,000 people were sold or exchanged in Mecca in 1878; a decade later an estimated 8,000 Ethiopians were still being traded at the holy city. Slavery was not officially abolished in Saudi Arabia until 1962.
Yemen and Oman
The ancestors of the Yemeni of African descent arrived in several waves. The Akhdam, Hajur and Subians descend from Ethiopian conquerors, notably Abraha al-Ashram, who settled in Yemen between the third and sixth centuries. Subsequently, their descendants worked as agricultural laborers and fishermen. They were joined by Somalis, Eritreans and other Ethiopians, who traded in Aden and remained there.
Today, the "black Yemeni," as they are referred to locally, are marginalized. Many of the now Muslim descendants of the once Christian Ethiopian conquerors of southern Arabia, along with other people of African origin, are relegated to performing the most menial jobs, facing poverty and social isolation. The 3,000 people comprising the Akhdam community in the district of Mahwa Dar Salm, south of the capital Sanaa, live in slumlike conditions, with virtually no access to electricity, running water or schools.
Gujarat
Africans have been part of the western state of Gujarat since at least the first century, when the town of Barygasa (Baruch today) was considered an Ethiopian town, peopled by merchants from East Africa.
if you ask me.