The Habshi Dynasty of India

Subject

Habshi Dynasty; Africa; India

Description

The relationship between Africa and India extends as far back as 1495 BCE. As scholars Renata Czekalska and Agnieszka Kuczkiewicz-Fraś point out, “The first verifiable mention of trade between Africa and India can be found in the relation of the Egyptian queen Hatshepsut’s expedition to Punt [modern day Somalia].” Czekalska and Kuczkiewicz-Fraś note that the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a Greco-Roman document describing trade routes from Egypt to the rest of the world in the first to third century CE, includes the first recorded mention of slave trade from Africa to India. As importers brought Italian and Arab wines, olive oil, silverware, and glassware to India, so too, the Periplus advises, they complied with the demands of Indian kings for “slave musicians” and “beautiful girls for concubinage.”

Such enslavement accounts for most of the Indo-African population in India today.

But according to historian Astair Gebremariam Mengesha, enslaved people were brought to the Deccan from East Africa from the sixteenth century to the latter part of the seventeenth century “in small numbers of about 500.” That trend continued on and off until the end of the nineteenth century. Initially, these newcomers were put to work defending the domains of monarchs. Eventually, they would serve in armed and naval forces under Muslim, Hindu, and Portuguese rule, forming “efficient” troops “capable of holding their own amidst the ceaseless intrigues and conspiracies of the subcontinent.”

Creator

By: Akanksha Singh

Source

https://daily.jstor.org/the-habshis-dynasty-of-india/

Publisher

daily.jstor.org

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