The Dom (دوم) people migrated to the territory of the present day Egypt from South Asia, particularly from Indian Subcontinent, and heavily intermixed with Egyptians. Scholars suggest that their Egyptian admixture later made them known around the world by the vernacular term Gypsies, deriving from the word Egyptian.[2][3]
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 100,000 (estimated) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Upper Egypt, Cairo and Alexandria | |
| Languages | |
| Domari, Egyptian Arabic | |
| Religion | |
| Islam (main religion), Christianity (1%)[1] | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Romani people, Nawar people, Kawliya |
Though some of the Dom people self-segregated themselves for centuries from the dominant culture of Egypt,[4] historically; Domari in Egypt have intermixed with Egyptians and participated at local musical entertainment at weddings, circumcisions and other celebrations, singing Egyptian traditional songs and dancing in return for money. The Dom people in Egypt or Roma Egyptians include subgroups like Nawar, and Ghagar or Ghaggar (غجر).[5][6]
The Dom in Egypt are Sunni Muslims, and apart from Egyptian Arabic, they also speak their own Domari language.[7]
Ottoman sources
editIn Evliya Çelebi's Seyahatnâme of 1668, he explained that the Gypsies from Komotini (Gümülcine) "swear by their heads" their ancestors came from Egypt.[8] Moreover, the sedentary Gypsy groups from the Serres region in Greece believe their ancestors were once taken from Egypt Eyalet by the Ottomans to Rumelia after 1517 to work on the tobacco plantations of Turkish feudals there.[9] Muslim Roma settled in Baranya and the City Pécs at the Ottoman Hungary. After the Siege of Pécs, Muslim Roma and some other Muslims converted to the Catholic faith in the years 1686–1713.[10] The Ghagar a subgroup of the Doms in Egypt, tell that some of them went to Hungary.[11]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ "Romani, Domari in Egypt".
- ^ "Gypsies arrived in Europe 1,500 years ago, genetic study says". the Guardian. 7 December 2012. Retrieved 19 January 2023.
- ^ "Gypsy, Domari of Egypt" (PDF). Nehemiahteams.com. Retrieved 16 July 2022.
- ^ ""Homeless, yet at home": Egypt's Domari Ghagar". Egyptianstreets.com. 7 April 2022. Retrieved 16 July 2022.
- ^ Phillips, David J. (16 July 2001). Peoples on the Move: Introducing the Nomads of the World. William Carey Library. ISBN 9781903689059. Retrieved 16 July 2022 – via Google Books.
- ^ Berland, Joseph C. (2004). Customary Strangers: New Perspectives on Peripatetic Peoples in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers. ISBN 0-89789-771-4. Retrieved 28 October 2013.
- ^ "Doms of Egypt". Peoplegroups.org. Retrieved 25 July 2022.
- ^ "The Earliest Text in Balkan (Rumelian) Romani: A Passage from Evliya Çelebi's Seyah¢a@t na@meh" (PDF). Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society. 1 (1): 1–20. 1991. Retrieved 25 July 2022.
- ^ Zachos, Dimitrios (2011). "Sedentary Roma (Gypsies): The case of Serres (Greece)". Romani Studies. 21: 23–56. doi:10.3828/rs.2011.2. S2CID 144321480 – via ResearchGate.
- ^ Gattermann, Claus Heinrich (25 July 2005). Die Baranya in den Jahren 1686 bis 1713: Kontinuität und Wandel in einem ungarischen Komitat nach dem Abzug der Türken. Universitätsverlag Göttingen. ISBN 9783938616321. Retrieved 25 July 2022 – via Google Books.
- ^ Newbold, Capt (1856). "The Gypsies of Egypt". The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. 16: 285–312. JSTOR 25228684.
External links
edit- The Gypsies of Egypt Archived 23 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine, Dom Research Center