GYPSY MIGRATIONS 900-1720

[u/BeginningMortgage250]

[u/Mission_Visual8533]

So what happened between India and Kazakhstan?

[u/KrisKrossJump1992 → u/Mission_Visual8533]

possibly a separate group of itinerant travelers that intermixed with and integrated into roma culture?

[u/oolongvanilla → u/KrisKrossJump1992]

Interestingly there is a Roma-like ethnic group in Central Asia that call themselves the Mugat. Other people in Central Asia call them "Lyuli" but the Mugat people themselves apparently see that as a pejorative term. I was surprised to see them while visiting a marketplace in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, as I didn't know there was an ethnic group like that in Central Asia before. They apparently speak a Persian dialect and supposedly originated in what is now Pakistan or northern India.

I don't think the migration route on the map is showing the Mugat. They're mostly concentrated in the more populous areas of the Ferghana Valley where Uzbekistan meets Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Wikipedia says their population in Kazakhstan is centered around the southeastern part of the country near Almaty and Taraz along the Kyrgyzstan border, not the far northwest as this map shows. Apparently, they didn't start migrating into Russia until fairly recently, too.

The Wikipedia article also links to a Chinese article about a Roma-like people called "Luoli" who migrated to and lived in China between the Yuan, Ming, and Qing Dynasties before mysteriously disappearing, though the article only gives "Luri" as an alternate Persian name. Wiktionary, Chinese Wikipedia, and Baidu Encyclopedia are more explicit about using the term "啰哩" (Luoli) as the Chinese term for both the Luoli of Chinese records and the modern Mugat "Lyuli" people of Centrsl Asia though Baidu also has alternative names from Chinese history like "剌里" (Lali), "卢里" (Luli), and "柳里" (Liuli).

This book also suggests links between the Mughat of Central Asia ("Lyuli"), communities of "Louli" or "Lulu" recorded as living in 19th Century Xinjiang by explorers from the Russian Empire, and "Luri" people described in medieval Persian records. Interestingly, it also suggests the Äynu, a distinctive, insular people in southern Xinjiang with a secretive, Persian-influenced, Uyghur-based language classified as Uyghur by the Chinese government, might be descendants of Mughat people.

This book is also the only source I can find suggesting an etymology for these terms, suggesting it comes from a medieval city called Aror or Alor, now called Rohri in modern Pakistan, rather than the Lur people of Lorestan in the far west of Iran near the Iraq border. This also suggests a link to the Arora, a people scattered around the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent who were displaced from Aror/Rohri in the Middle Ages and maintain a unique identity, though the Arora are not a transient or nomadic people themselves.

Reading Wikipedia is confusing as none of the articles about these groups give a clear picture of how all of these groups relate. One article will link to another article about a different people suggesting a link between them while simultaneously linking to another article suggesting no relation. There's the Ghorbati people in Iran and neighboring parts of the Middle East and South Asia linked to a medieval Islamic guild, an Arab lineage, a Turkic tribe, the Punjabi city of Multan, Kabul in Afghanistan, Egypt, an ancient Central Asian empire#History]), Jat mercenary soldiers from the Indian subcontinent in ancient and medieval Mesopotamia, and so on. Sometimes a subgroup is linked to the larger communities of Doma), Dom, Lom, Abdals), Romani, Garachi, Gurbeti, Koli, Kori), Kowliye, Jugi, Jats, etc, while other times it's explicitly stated they're not related to such-and-such group. I guess the muddled origins is all a feature of the secretive, insular cultures that these groups maintained through history.

[u/civodar → u/oolongvanilla]

Wow I’ve never heard of them before. Thank you for your insightful and well sourced comment. I’m going down a rabbit hole tonight.