>> From the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. [ Silence ] >> Good afternoon and welcome to the African and Middle Eastern Divisions Reading Room. My chief, Mary-Jane Deeb in the audience also greets you to today's event. I am Marieta Harper, Area Specialist in the African Section of this division. Today's program is sponsored by African and Middle Eastern Division, the Asian Division, in conjunction with the Embassy of India. We will be great-- greeted later by the Embassy of India's Official who can't be here at this point in time. Mr. Virander Paul, who's their Cultural Educational Officer-- he'll be introduced later. The African section is celebrating its 50th Anniversary and this program, its part of the activities that celebrates this anniversary. Today's lecture and book signer on African Elite's in Africa will be discussed by Dr. Kenneth X. Robbins. I'm going to tell you a little bit about Dr. Robbins. He's a psychiatrist practicing in the Washington area and a member of the Board of Directors of the Friends of the Asian Division of the Library of Congress. He has a special interest in the Maharaja's and has published a dozen of articles on Indian history, art, religion, medicine, psychology, politically and numismatics-- sorry. And he has curated many exhibitions from his collections at sites ranging from Columbia University to the National Library of Medicine. He is currently working on a five-volume study of the Jews of India and Jews in India. He has organized many scholarly conferences and is planning on April of 2011 a conference on South Asian Sufis to take place at Saint Johns Hopkins at SAIS, the Fria Gallery [phonetic] and also the Library of Congress. I give you Dr. Robbins. [ Applause ] >> Thank you very much Marieta and I appreciate this opportunity and thank you Dr. Deeb. I think that a lot of people are wondering why this is gonna be a very short book like Puerto Rican Jewish Hockey players in 13th Century Puerto Rico. Now a lot of people have heard that there were Indians in Africa but nobody seems to know there were a lot of Africans in India. And the very title of the book is something that I think troubles a lot of people. People make certain assumptions that Africans can't be elites and they certainly be elites anywhere outside of Africa and they could have never ruled over non-Africans that they were in fact Africans who did do this, they were in fact North Africans and not East Africans from places which today are places like Somalia, Ethiopia and so on. But this is not completely true. [ Pause ] >> I was playing for you some music by a group called the Sidi Goma which performs African Music today and here is a 19th Century painting of them and they look quite African and if one goes to the lower class or middle class areas of Ahmedabad and Gujarat and other places in Gujarat this is what one finds. Actually we went to see this troop in the home where they live and we're sitting in a little room and the wisen matriarch of the clan who really seemed like almost like a mummy, was all shriveled up in an almost fetal position in this tiny room and before you know it, it was like-- did you ever see that Marx Brothers movie where they all get into the ships cabin and everybody falls out because there's so many people? And next thing you know there's drummers and there's people playing all sorts of instruments and so and on and so forth. When this wonderful experience was over I then speak to the leader of the group and I'm starting to ask her questions about Africans. And being in India, only in India could this happen. The lady of course, not only can not answer my question, she reaches into her refrigerator. Okay, I don't know why she's reaching through her refrigerator which of course doesn't work and out she pulls my book and says, "If you want to know the answers, this is where you should ask." [ Laughter ] >> So this-- my narcism was very much affected by this. This is also true a few days later we went to a dinner party and my wife embarrassedly said, "I wrote a book." and the guy said, "Well, what do you write a book about?" She's very embarrassed, you know, because this is the book even your mother wouldn't buy. Nobody would possibly be interested in this book. And the guy of course had read it, so this book has gotten much more publicity. People are much more interested than one would think in these days. Now in Ahmedabad itself the city has a symbol. The symbol is a mosque called Sidi Sayyid Mosque which was built in the 16th Century by an African. And just like the Eiffel Tower is a symbol of Paris, this wonderful stonework is the symbol of the City of Ahmedabad, one of the most recognizable sysmbols well known in India today built by an African-- not the only place built by an African. So there were Africans who were in the elite. In this surrender scene of the Sultan of Gujarat to the Mughal's emperor in the 16th Century in a-- slightly later painting, one sees two Africans clearly in the elite surrendering and there were many such Africans. There are all sorts legends about Africans and this epic about the prophet Mohammed's uncle, they're legendary Africans called the Zengis and here are the Zengis, you can see the king of the Zengis and all of his minions and they're wearing this curious fur hats with most of which are red and I'm gonna show you similar hats because that became the symbol in India of Africans. If toy see somebody wearing such a hat you'd know they're an African. So but these people are really Africans or, you know, a lot of a dark people in the skin, people in India. I was shocked when I went to a 13th century temple in Orissa which is in Northeast India. And up on the wall, there were two guys in front of the king with a giraffe, in Middle Eastern dress giving him a giraffe and this is 13th Century sculpture. A little bit later in the 17th Century, a zebra was presented at the Mughal court and of course everybody thought the stripes have been painted on. They thought this was the weirdest thing they'd ever seen. Well, so I found a few people, so what? This is obviously an odd ball thing or a much later thing. Not true, because if you go and you look at-- speak to numismatist and see the coin hoards, one finds 5th Century Aksumite Ethiopian coins all over-- buried all over South India. That means there was trade between India and Africa at that time. By the 8th Century, India was an important market for slaves in the East Coast of Africa. And the estimates that I've seen range from 4.7 to 11 million people were sold into slavery and then went to Arabia, Persia and South Asia. A lot of people were coming and going. Much of the slave trade was in the hands of Arab merchants and many of these were sent directly to India into a small town which is now a suburb of Bombay. Bombay didn't exist at the time which was an entrepot for slaves, it's called tana [phonetic] and we have a lot of information about the slave trade there. But most of them came by way of Arabia and the Persian Gulf and many of them entered into the areas which are now Pakistan. I said there were all these things about legendary Africans who didn't exist. This is a painting of Alexander the Great-- tales of Alexander the Great, not historical tales but made up tales. In a similar venues script, they have them defeating the zarist army. So I don't think that actually happened. But they're dressed-- they're colored blue and very often in India blue and black are interchangeable and you see gods, you know, who supposedly are dark or black and they're actually painted blue. And this was painted by a sultan in Bengal, which is Northeast India at where the area where Calcutta now exist-- Calcutta did not exist at this time, its much earlier. >> Calcutta now exists-- Calcutta did not exist at this time, this was much earlier. And his father had to post a Habshi Dynasty. So from 1486 to 1493, Bengal of all places which had no Africans was ruled by an African-- series of four African sultans. We have the coins to show this. Many of these Africans were involved in with other Muslims in the military service. And this is a painting I want to show you a little bit because it's a little bit risk getting. But this was the cover of the book, a painting from my collection. And you can see this fellow is clear an African, again, wearing this red hat. And sometimes the hat gets much more refined as you can see in this 1570 painting with the red hat, with the yellow. And in this painting, with the guy in the center in the stripe uniform custom is in fact an African. And he is surrounded by also sorts of other Europeans and so on and so forth. And this is a-- all the people of the world showing their obedience to the Mughal emperor at is enthronement. I also found in the wall paintings, there were Africans and this is a painting with-- you'll see an African and what's interesting is there are even darker people in these paintings who are not Africans. But some of these people are clearly Africans. Anybody interested in African music can tell you that this is not a glockenspiel. This in fact, a clearly African instrument-- this is 17th Century painting. And also to stereotypes about Africans, if you have a patent medicine today, who would give you that strength? Of course an African with a spear and nobody has any, you know, feels it's politically incorrect to show this kind of thing. I said this painting is a little bit risque and here's the whole painting. I'll pass over it quickly because it involves sex and drug taking, those who can show me notes from their mother that they're old enough can see the painting later. A lot of Africans were in stereotype positions. I'm still not talking about the great elites, I'm talking about Africans in the elite but a guy who cleans the White House is not the President of the United States just because he's in the White House and these were not people who necessarily were high of-- extremely high status though many of them did get-- even eunuchs get to high status. Here some more eunuchs in the court scene. What's really shocking is that in a place called Mandu which has wonderful architecture, ruins you've seen, there was actually a whole core of African women in the harem. And you can see which are the Africans by which are shown three-quarter face and are darker from the women who's shown-- whose face is face shown in profile who is a dark skinned Indian. Even in the 19th Century, odd Africans turned out to become queens in bizarre manners. In one case, the very important ruler is reduced in rank by the British from the grandios type of Nawab Nazim of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. Three huge states to the Nawab of Murshidabad a much smaller area and he succeeded by his son, by and had a city and concubine. The last Siddi Maharaja was deposed as a child by the British when he was-- he became a Christian and he was looking for a good Christian wife stopped in Egypt and he married the daughter of Abyssinian slave and a German banker. So here's-- and he brings her back to-- with his friend Queen Victoria, the have-not with Queen Victoria. But these are still odd ball things. Africans had higher positions. There were many Africans who were involved in Islamic-- important Islamic task both in orthodox circles and among the Sufis. Now this is a shrine to an African saint and many of these Sufi shrines have very strange things because you see what looks like a tomb, supposed to be a tomb, and everybody goes and prays here as if his body is there. But there maybe a hundred or 200 shrines all over the country that shows similar things. These are African children who are playing in a shrine in their neighborhood to an African saint, Sufi saint. Now what's interesting to me is that this African saint did not come as a slave. He came as a traitor. He in fact started and cornered the agri trade between the Middle East and Africa on one end and India. And he became-- he and his sister became installed as Sufi saints. And the drummers that you saw and the music you heard were adherence of the Sufi saint. He wasn't the only African who came as a traitor. We know that in the 17th Century, one of the most prominent commercial families was called Al Entabei [phonetic] and came from what is present day Uganda. So if we just look, we find these things. What's even stranger is in the 15th Century, Africans captured an island fort and they did it in a strange way. They pretended to be merchants. Got into boxes and got the boat ship wrecked on the island and of course came out of-- got everybody drunk, came out of the boxes and took over the island. But what's interesting to me here is that nobody thought it was anyway strange that a bunch of Africans are coming along and claiming to be merchants. If this had happened to Savannah, Georgia in the 19th Century, I'd assure you, it would not been seen as normal. So obviously there were opportunities for advancement for Africans in India that there were none in other places. I said they were also involved in-- among the leading Islamic scholars. I was looking at a very famous two-sided painting. Here's the Emperor Shah Jahan, the great Mughal emperor honoring Muslim specialist in Islamic law and I get the sec-- look at the second side of the painting and there centered, nobody had noticed, right in the middle are two Africans. Clearly, I don't think there's any question about it. So how does this happen? If a lot of these-- not all these people came as slaves, but a lot of them came as slaves, how do Africans become part of an elite? And how do they become actual rulers in many places as I'll show you, 'cause it's the only place in the world where Africans-- black Africans ruled over non-Africans. In the Islamic world, there was a phenomenon called elite slavery and were in fact what was so called Slave Dynasty. If one looks at South Asia, once this several things about this. This thing of elite slavery is situation where on a frontier where established authority is weak, where there are foreign elites coming in and taking over and within the elites there are struggles between different Muslim elements. On one side are those people who are so called Westerners who maybe Shias or Sunni depending on where they came from. And those people who were known as Deccanis who were Sunnis, these are local people. And the Africans usually did not-- were not with the foreigners, they were with the local Muslim elites. The Africans themselves were in a curious situation because they weren't like household slaves necessarily, but they were treated as members of the family. They were entrusted with duties as court officials, administrators, and army commanders and see this loyal because they didn't have any outside traditional-- possessed outside traditional authority. Though in some cases, they formed factions and were able to take over power themselves. They were often at the center of factional court disputes and I'm gonna show you some of the examples where they took power themselves. But let me first tell you some of their accomplishments. I showed you this great beautiful stonework. To me the most beautiful stonework I've seen anywhere. This picture does not do the delicacy of this. I have to describe where this is. This mosque is in the middle of what's now a traffic island and across the street is a huge block where it has one house on it, which is now a hotel, which was textile magnets house. So all these things that are going around and around and then this wonderful stone lattice work windows in what looks like a subway kiosk. But when you get close, you see the beauty of these things, it's very impressive. Now if there's a question about who build this so called Sidi Sayyid Mosque? It was built according to the inscription by an Abyssinian tin the service of a governor. Later, he joined the personal retinue of a famous Abyssinian General and the army of the last Sultan of Gujarat and he was a learned man and he died in 1576. Obviously, this was no low class person. >> This was obviously a person who is a member of-- rich member of the elite. So you say there's one such guy. And I mentioned another guy who is a general but there are others. One of the most fabulous experiences I ever had in India was going to another mosque that was built by an African, the Sidi Bashir Mosque. And what the main thing that is left are the minarets, these towers. And this is the only place in the world, and we have a chapter about it in the book how this is possible, and I've had the experience myself where if you shake one minaret the other minaret shakes. It's-- it's an extraordinary experience. In-- a sultan they called Bijapur Africans were very important and they built many important buildings. One of them was a fellow named Malik Sandal and this is part of place that he built in Bijapur. And he built this tomb and mosque for the Sultan which are very famous in India. But I think the most extraordinary thing is the insides of the Jama Masjid in Bijapur. Created by another African who also has own mosque in his own name. But I think this is-- this is just an incredibly beautiful [inaudible]. Africans where heavily involved in the army as could be seen in this picture of an African included. And in this painting from my collection, here they are marching, there are 4 Africans in the lower right hand and there's an African in the center. But in this place which is an extreme Northwest Indian near Pakistan. Africans played a big role in the Sidi, were prime ministers and so on and so forth but this painting doesn't show it and I show it because it's my painting. You find Africans in other armies. In fact in the 19th century, one of the nobles had an army in a place called near Hyderabad and they were all Africans and the ruler liked it so much he took over the whole thing and they became his African bodyguard. Now, I'm gonna show you a picture of an army that doesn't have any African in it. You know why I'm showing you this picture 'cause the king was an African with no Africans in his army. And here are 2 staffs from my collection. You see there's an orange one and there's a similar one in purple from a place called Sachin which is near Serat in current day Gujarat that was ruled by Africans from the late 18th Century to the time of independence. So, when I make-- start to make a list of this thing, here's an incomplete list of what I found. Well, the first one that I came across was a place where the first sultan was eunuch. And some people think he was an African. They couldn't prove it one way or another. Now, when he died he was taken-- his position was taken over by another group from Deli, and other people think that he was-- they were Africans. I did find out of course that the major figure-- holy figure in that thing was on the figure in that thing was in fact a Syrian Jew who would-- converted to Islam. This was in the 14th century. So, people were coming back and forth from as far as Lehpo [phonetic] and Africa even in the 14th Century. Vasco De Gama did not discover India. There were people here before Columbus came. The most extraordinary thing where the Habshi sultan is a Bengal who ruled only for 7 years so there were 4 of them who came as an army and took over Bengal. Then there was Sidi Massoud who was the prime minister and master of the palace of Bishapur and formed a small rump state of his own. And then there were the Nawabs of Janjira and Sachin who ruled for a long time, princely states and played a big role in this book as I'll show you. Even bigger places like the Deccanis Sultanates and I have mentioned 4 of them here from the 14th Century to the 17th century, had strong African presences where the Africans were very often the rulers even though they were not the rulers in name and on and on and on. This is just a partial list. So this is not a one off phenomenon. I mentioned the Habshi or African Sultanates of Bengal. Here's a wonderful gold coin by one of them. And Habshi means African. I'm not gonna bore you with the history of all these places but I want to just quickly go down to mention some of the features of this. In the Bomani Sultanate which was from 1347 on. The-- one of the sultans was assassinated by his African bodyguards. And the next reign there was a general, two provincial governors and the keeper of the seals. Then Africans-- with the next sultanate were heavily involved in the power struggle and we have the names of many of these Africans and on and on and on. And when this dynasty split into several pieces, one of their local governors was an African who almost established a successor state. In this whole area which is in Central India, you'd see [inaudible] in the lower left was split into these sultanates all of which had strong African presences. I'm not gonna give you all the details of these things but I think you get the idea from the list of all these things and there would not be a test on all this. That Africans were involved in the power struggles and were prime ministers and so on and so forth. The most important of which was a fellow name Malik Ambar. Now in the book, we trace Malik Ambar's back to the Kambata region of Ethiopia where he came as a slave. And he went from a slave-- oh, by the way he was a slave of a fellow who was a slave, an African slave, but was also a prime minister. He went from this position to being the most feared enemy of the Mughal Emperors and the Mughal Emperor was obsessed with this guy. Absolutely obsessed with him, called the most sensitive racist names-- the reason he has an owl on his head is because an India owl is a stupid bird rather than a smart bird and this is his dream of killing his great enemy this African, never was able to get him. This African perfected Guerilla Warfare and the demise of the Mughal Empire was by Hindus in particular, who served as his generals. So in today's politics where you see, nationals politics of where-- which were seen in terms of Hindu Muslim issues, Shivaji is seen as the great-- his is a Hindu, leader of these-- the Hindus who perfected this Guerilla Welfare. He served under Bijapur rulers who were an African, Ikhlas Khan, was really in charge of everything. His uncle, his grandfather, his father all served This as a map of the books of the waterworks that he created in the state which are example of the most advance water works in India in his time, the early 17th Century. This is his tomb and this is his son. His son of course took over and that the whole thing was really thing-- Malik Ambar had married his daughter to the sultan. The next sultan's sister may have been the wife of Malik Ambar's son and so on and so forth and everybody is getting killed and the Africans turn out to win in the end. Even though they're on the wrong side, they get pensions and they win. And the next sultan of Bijapur we're left with this fabulous set of paintings of one of the Prime Ministers, Ikhlas Khan. Here he is with the sultan and he is of course the one who really holds the power. You know I like these sultans very much because they were interested in art and I love art. But they didn't do any of the work and none of their painting shows any battles because they didn't fight in any battles. And I made a list here of the other important Africans there, as you can see in the lower left hand corner and its amazing when you start to look at the history of this. In 1580 to 1627, the sultan was this great-- he considers himself the master guru and the master artist. He did these wonderful poetry books about music, and so on and so forth, great Persian influence. Of course I love that he didn't do anything politically and an African party under two-- adversary party under two Africans Dilavar Khan and Ikhlas Khan whose pictures I showed you, really ran the country. Ikhlas Khan continued to run the country under the next sultan and there were a whole set of other viziers or prime ministers who were Africans. They're all named in the book and again, there won't be a test on this. >> One of those African prime ministers developed his own personal state and was later conquered by the Mughals and again, the interest in this comes about in different ways. He was a great patron of paintings of Muslim style paintings and his paintings and painters were taken away to the far off Rajasthan to the desert in Bikaner and the whole school of-- begin their painting in Rajasthan, the painting flows out of those painters and we don't really understand the percentage of them that were-- came from his [inaudible] and the other who came from another Muslim court. I wanted to end up by telling you about two other princely states because these are places that I'm closely connected. One is near Bombay and you see the Africans dressed in their Arabic dress, the Ship, and they were great admirals and great sailors and this is their impregnable island fort. When one comes up to a dhow, it was a whole city in here and which is only in the 20th Century have been deserted. It's now in the archeological survey. It has wonderful mosques. It has wonderful towns and so on and so forth. And then you come up on a dhow with other tourists because-- other Indian tourists because no Western tourists ever go to this place. And you've got to jump out quickly. You can see what its like. There's this little entrance, there's stairs in this entrance and unless you jump out of the boat quickly, you're gonna be jumping into the wall so you've got to jump right into the water. So you've got to picture me, I'm leading a group and I'm not too swift and I got with me an 88-year-old guy with 2 canes and a 78-year-old guy and we're trying to maneuver these people and get them out of the boat before we crash into the wall, but we do. And there are wonderful, you know, carvings all over the walls. This is a map that I've found that the strongest navy in the area had tried to attack this fort over generations, over 30 times. I think it was 36 times or 37 times, never was impregnable. But this is the one thing I like the most. This was the secret escape edge-- entrance, exit from the fort and I felt like Errol Flynn when I found thing. So where did the rulers live as times changed and things became more safe? They built a palace on land 100 years ago, 110 years ago, and this is the palace. [ Pause ] >> And here is one of the Africans. You know, I think this painting is particularly interesting because one of these Africans was married to a non-African-- one of these African kings was married to-- actually the father of this boy was married to a non-African Shiite whose father was the president of the Indian National Congress, a freedom movement and her sister, in other words the queen's sister, married a local man from that area named Faizi Rahimin who's a great painter. Later became the favorite painter and close friend of Mohammad Ali Jinnah and there were a couple of things that are very strange about this whole situation. This Muslim, Faizi Rahimin, was in fact born a Jew. A local indigenous Jew and he came from this place. As a matter of fact, the Africans were ruling over this place and there were more indigenous Jews than there were Africans in this place. I don't think you will find a history like that anywhere else in the world. And here's the present man who would be in Nawab's three sisters today with their families. The woman in the lower right hand corners is a historian, Nawab's niece and she wrote part of the chapters about this. And as you can see, they intermarried with other Muslims. The man in the left is not an African. He's wife is right next to him and she's lighter than him. You know when you're talking about the color and, you know, what this color mean. She's an African and he's not. In the 18th Century, the family had a disputed and they were also emperors of the-- admirals and chief admirals of the Mughal navy and controlled the whole western coast and they formed another state in 1791. Here's one of the rulers of that state and here is a guy who's ruling about 1930, very handsome. And the only thing that we took out of this, I don't-- it's being recorded by-- I could say it anyway. And then we took out was that he is the-- was the father of two famous movie stars by his lovers. Here's his coronation. [ Silence ] >> I think what I've shown you today is that Africans-- black Africans from East Africa did rule over non-Africans in many places in India or hold power in places where they didn't actually hold the title. I hope that this will accomplish two things. Relationships between indigenous Africans and Indians and African have not always been good and I feel that its very important for Africans to see that they were able to accomplished things in India where given opportunities to over other Indians. And I think that we need to put to rest the idea that we should be shocked to hear that Africans had accomplishments. If given the opportunity, Africans can do a lot of different things. I want to thank you and I'd like to just take a few words from the Indian Embassy, from Virander Paul, the minister for culture and press and then open out discussion to questions. Yes? [ Pause ] >> Thank you Dr. Robbins and I would like to thank the organizers in the library to organize this event which the Embassy is very happy to go associate with. I would like to congratulate Ken. He is one of the scholars whom I met soon after I met my level in D.C. about two months ago and it was a great-- a great pleasure meeting him and hearing from him his areas of research. And today you have seen for yourself, you know, how deep his research is and how meaningful conclusions he has drawn out from his work. You know, for us it's very important to be associated with scholars like Dr. Robbins and to encourage and be associated with this research because it opens up new insights and new areas of cooperation. For instance, in this particular work of scholarship-- in that context I would like to say that India's relations with Africa, they are civilizational, there have been historical, very mutually beneficial and substantive civilization linkages and even in present times, the relations with-- India's relations with Africa have been developing very rapidly. I'm not a historian, but sitting through his talk, I think it was extremely incisive and the depth of your research is really impressive. So I congratulate you on your work and I promise I won't stand in the way for a very interesting discussion that we'll we're going to have now. Thank you so much. >> Thank you for coming. [ Applause ] >> Are there any questions or comments in the back? [ Inaudible Remark ] >> I misspoke then-- there was another painting of defeating the czar of Russia's armies and I don't think that ever happened. [ Inaudible Remark ] >> Because I think in many times you see things that are out of, you know, they are legends and they don't have any concept of time. They mix all sorts of people from different centuries together. [ Inaudible Remark ] >> No, because these were new states and, you know, one of the questions that you have in a place like India is that you have areas that are not ruled over-- were not ruled over by the indigenous population, majority of the population and it was not unusual for foreigners to come in and take over. [ Inaudible Remark ] >> Yes? >> -- in Egypt who are slaves and take over power and there are also a group from outside but slaves and people with power gonna [inaudible]. So the concept of having slaves come in and take over power and rule is-- is just a little bit-- >> You know, there is a slave-- there was a slave dynasty among that ruled Delhi at one point. But I think that-- the question these people had to establish genealogies and many times they would established genealogies like for example, one of the dynasties in Bahawalpur which is now Pakistan claims that they descended from the Abbasids of Egypt. In fact, at one point, the guy renamed is capital of Baghdad. Yeah, so there was this constant thing where people were taking over different places. Ma'am? [ Inaudible Remark ] >> No, because I think that they were trying to-- there's a split between what I showed you first which is not elite and never was elite where the African influences continue with and those who acclimated themselves as individuals to an Islamic or Islamicate setting where that would be the lingua franca rather than some sort of African. [ Inaudible Remark ] >> Now you're gonna get me into trouble, reopen a whole thing. There was a whole conference at the Max Planck Institute which I fortunately didn't go where it got down to the whole question about was I in fact overstating this case and not really dealing the fact that there were a number of poor African groups today and those are the majority of people who never had any relationship to these things in power. And they have different backgrounds. Most of them were Muslim or some sort of Sufi in the North. In the South there are-- in Karnataka there are some that are Hindu and Christian. But these are depressed groups basically and they're finding their voices and the question of how they're finding their voices is will they be seen as separate groups or will they become part of Islamic groups, in other words will their ethnic background be less important than the fact that they're Muslim. And so the Sufi shrines are changing and for example in the Sufi shrines in Gujarat, they're becoming much more Islamic, you know, normative Islamic and I'm told I'm not sure that the local Africans have not-- no longer really have control of that-- one of those shrines. [ Inaudible Remark ] >> I think it's a very good point but because an Ethiopian researcher at the Max Planck Institute actually went to Hyderabad where the population mainly, there were Africans there for hundreds and hundreds of years but there was a new influx in the 19th Century and he was able to find Somali clan names. So he was able to take that a step further that I couldn't. Sir? [ Inaudible Remark ] >> Yeah. [ Inaudible Remarks ] >> Yeah I-- but they're dealing with these, they're not dealing with historical facts. They're dealing with stories from the [inaudible] stories of Alexander the Great or story of Hamza the eighth prophet's uncle. Not actual factual once and that distinction is made. But I think you were right. I think that that is the basis of it. Sir? [ Inaudible Remark ] >> Anyway they didn't-- they didn't send a ship back to bring people from Ethiopia to join them and colonize the area. I think that's absolutely true. [ Inaudible Remark ] >> No. I think that their identity was always in-- I was just came from Lucknow, and in Lucknow there's these so called depressed classes with most people in America call the Untouchables have a new heroine who was a dead shot in-- in this mutiny in 1857, 1858. And the leading researcher on Lucknow has turned up the fact that she was in fact an African. She was not another untouchable at all, and she was-- her identity was taken away for her and has located a whole series of Africans who came in the 18th and 19th century to that court. And she found the remnants of these people still separated out but now are living in very depressed conditions 'cause that court life disappeared 150 years ago. But I don't think there was any attempt ever by Africans to create-- colonize in Janjira which ruled over a hundred thousand people. The African population was never more than 200, 250, and they were intermarrying with other Muslims. They just were a small elite. Sir? [ Inaudible Remark ] >> Thank you very much. [ Applause ] >> You're welcome, thank you Dr. Robbins for a very insightful and very informative lecturer on Africans and India. Thanks again. >> Thank you. >> And at this point in time, I would like for those of you who want to sign-- get a book signed, there are books in the back for you to purchase and Dr. Robbins will be glad to sign the books for you. >> Thank you all for coming. [ Inaudible Discussion ] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov. [ Silence ]