Who are the gypsies and where did they come from? Life, history and photo. A.V

Gypsies can now be found in all corners of the planet, except perhaps Antarctica. Only in Europe their number is 12 million people. I suggest you find out 11 national habits and characteristics of the gypsies, some of which will surprise you very much.

"Gypsies" is a collective term, the same as "Slavs", "Caucasians", "Scandinavians" or "Hispanics". Gypsies include several dozen nationalities. In many regions of Russia, you can still find gypsy camps, they smell of Pushkin's Bessarabia, their language is a rough verbal lump, and their clothes are an endless holiday.

A 14-year-old girl for gypsies is already a potential bride. At weddings and other celebrations where you can dance, all girls who are over 14 years old will dance until the very end of the celebration, because they know that the fathers of their sons are currently watching and judging them. An unmarried gypsy 19 years old is already an old maid.

The bride on the wedding day is redeemed in gold in kilograms or "in jars". The bride's father or brothers, if there is no father, set the price themselves, for example, two three-liter jars filled with gold rings, chains, etc.

On the day of the wedding, the gypsies have one exciting moment for everyone, when the older women of the family take the bride to the bedroom and check whether she is a virgin or not. Actually, the deprivation of virginity in the same place, behind closed doors, takes place - without any participation of the groom. Afterwards, guests are shown a snow-white sheet or a shirt with a blood stain on a beautiful large tray.

For example, it is unlikely that there will be a wedding between Kotlyars and Russian Gypsies, since this is tantamount to a wedding with a non-Gypsy. The Roma of one state see the Roma of another state as a special people and never keep in touch. Russian gypsies are mostly Orthodox, Crimean and Palestinian - Muslims, Croatian - Catholics.

A gypsy family must have at least one son. If the heir is not born in any way, then they no longer risk and take the boy from the orphanage. At the same time, a child can be anyone: Bashkir, Russian, red, freckled, fair-haired, blue-eyed. This was partly the reason for the myth that gypsies steal children.

A child is sent to school most often so that he learns to read, write and count, since from the age of six to eight children are taught to adulthood - they begin to help their parents in trade. Therefore, if a gypsy child after the third grade still goes to school for lessons, and does not help his parents in the market, it means that he is wasting time instead of learning the family business.

If a gypsy has a two-story house, no woman can go up to the second floor if the man is on the first. This law is still observed today.

Women still wear two skirts and an apron. It is believed that below the waist a woman is "dirty" and "unclean". The touch of her skirt can "desecrate" not only any object, but also a person. Therefore, the underskirt is considered unclean, as it touches the woman, the second is also considered unclean, since the underskirt is still a little dirty. Only the apron is considered clean. You can touch it, lean dishes, wipe your hands on it.

They have an internal court

In the event of a dispute, respected gypsies come to listen to the arguments of the parties for and against. For gypsies, this is an important moment in the settlement of relations, and it is not subject to publicity. Punishments can be very different. One of the most serious - "gave 24". The guilty gypsy is forced to leave the community and given 24 hours to do so.

Each of you, more than once in your life had to meet with these people. In my childhood, post-war years, I happened to live for some time in the same village with the Gypsies. Those who lived with us did not cause any rejection or disgust in me. On the contrary, I learned a lot from the old people. I remember how I couldn’t manage to tame a young stallion in the herd, and what I didn’t do, and my grandfather, Gypsy, instantly took him, put on a bridle and brought the stallion to me. And not only the Gypsies taught me how to handle horses, but I guess I was just lucky in life. There were other meetings, but I don’t even want to remember them.
Gyga;ne (Roma) - one of the largest ethnic minorities in Europe, a layer of the ethnic population of common Indian origin. A common self-name is Roma, Roma, although other ethnonyms are also used: Sinti, Manush (“people”), Kale. As a generalized name at the human level for all European gypsies, the designation Roma (English Roms, Romanies) is used.
The origin of the name "Gypsies", as an exonym (that is, from the side of the surrounding population), is conditionally raised to the 11th century, approximately in 1100 AD, George Athos describes the events that took place in 1054. It was from this description that the opinion about the Egyptian origin of the Gypsies appeared. This is how it always turns out, someone put up a beautiful story, and everyone liked it, but in reality, it turned out that everything was completely wrong.
The British traditionally called the Gypsies Gypsies (from Egyptians - "Egyptians"), the Spaniards - Gitanos (also from Egiptanos - "Egyptians"), the French - Boh;miens ("Bohemians", "Czechs"), Gitans (distorted Spanish Gitanos) or Tsiganes (borrowing from Greek - ;;;;;;;;;, scurvy; ni), Germans - Zigeuner, Italians - Zingari, Dutch - Zigeuners, Hungarians - Cig; ny or F; ra; kn; pe ("Pharaoh's tribe ”), Finns - mustalaiset (“black”), Kazakhs - sy; Andar, Lezgins - karachiyar (“hypocrites, pretenders”); Basques - Ijitoak; Albanians - Jevgjit ("Egyptians"); Jews - ;;;;;; (tso'ani;m), from the name of the biblical province of Tsoan in Ancient Egypt; Persians - ;;;; (if;); Lithuanians - ;igonai; Bulgarians - Tsigani; Estonians - "mustlased" (from "Must" - black). At present, ethnonyms from the self-name of a part of the gypsies, “Roma;” are becoming more and more widespread in various languages.
Thus, in the "external" by origin names of the gypsy population, three prevail:
reflecting the early idea of ​​them as coming from Egypt;
distorted versions of the Byzantine nickname "atsinganos" (meaning "fortunetellers, magicians");
designations of "blackness" as a distinctive feature of appearance, made in different languages ​​(which is typical, one of the self-names of gypsies is also translated as "black")
According to various estimates, the number of European gypsies ranges from 8 million to 10-12 million people.
In the former USSR, there were officially 175.3 thousand people (1970 census).
In Russia, according to the 2010 census, there are about 220,000 Roma.
The most common self-name of the gypsies, which they carried out from India, is “rum” or “roma” among the European gypsies, “house” among the gypsies of the Middle East and Asia Minor. All these names go back to the Indo-Aryan "d'om" with the first cerebral sound. Cerebral sound, relatively speaking, is a cross between the sounds "p", "d" and "l". According to linguistic studies, the Roma of Europe and the Dom and Lom of Asia and the Caucasus were the three main "flows" of migrants from India. Under the name d'om, low-caste groups appear in various areas of modern India today. Despite the fact that the modern houses of India are difficult to directly correlate with the gypsies, their name has a direct bearing on them. The difficulty is to understand what was the connection in the past between the ancestors of the Gypsies and the Indian houses. The results of linguistic studies conducted back in the 20s of the 20th century, and which are shared by modern scientists, show that the ancestors of the gypsies lived in the central regions of India and several centuries before the exodus (approximately in the 3rd century BC) migrated to Northern Punjab.
In the Indo-Aryan sources of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, which until now have not been considered as relevant to the genesis of the so-called "protoromes" in India, there are many connecting questions. A number of data indicate the settlement in the central and northwestern regions of India of a population with the self-name d'om / d'omba starting from the 5th-4th centuries BC. e. These populations were originally tribal groups of common origin, possibly related to Austroasiatics. Later, with the gradual development of the caste system, d'om / d'omba occupied the lower levels in the social hierarchy and began to be recognized as caste groups. At the same time, the integration of houses into the caste system took place primarily in the central parts of India, while the northwestern regions remained a “tribal” zone for a very long time. This tribal character of the areas of origin was maintained by constant contact with the Iranian nomadic tribes, whose resettlement in the period before the migration of the ancestors of the Gypsies from India assumed a massive character. These circumstances determined the nature of the culture of the peoples of the Indus Valley zone (including the ancestors of the Gypsies), a culture that for centuries retained its nomadic and semi-nomadic type. Also, the very ecology of Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat, arid and infertile soils near the Indus River contributed to the development of a semi-pastoral, semi-commercial mobile business model for a number of groups of the local population. Some authors believe that during the period of the exodus, the ancestors of the Gypsies were a socially structured ethnic population of common origin (rather than a series of separate castes), engaged in trading transportation and trade in transport animals, and also, if necessary, as auxiliary occupations - a number of crafts and other services, which were part of everyday skills. The authors explain the cultural and anthropological difference between the Gypsies and the modern houses of India (having more pronounced non-Aryan features than the Gypsies) by the indicated strong Aryan influence (in particular, in its Iranian modification), characteristic of the northwestern regions of India, where the ancestors of the Gypsies lived before the exodus. . This interpretation of the ethno-social origin of the Indian ancestors of the Gypsies is supported by a number of foreign and Russian researchers.

Krymsky gypsies; not, also Krys; we, Tatars; rsky gypsies; not, Tatars, Ayuji (gypsy. Kyrymitika Roma, Crimean Sea) - a gypsy sub-ethnic group that is part of the "large" Roma group. Formed in the Crimean Khanate. Nowadays, he lives in many countries of the former USSR, including Russia. They speak their own dialect of the Romani language, with lexical borrowings from the Crimean Tatar and Russian languages.

In 1944, the Crimean Gypsies, as well as the Crimean Tatars, were deported to Central Asia, which was due to the fact that most of the Crimeas in Soviet passports were recorded as Tatars. However, already in 1948-1949 they began to appear again in the Crimea. Currently, most of the Crimeans live outside the Crimea - in the Krasnodar Territory of the Russian Federation. The traditional occupation is petty trade, performing music, various kinds of handicrafts, jewelry, blacksmithing, fortune-telling, begging (still practiced. Gypsy orchestras traditionally served Tatar weddings. Nowadays, music and dances of Russian gypsies or modern ones) are also the most a common occupation of the Crimean gypsies.
Sometimes the Crimean gypsies are also confused with the Crimean Gurbets (a separate gypsy Turkish-speaking subethnos, they are recorded as Crimean Tatars in the census).

European geneticists analyzed the gypsy genome and found that this people originated in northwestern India about 1.5 thousand years ago and entered Europe 900 years ago, according to an article published in the journal Current Biology.
"From the point of view of genetics, all gypsies are related to each other by two things - they come from northwestern India and their ancestors intermarried with representatives of other peoples during migrations across Europe.
Over 10 million people who identify themselves as Roma live in the European Union. Most of them live in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, including Romania and Hungary. The ancestors of the Gypsies did not leave any monuments of written history behind them, which is why their historical homeland and the history of migrations remain unknown.
Scientists formed a group of 206 gypsy volunteers living in different countries of Western and Eastern Europe, collected DNA samples and deciphered their genomes.
Then the geneticists compared the genomes of the volunteers with each other and with the virtual DNA of five thousand gypsies and other peoples living outside Europe. This allowed them to identify about 800,000 single-nucleotide polymorphisms - differences in one "letter"-nucleotide, which were later used as a "roulette wheel" to assess the genetic distance between peoples.
According to the calculations of geneticists, the most likely homeland of the gypsies are the territories of the modern states of Gujarat, Rajasthan and Kashmir in northwestern India. It is here that several isolated peoples live, such as the Meghawals in Gujarat and the Pandits in Kashmir, whose genome is most similar to the gypsy DNA. the version about the Egyptian origin of this people is clearly erroneous.
According to scientists, shortly before entering Europe and some time after this event, the gypsies experienced two sharp population declines. This is evidenced by a fairly small number of differences between the genomes of different representatives of this people.
Comparing the differences in the structure of the genomes of European and non-European gypsies, scientists found that the first representatives of this people reached the borders of Europe about 900 years ago. As geneticists suggest, the gypsies first penetrated the Balkans, and only then spread throughout Western Europe.

Back in the early 70s, I read in the journal "Priroda" a large article about gypsies was published. And it was written there that the gypsies were one of the castes in India. For unacceptable behavior, they were expelled from India, which was the reason for their migration towards Europe. And at first they appeared in Spain, where they were met quite friendly, but quickly spoiled their attitude towards themselves with theft and deceit. The gypsies did not leave written sources about themselves, but their adventures are recorded in European sources. Perhaps the gentlemen of genetics only confirmed what has long been known. The article in the magazine was quite large.
The above remark adds to the delusion of Hitler's Nazism: * Hitler was 1/2 - 1/3 Jewish and hated Jews. * A fan of the "Aryan race", but the Aryans are exclusively Indo-Iranians and a little Slavs, who genetically have nothing to do with the Germans. Actually haplogroup Y-DNA of the German-Scandinavian peoples I is closest to the Semitic haplogroup J. * It turns out that Hitler - He hated the gypsies and loved the Indians, and this is one and the same people.
Before geneticists, their origin was not clear. For example, in European they are called Gipsy, from the word "Egypt", because they believed that they were the descendants of the ancient Egyptians - magicians, akin to the Jews who came from ancient Egypt.
Another study of the last 10 years - linguistic, also proved that the language of the gypsies appeared about 1.5 thousand years ago in India. It was believed that these were the Dravidians - the indigenous pre-Aryan population of India, whom the Aryans, having captured India, made a lower caste. But if they come from the northwest of India, then they are Aryans, and not Dravidians? ...
The ancestors of the gypsies did not leave behind any monuments of written history, which is why their historical homeland and the history of migrations remain a mystery. "And in people's memory of them there is only the negative of tramps, thieves, murderers, deceivers.

E; niches (German Jenische, also self-name), "nomadic", "white gypsies" - an ethnographic and social group of heterogeneous origin, living in Central and Western Europe, mainly in the area around the Rhine (Germany, Switzerland, Austria, France, Belgium). Historically, the Yenishi arose in the early 18th century as descendants of marginalized population groups (mostly German-speaking), although a number of researchers suggest that the Yenishi may be descended from a Germanic Celtic-speaking population. Only a small part of the Yenishes switched to a nomadic way of life.
Yenish speak a special Yenish slang, grammatically close to the Swiss dialects of German.
Apart from Switzerland, the Yenish are not recognized in any of the countries of Europe as a national minority.
During the Second World War, the Nazis persecuted the Yenish along with the Gypsies who were close to them in terms of their way of life. In modern Switzerland, the Yenishi are regarded by the authorities as one of the Gypsy groups. The Swiss Yenish actively interact with the Sinti Gypsies, while in other European countries the Yenish actively separate themselves from the Gypsies.

(Moldavian principality). Slavery in Romania, at that time a vassal of the Ottoman Empire, was legally banned only in February 1856, but in fact it disappeared only in the mid-1860s. At the same time, along with the slaves in the Romanian lands, there were Romanian serfs (known as tsarany, vechiny, serfs); and in Transylvania - "Romanians", Yobags, etc.) The basis of the local master class (boyars) was ethnic Romanians (in Wallachia and Moldavia), in Transylvania - ethnic Hungarians.
Story
Despite all the difficulties of statistical accounting, as well as socio-political contradictions in the country, Romania is the largest and most famous region of the gypsy culture in the world. This circumstance is not accidental. Gypsies settled in medieval Romanian lands in unusually large numbers. They were undoubtedly attracted here by the great tolerance of the Romanesque population, which has been preserved here since antiquity. Indeed, compared with the Vlachs, who were also partially engaged in nomadic pastoralism, the later peoples who settled in the Balkans were much less tolerant of the nomadic lifestyle of the gypsies, their language and culture. Romanian gypsies currently number at least two million people. The first gypsies entered the Romanian lands in the 12th century from the south. Starting from the 13th century, the gypsies found themselves in the position of slaves of the local Romanian and Hungarian boyars. It was then that their gradual enslavement by the local Slavic-Roman elite began in a very peculiar form, reminiscent of slavery in Brazil. The first written mention of Romani slaves in Romania appeared on October 3, 1385. At various times, put forward also hypotheses that the Mongols or the Turks, who brought them from Asia, supplied the Gypsies to Romania. After turning Romania into a vassal of the Ottoman Empire, the country became part of the Mediterranean slave trade with the Maghreb countries.
Gypsy estates
In Romania, the following professional classes of gypsies were formed:
kalderashi (literally. "copper craftsman"),
lautars ("musicians"),
boyashi or lingurars ("spoonmen")
ursars ("bears"),
fierars ("blacksmiths"), as well as "horses".
From the very beginning of the history of slavery in Romania, many slaves, as in Roman Dacia, worked in the salt and ore mines. Gypsy women who belonged to the boyars were servants, often concubines. Official marriages between Romanians and Gypsies were not encouraged, however, illegitimate children from such unions filled the streets of Romanian cities, exacerbating the problem of child homelessness, which continues to this day. This problem was acute in Brazil and other Latin American countries, which for a long time cultivated the institution of place.
After the abolition of slavery in the Danube Principalities, at least 250 thousand gypsies, or about 10% of the population of Wallachia, received freedom. In Russian Bessarabia in 1858, the census also counted 11,074 gypsy slaves. The release of the Roma did not improve their economic situation. As in Brazil, freed slaves did not receive land, which means they were forced to join the ranks of the urban poor or modify the scope of their activities. For example, fierars combined shoeing with horse stealing.

Roma, Gypsies, Roma are a traditionally itinerant people originally from North India, spread throughout the world, mainly in Europe.

Language and origin

Most Romani speak a form of Romani, closely related to the modern Indo-European languages ​​of North India, and also the main language of the country in which they live. It is generally accepted that Romani groups left India many times, and by the 11th century they were already in Persia, at the beginning of the 14th century. - in South-Eastern Europe, and in the XV century. reached Western Europe. By the second half of the twentieth century. they spread over all inhabited continents.

Persons of the Roma nationality refer to themselves by the common name "Roma" (which means "man" or "husband"), and all non-Roma by the term "gadzho" or "gadzho" (a word with a derogatory connotation that means "hillbilly" or "barbarian" ). Many Roma consider the name "Gypsies" offensive.

Demography

Due to their nomadic lifestyle, lack of official census data, and their mixing with other nomadic groups, estimates of the total global number of Roma are in the range of two to five million people. No reliable statistics can be obtained from sporadic reporting across countries. The majority of Roma still live in Europe, especially in the Slavic-speaking states of Central Europe and the Balkans. Many of them live in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Hungary, the countries of the former Yugoslavia and neighboring Bulgaria and Romania.

Eternal migrants

The stereotype of nomadic gypsies is often at odds with the fact that fewer and fewer of them are truly constantly migrating. However, their travel is limited. All nomadic Roma migrate along established routes that ignore national borders. They also follow a chain of kinship or tribal ties.

Roma predisposition to forced expulsions or deportations. 80 years after their first appearance in Western Europe in the 15th century, they were expelled from almost all countries of Western Europe. Despite the fact that Roma nationality became the cause of systematic persecution and exportation abroad, however, gypsies continued to appear in one form or another in the countries they left.

Objects of persecution

All non-settled groups living among settled peoples seem to be becoming comfortable. The same is the case with the Roma, who were regularly accused by the local population of many atrocities, which was a prelude to further official and legal persecution. Their relationship with host country authorities was marked by consistent controversy. Official decrees were often directed at their assimilation or coercion, but the local authorities systematically denied them the right to set up their camp.

During the Holocaust, the only fault of the Roma was their Roma, which led to the murder of 400,000 Roma by the Nazis.

French laws in our time forbid them to camp and made them the object of police surveillance, taxed them and conscripted them into military service, like ordinary citizens.

Spain and Wales are two countries that are often cited as examples of states where the Gypsies have become settled, if not fully assimilated.

In recent times, the countries of the socialist camp in Eastern Europe have tried to implement forced settlement programs designed to end their nomadic lifestyle.

Gypsy professions

Traditionally, the Roma were engaged in jobs that allowed them to maintain a nomadic lifestyle, on the periphery of a sedentary society. The men were cattle dealers, animal trainers and entertainers, tinkers, blacksmiths, kitchen utensils menders, and musicians; women told fortunes, sold potions, begged and entertained the public.

Before the advent of veterinary medicine, many farmers sought out gypsies for advice on animal husbandry and herd health.

The modern life of the Roma reflects the "progress" of the Gajo world. Journeys are now made in caravans of cars, trucks and trailers, and the livestock trade has been replaced by the sale of used cars and trailers. Although the mass production of kitchen utensils has put tinkers out of work, some urban gypsies have become auto mechanics and repair car bodies. If some Roma people still lead a nomadic lifestyle, then many have settled down, practicing their skills or working as laborers. Traveling circuses and amusement parks also provide jobs for modern gypsies as trainers, stall holders and fortune tellers.

Family

The classic Roma family consists of a married couple, their unmarried children and at least one married son, his wife and their children. After marriage, the young couple usually lives with the husband's parents until the young wife gets to know the way of life of her husband's family. Ideally, by the time the eldest son is ready to leave with his family, the youngest son will marry and bring his new wife into the family. Previously, marriages were traditionally organized by family or group elders to strengthen political and kinship ties with other families, groups, or, occasionally, confederations, although this practice was greatly reduced in the late twentieth century. The main feature of the Roma marriage unions was the payment of kalym to the parents of the bride by the parents of the groom.

ethnic groups

Distinctive features of a Roma representative are territorial differences, reinforced by certain cultural and dialectal features. There are three main branches, or nations, of the gypsies:

• Kalderars are tinkers who came from the Balkans and then from Central Europe, being the most numerous.
• Iberian gypsies, or zhitanos, are a Romani nationality whose representatives live mainly in the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa and southern France. Strong in the art of entertainment.
• Manouche (from the French manouche), also known as Sinti, is a Romani ethnicity whose representatives live mainly in Alsace and other regions of France and Germany. There are many traveling showmen and circus performers among them.

Each Roma nationality is divided into two or more sub-groups, distinguished by professional specialization or territorial origin.

Political organization

Not a single body, congress was ever officially created, and not a single “king” accepted by all Roma was elected, although “international” Roma congresses were held in Munich, Moscow, Bucharest, Sofia (in 1906) and in the Polish city of Ruvne (in 1936). Nevertheless, the existence of political authorities among the Roma is an established fact. Those who received noble titles such as "duke" or "count" in their early historical dealings with the local population were probably nothing more than chieftains of groups that moved in numbers from 10 to several hundred households. These leaders (voivods) were elected for life from among prominent families. Their strength and power varied depending on the size of the association, traditions and relationships with other entities within the confederation.

The voivode was the treasurer for the whole group, determined the route of its migration and participated in negotiations with the local municipal authorities. He led through a council of elders who also consulted with the senior woman of the association. The influence of the latter was strong, especially with regard to the fate of women and children, and was based on the apparent ability to earn and organize women within the group.

social control

The strongest institution of the Roma people was the "kris" - the norms of customary law and justice, as well as the ritual and tribunal of the group. The basis of the Gypsy code was all-encompassing fidelity, coherence and reciprocity within a recognized political unit. The highest penalty of the tribunal, which dealt with all disputes and violations of the code, was excommunication from the group. The sentence of ostracism could exclude a person from participation in certain activities and punish him by performing unskilled work. In some cases, the elders granted rehabilitation followed by a feast of reconciliation.

social organization

Roma groups consist of vicas, i.e., associations of extended families with a common origin on both paternal and maternal lines, numbering at least 200 people. A large vice may have its own boss and council. You can apply for participation in vice as a result of marriage with a member of the genus. Loyalty and economic cooperation is expected at the household level, not at the vice level. The Romani language does not have a common term for household. A person can probably count on the support of a circle of significant relatives with whom he is physically close and not in a quarrel.

Spiritual Beliefs

Gypsies do not have an official faith, and in the past they tended to despise organized religion. Today, Roma often convert to the dominant religion of the country in which they live and describe themselves as "many stars scattered in the eyes of God". Some groups are Catholics, Muslims, Pentecostals, Protestants, Anglicans and Baptists.

Gypsies follow a complex set of rules that govern things like neatness, cleanliness, respect, honor, and fairness. These rules are called "romano". Romano means to behave with dignity and respect like a Roma person. "Romanipe" is the gypsy name for their worldview.

Tradition keepers

The Roma were the disseminators of folk beliefs and practices in the areas where they settled (for example, Romania), preserving national customs, dances and the like, which had largely disappeared from rural life at the turn of the 21st century. Their musical heritage is vast and includes, for example, flamenco. Although the Gypsies have a rich oral tradition, their written literature is relatively poor.

At the beginning of the 21st century, the Roma continue to struggle with contradictions in their culture. Although they are less likely to have to defend themselves against persecution by a hostile society, some distrust and intolerance still remain. Perhaps an even greater problem they faced was the erosion of their way of life under the influence of the city in industrialized societies. The themes of familial and ethnic loyalty, typical of Roma music, helped to preserve certain notions of what Roma nationality is, but some of the younger and more talented exponents of this music, under the influence of material rewards, moved away into the outside world. Individual housing, economic independence, and intermarriage with non-Romans became more common.

Gypsies, one of the most mysterious nations living in Russia. Someone is afraid of them, someone admires their cheerful songs and perky dances. As for the origin of this people, there are a variety of versions on this score.

Version one: Indian

The most amazing thing is that the gypsies are one of the few peoples in the world who do not officially have their own country. In 2000, they were legally recognized as a non-territorial nation. For the past one and a half millennia, they roam around the world. The most paradoxical thing is that it is still not known exactly how many representatives of this ethnic group live on the planet. As a rule, the figure of 11 million is given, but it is often questioned. There is a legend according to which the gypsies arose on Earth in a magical way. That is why they seem to have an innate ability to divination and divination. Modern scientists, of course, cannot be satisfied with such a theory. According to them, the gypsies originated in India, from where they emigrated to Asia Minor in the 5th century. It is assumed that the reason that prompted them to leave this country was the spread of Islam. As a freedom-loving nation, the gypsies categorically did not want to fall under the pressure of any religious dogmas.

Version two: philistine

Unfortunately, leaving India, the gypsies did not find a new homeland in European countries. From the 14th to the 19th centuries, they were openly feared and not loved. Their way of life, very different from the European one, caused a sharp rejection. A number of discriminatory laws against Roma have appeared in European countries, including a ban on their residence in a particular state. A lot of philistine fables were also born, many of which told about the origin of the gypsies. Since this people did not have written sources describing its history, guesses about its arrival in Europe were one more incredible than the other. European townspeople assured each other that the gypsies were the remnants of the people of Atlantis, the ancient Egyptians or German Jews. It is noteworthy that the Egyptian version had indirect confirmation. The fact is that on the way from India, the gypsies really visited Egypt. According to some reports, their ability for magic and astrology was inherited by them from the Egyptian priests. This hypothesis turned out to be so popular that in Hungary the gypsies began to be called nothing more than “Pharaonic people”, and in England - Egyptians. The most interesting thing is that the gypsies not only did not refute such fictions, but also supported them. Encountering a negative attitude towards themselves in the countries of Europe, they covered themselves with a mystical fog as a defense.

Version three: Athos

Today, scientists, based on the similarity of the language of the gypsies and a number of nationalities of India, quite accurately established the place of their origin. Nevertheless, a number of ancient authors called Asia the birthplace of this people. The famous scholar Henri de Spond claimed that the Gypsies descended from the medieval Atsingan sect. This theory arose from the first written record of the appearance of gypsies in Europe, dated 1100. Its authorship is attributed to George Mtatsmindeli, a monk of the Athos monastery. He connected the Gypsies with the Atsingan sect. Byzantine sources adhered to the same version, considering the Atsingans to be the remnants of the Manichaean sect, which disappeared in the 8th century. It is important to note that the Atsingans not only looked like gypsies, they also actively practiced magical rites.

Version four: Asian

The ancient historians Strabo and Herodotus connected the appearance of the Gypsies with the Near East Asian tribe of the Siggins. Indeed, linguists, studying the language of the gypsies, established the route of their settlement around the world. From India, the Gypsy tribes moved to the territory of Western Asia, mainly to Iran, Afghanistan and Armenia. Their next stopping point was Byzantium, from which the gypsies spread across the Balkan Peninsula. In the 15th century they came to Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. A century later, Gypsy tribes could be found throughout Central, Western and Northern Europe. At the same time, it should be noted that the Gypsy tribes settled around the world are heterogeneous in composition. For one and a half millennia of wandering around the planet, they have absorbed such a huge number of representatives of other peoples that they have largely lost their historical national identity.

For centuries, the origin of the Gypsies has been shrouded in mystery. Appearing here and there, the camps of these swarthy nomads with unusual customs aroused the curiosity of the settled population. Trying to unravel this phenomenon and penetrate the mystery of the origin of the gypsies, many authors have built a variety of and incredible hypotheses. In the 19th century, when a well-founded answer was found thanks to scientific research, the most fantastic stories were still being born.

This heap of frank prejudices and dubious hypotheses was destroyed with the beginning of serious studies of the gypsy language. Scientists had some ideas about it already in the Renaissance, but at that time they did not associate it with any group of languages ​​and did not establish its place of origin. Only at the end of the XVIII century. on the basis of scientific data, it was possible to establish the origin of the gypsies.

Since then, prominent linguists have confirmed the conclusions of these first research scientists: in terms of grammar and vocabulary, the Romani language is close to Sanskrit and such modern languages ​​as Kashmiri, Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi and Nepali.

And if modern scientists no longer have any doubts that the gypsies come from, then many questions related to ethnography, sociology and the history of the first migrations of the gypsies are still waiting for an answer.

Linguistics plays a leading role in establishing the origin of the Gypsies, but scientific disciplines such as anthropology, medicine and ethnography can also make a contribution.

Written evidence of an era that could be called the "prehistoric period of the gypsies" is very scarce. The ancient Indian writers focused on gods and kings rather than the people known as aott, jat, lyuli, nuri, or dom.

However, already from the time of the first migrations to the West, we have somewhat more accurate data on the Gypsies, contained primarily in two texts in which history and legend merged. Written in the middle of the X century. Hamza from Isfahan tells of the arrival in Persia of 12,000 Yaott musicians; Fifty years later, the great chronicler and poet Firdousi, the author of Shahnameh, mentions the same fact.

This reference most likely belongs to the realm of legends, but it testifies that there were many gypsies in Persia who arrived from India, they were known as good musicians, did not want to engage in agriculture, were prone to vagrancy and did not miss the opportunity to grab what lies badly.

These ancient texts are the only source of data on gypsy migrations in Asia. To learn more about this, you need to turn to language factors.

In Persia, the Gypsy language was enriched with a number of words that were subsequently found in all its European dialects. Then, according to the English linguist John Sampson, they split into two branches. Some of the Gypsies continued their journey to the west and southeast, others moved in a northwesterly direction. These Gypsies visited Armenia (where they borrowed a number of words carried by their descendants all the way to Wales, but completely unfamiliar to representatives of the first branch), then penetrated further into the Caucasus, borrowing words from the Ossetian vocabulary there.

Ultimately, the gypsies end up in Europe and the world. From that moment on, they are mentioned in written sources more and more often, especially in the notes of Western travelers who made pilgrimages to holy places in Palestine.

In 1322, two Franciscan monks, Simon Simeonis and Hugo the Enlightened, noticed in Crete people who looked like the descendants of Ham; they adhered to the rites of the Greek Orthodox Church, but lived, like the Arabs, under low black tents or in caves. They were called "atkinganos" or "atsinganos" after the name of the sect of musicians and fortune tellers.

But most often Western travelers met with gypsies in Modon - the fortified and largest port city on the western coast of the Morea, the main transit point on the way from Venice to Jaffa. "Black as Ethiopians", they were mainly engaged in blacksmithing and, as a rule, lived in huts. This place was called "Little Egypt", perhaps because here in the middle of the withered lands lay a fertile region, like the valley of the Nile; that is why the European gypsies were called "Egyptians", and their leaders often called themselves dukes or counts of Lesser Egypt.

Greece enriched the gypsy vocabulary with new words, but most importantly, it gave them the opportunity to get acquainted with the way of life of other peoples, since it was in Greece that they encountered pilgrims from all countries of the Christian world. The gypsies realized that the pilgrims enjoyed the status of privileged wanderers, and, moving back on the road, they already pretended to be pilgrims.

After a long stay in Greece and neighboring states such as the Romanian principalities and Serbia, many Roma moved further west. The position of the Gypsies in the territories that repeatedly passed from the Byzantines to the Turks was not easy. About this, trying to inspire confidence in themselves, they told the spiritual and secular rulers of those places where their fate led; the gypsies said that, having left Egypt, they were first pagans, but then they were converted to Christianity, then they returned to idolatry again, but under pressure from the monarchs they converted to Christianity for the second time: they claimed that they were forced to make a long pilgrimage around the world.

In 1418, large groups of gypsies crossed Hungary and Germany, where Emperor Sigismund agreed to give them safe conduct. They appeared in Westphalia, in the Hanseatic cities and in the Baltic, and from there they moved to Switzerland.

In 1419, the gypsies crossed the borders of the territory of modern France. It is known that on August 22 they presented documents signed by Emperor Sigismund and the Duke of Savoy in the city of Châtillon-en-Dombes, 2 days later in Macon, and on October 1 in Sisteron. Three years later, other groups of gypsies appeared in the southern regions, arousing curiosity among the inhabitants of Arras. There, as in Macon, they were told that they were on royal lands, where the emperor's safe-conduct was invalid.

It was then that the gypsies realized that in order to move freely in the Christian world, they needed to have a universal safe-conduct issued by the pope. In July 1422, Duke Andrew, at the head of a large camp, passed Bologna and Forli, announcing that he was on his way to meet the pope. However, neither in the Roman chronicles nor in the archives of the Vatican is there any mention of this visit by the Gypsies to the capital of Christendom.

Nevertheless, on the way back, the gypsies talked about how they were received by the pope, and showed letters signed by Martin V. Whether these letters were genuine is unknown, but one way or another they made it possible for gypsy camps to roam freely for more than a hundred years where they will be pleased.

In August 1427, the Gypsies first appeared at the gates of Paris, which at that time was in the hands of the British. Their camp, spread out at the Chapelle-Saint-Denis, attracted crowds of curious people for three weeks. It was not without curiosities: they said that while dexterous fortune-tellers read the line of life from the palm of their hands, their wallets disappeared. The bishop of Paris, during a sermon, condemned the gullible and superstitious flock in connection with this, so the "Egyptians" had no choice but to roll up their tents and go to Pontoise.

Bypassing France far and wide, separate groups of gypsies soon penetrated into Aragon and Catalonia under the pretext of a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. They passed through all of Castile and arrived in Andalusia, where the former chancellor of Castile, Count Miguel Lucas de Iranso, gave a warm welcome to the gypsy counts and dukes in his Jaena.

A number of authors, despite the absence of any data, argue that the gypsies, having sailed along the Mediterranean coast, arrived in Andalusia from Egypt. However, there is not a single Arabic word in the vocabulary of the Spanish gypsies, and their route was fully indicated: in Andalusia, they referred to the patronage of the pope, the kings of France and Castile.

The first mention of gypsies (Ciganos) in Portuguese written sources date back to the 16th century. Around the same time, gypsies appear in Scotland and England. How they got there is unknown. Perhaps they attracted less attention there than at their former sites in Germany, France or the Netherlands, since the British Isles have been inhabited for centuries by nomadic "tinkers", whose lifestyle in many ways resembled that of the gypsies.

It was much more difficult for the gypsies in Ireland, where by that time numerous “tinkers” perceived the newcomers as competitors and did everything possible to arouse hostility towards them.

Count Anton Gagino of Egypt Minor arrived in Denmark aboard a Scottish ship in 1505, presenting the recommendations of James IV of Scotland to the Danish king John. On September 29, 1512, Count Antonius (probably the same person) solemnly arrived in Stockholm, to the great surprise of the locals.

The first "Egyptians", who appeared in Norway in 1544, did not have such recommendations. These were prisoners whom the British got rid of by forcibly taking them out of the country on ships. In Norway, the gypsies were expected to meet with nomadic "fanters", similar to the one that was provided to their fellow tribesmen in England and Scotland by the "tinkers".

From Sweden, some groups of gypsies penetrated into Finland and Estonia. Around the same time, "mountain gypsies" from Hungary and "plain gypsies" from Germany came to Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

By 1501, some groups of gypsies roamed the south of Russia, others moved from Poland to Ukraine. Finally, in 1721, the gypsies from the Polish plains reached the Siberian city of Tobolsk. They announced their intention to advance to the borders of China, but the governor of the city prevented this.

Thus, in the period of the XV-XVIII centuries. gypsies penetrated all European countries; they also ended up in colonies on the American and African continents, but this time not of their own free will. Spain sent some groups of gypsies overseas, setting the example of Portugal, which from the end of the 16th century. deported them in large numbers to their colonies, primarily to Brazil, but also to Angola, Sao Tome and the Cape Verde Islands. In the 17th century Gypsies were sent from Scotland to the plantations of Jamaica and Barbados, and in the 18th century. - to Virginia.

In the reign of Louis XIV, gypsies sentenced to hard labor were released by royal decree on the condition of leaving for the "American Isles". Among the colonists recruited by the "Indian Company" for the development of Louisiana, there were "Bohemians". Like other colonists, they settled in New Orleans. A century later, their descendants who settled in Biloxi, Louisiana still spoke French.

Since the 19th century many Romani families voluntarily migrated from Europe to the New World. They can be found in Canada, in California, in the suburbs of New York and Chicago, in Mexico and Central America, and much further south - in Chile and Argentina. They have the same occupation as the gypsies in Europe, the same customs, and everywhere they feel at home, because the place where the tent is pitched becomes their homeland.

P.S. Ancient chronicles say: By the way, it’s interesting how things are now with the immigration of gypsies to various countries, especially since now even for non-gypsies it is sometimes difficult to get a visa to certain countries, such as, for example, Canada. Look at the CanadianVisaExpert website, the rules for immigration to Canada for residents of Eastern Europe, South and Central America and even countries such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar are described. And they, these rules are very difficult, even for people who can be conditionally classified as the “middle class”, not to mention the poor segments of the population who go to Canada solely to earn money as cheap labor.