Hugh Kennedy in Great Arab Conquests says that there’s one more ethnic footnote to the Muslim conquest of Sind. It may be the origin of some of Europe’s gypsies.
The Zutt tribesmen, who joined Muhammad ibn Qasim’s upriver invasion, also moved westward into Iraq. They were farmers who favored water buffalos for riding and plowing. Umayyad governors of Iraq decided to move some of them into Syria, water buffalo and all. The water buffalo were supposed to scare away Asian lions who preyed on travel. So we know the Zutt farmers, speaking their Sindhi language, at least came into Syria.
But a Byzantine raid aimed at taking back part of Syria took some of these farmers as captives. The captives, including water buffaloes, were taken into Byzantine lands. They disappear from written history, though some gypsies called Atsinganoi are recorded in the 11th century. “Atsinganoi” might be a Greek way of designating people from Sind. It was the hypothesis of a 19th century Dutch scholar that these displaced Zutts became gypsies in Eastern Europe.
- Great Arab Conquests, by Hugh Kennedy