The Romani or Romany people (singular Rom, plural Roma; sometimes Rrom, Rroma) or Romanies belong to many ethnic groups that appear in literature and folklore, and are often referred to as Gypsies or Gipsies, a term that is sometimes considered pejorative and is based on a mistaken belief of an origin in Egypt, many thought that Rroma came from Egypt, Nubia or some other "Saracen" land or even, that they were one of the lost Jewish tribes.
The debates and discussions about the origin and history of the Gypsy peoples all around the world, have been conducted amongst scholars, activists and governments, since their appearance in the historical record and maybe long before that. Modern historiography functions as the history of nations, and frequently assumes that groups of people have who may or may not have some shared characteristics have travelled through time and over sometimes enormous geographical distances as sealed units. Each group exist like some kind of container, acting as a barrier to keep the content ‘intact’, until their historical trajectory or pre-destined “path” brings them into contact with history again, as a “nation”.           Through Gypsy histories (the differing experiences of the Romani, Domari, Lom and others), the idea of a nomadic lifestyle is frequently associated with the agent of time; “…many Romani are again living a nomadic life and have returned to their earlier culture”, according to an Azeri Rom (Daniels, 2003). The movement from an older (primitive?) past into a more modern (civilised?) present, represent a “settlement”, groups and individuals moving in or out of it various times. The history of nomadic peoples demonstrates that the latter is the most frequent mode of existence, but the ideology of the nation-state would seek to deny this and promote the concept of sedentarism as part of “modernism”.                                   
A especial interest for us are the discussions about who and who are not included in these nation-states; inevitably Gypsy peoples have been identified as ‘not belonging’ in most nation-states at some time. Today, the Gypsies are usually seen as “…a people without history…” always suffering persecution, discrimination, forced settlement or forced migration, though this perception itself is recent. Before this, Gypsies were rarely seen at all, except as inherently “criminal”, but again without a history. The experience of Gypsy peoples, a common stereotype amongst non-Gypsies is the notion that these are a people who live in the eternal present, incapable to plan for their future or recall a more general past. Integral to the “scientific” racism that underpins the ideology of the nation-state, the “People” as a “nation” exist on a point along a continuum which stretches backwards and forwards in time (and often geographical space), punctuated by events that are recorded and ordered in the national historiography. The Gypsies have been consistently defined vis-à-vis this series of Eurocentric ideas, even characterising their political and social organisation as “anarchical”, in the “democracy-tyranny” spectrum. In this sense, the concept of “origin” as a point of departure, can be used as a “measure” against which to compare others that makes the establishment of such more or less “important”. The more temporally remote that point, the greater the claim to an “authentic” longevity as a “nation” or “people” and the more one’s own “nation” may have “influenced” or informed others (Hellenic Greece for example)”. This considerations sustain the attempts to establish the origin of the Gypsies.
From the record of references to the origins of the Gypsies, inevitably one lights upon the most frequently cited example of both, the reference to the “Luri” in the Shahname or Book of Kings. Abu l’Kasım Firdausi wrote the 60,000 verse Iranian epic and he presented in 1010 to Sultan Mahmûd of Ghazna (997-1030), another important figure in the discussion of Gypsy origins. This ‘legend of the Luri and Bahram Ghur’ has become ubiquitous in Romani Studies, featuring in almost every monograph, article and web-site devoted to the Gypsies and has been used to suggest their presence in fifth-century Sassanid Persia. Recently the reference of Col. John S. Harriott in 1830 attempting to draw attention to the Oriental Origins of the Romanichal, or English Romanies, were re-examined and challenged on a number of points (Marsh, 2003). Firdausi and indeed his earlier source Hamza al Isfahani’s Chronology, never defined their use of the term “Luri” beyond explaining their presence in eleventh-century Persia by reference to a group of musicians from Sindh, or western India in the fifth-century.                                              The ruler of Hindus and Buddhists from Sassanid Persia, Bahram Ghur (420-438), gave poets, musicians and singers “the highest ranks at court” (Wiesehöfer, 2001:159), little conclusive evidence that these were Gypsies can be drawn. In the context of this discussion, the suggestion that we might find the origins of the Romanies in Persia as a group of Indians from Sindh must be seen to be a consequence of earlier identifications coming, as it does in the nineteenth century.

         
The references from the tenth-century to the Atsinganoi, a heretical Judeo-Christian group centred in northern Asia Minor may be our earliest extant record of to Romani people, although there are still questions about drawing equivalence between these references. The notion was present in these that the group referred to were “…a Sarmatian people…” (Fraser, 1992:46). The Sarmatians were a Central Asian, nomad people, speakers of an Indo-Iranian language.       Herodotus notes in his Histories (Rawlinson, Rawlinson & Wilkinson, 1862) that they were a people who lived and travelled in wagons, that their warriors included women and their priestesses men and they could retreat endlessly into their steppe lands, thus defeating the Persian shahanshah, Darius I through despair and despond. Clearly, this reference is doubtful in its suggestion that it is concerned with Gypsies. Descriptions of Byzantine Gypsies from the twelfth-century are much more reliable, referring to bear-keepers, magicians, soothsayers and charmers as “Egyptians” in various religious commentaries and tracts (Soulis, 1961:146-147). Late Byzantine sources indicate that there was no clear connection made with the earlier Indians in defining the origins of these wandering acrobats, jugglers and animal-trainers. Another reference from this period suggests a connection with the Arabs, that of Simon Simeonis in 1323, when he notes a group in the island of Crete who asserted “…themselves to be of the family of Chaym… always wandering and fugitive…” and living in black tents similar to the Arabians’ he had seen elsewhere on his travels (Fraser, 1992:50). The biblical reference to “Chaym” or Ham, is frequent in the context of descriptions of the Gypsies in this period, after 1400 when the Gypsies were identified as “pilgrims” in Western Europe, atoning for apostasy and armed with patents royal. Many legends attached to these bands of distinctive, dark-skinned travellers often led by ‘Counts’ or ‘Dukes’, but many of them made a connection with the ‘author’ of a series of Gnostic and alchemical texts (actually Arabic in origin; Holmyard, 1929:525-6) believed to be ‘Egyptian’. ‘Duke’ and ‘count’ were the awards titles for the Gypsy war-band leaders, they were responsable for providing military service in the classic late feudal relationship.
In 1547 Andrew Borde (or Boorde) tried to define the origins of the “Egyptians” in Western Europe, when he published his examples collected in 1542, of “Egipt speche”. Sebastian Münster’s Chronographia Universalis of 1550 also suggested an Egyptian origin, but in this case, Lesser Egypt located as Münster himself suggested, in the Gangetic or Indus regions (Bartlett, 1952:85). Earlier, the municipal authorities from Hesse responsible for Hildesheim recorded a visit from a party of ‘Tartars’ again from Egypt (Fraser, 1992:66-67). ‘Little Egypt’ was frequently cited as the place of origin in various records of towns and cities in the fifteenth century, possibly gleaned from Gypsies themselves. This was connected by commentators with the region of Modon, in the Venetian territories, but as Fraser suggests it derived from the original notion of an ‘Egyptian’ origin, as the community there in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries themselves claimed (1992:53-54). An interesting reference to the Gypsies of Modon at this time comes from Lionardo di Niccolo Friscobaldi in 1384, when he notes that these apparent penitents without the city walls as Romiti (1818:72). Other travellers to the city suggested that it was the original home of this group, but this reflects the growing antagonism and suspicion shown to Gypsies in Western Europe from the late fifteenth-century, illustrating the shift from pilgrims and penitents to ‘spies’ and ‘vagabonds’.
The arrival of Rroma in Western Europe, mainly caused by the chaos of the interregnum in the Ottoman lands during the begining of the fifteenth century and a worsening of their conditions there, focused attention upon the ‘discovery’ of the origins of this hitherto unrecorded group. The choice by many annalists, commentators and writers of Egypt as the ‘home’ of the Gypsies reflected the concern with magic, conjuring and especially alchemy, following the thirteenth-century translations of the ‘works’ of Hermes Trimegistus and their dissemination (Holmyard, 1923:525). Their appearance as dark-skinned, strangely dressed people also underlined the ideas about the ‘East’ as original land of wandering tribes, heathens and infidels, the enemies of Christianity. The turn to Egypt suggests the limited extent of the knowledge of those who first encountered these groups in the Modon region and their assumption that these were people connected with that land. Nevertheless, it might be the case that the Romiti chose to present themselves not as quondam residents in the Byzantine and then Ottoman lands (one a heretic state, the other an infidel one), but as original from a place that Europeans had some associations with namely the biblical lands. The flight to Egypt of the Holy Family even provided some basis for claims to penitence; It can be considered that the Gypsies had refused succour to the fleeing Christ-child and therefore were doomed to wander around the world. It is also possible that those who named Egypt as their origin, were indeed from that country. Their presence in Modon an important entrepôt for pilgrims to the Holy Land, and other ports with traffic to the Latin lands like Ragusa (Dubrovnik), is compatible with such a suggestion. It is supposed that only Romanies were present in the Balkans, by most modern scholars. An older community, absorbed into the more numerous later identity and earlier instances of Dom being found in these regions may be supported by the reference from the Crusader Kingdom of Cyprus to the community of Gypsies there under the Lusignan King Jacques II (1460-1473) (Marsh & Strand, 2003:4). It is very possible then, that the earliest “Egyptians” spoke the truth.
Until the later eighteenth-century their ‘Egyptian’ origin remained the dominant explanation, recorded in tracts and treatises with little variation. They were only vilified by commentators as Ottoman spies, thieves, idlers and con men and women because of their changing situation of persecution and oppression in Western Europe. Ideological justification for the appalling treatment meted out to Romanies in Europe was to be found in these works, and the earlier suspicions and prejudices took on a lethal character when the writers of standing and influence took up their pens to do so. Even the notion that Gypsies were indeed from Egypt came under scrutiny, and English encyclopaedias referred to “…counterfeit kind of rogues, who being English, or Welsh people, disguise themselves in uncouth habits…” according to Ephraim Chamber (1728). This terminology merely reflected the earlier legislative descriptions of “counterfeit Egyptians” in a variety of punitive laws in the mid-sixteenth century (Fraser, 131-137). This kind of approach dominated the discussion of Gypsy origins, and can be seen to manifest the beginnings of the racist paradigm of the “true Egyptian”, as opposed to the vagabonds and thieves claiming to be Gypsies (Fraser, 1992:92).
Münster might be the one that ‘discovered’ the Indian origin of the Gypsies, in 1550, although the claim that he was told this by Gypsies is not entirely correct (Hancock, 2002:2) as referred to above. His oppinion was not taken up by others and the Gypsies maintained their idea of an Egyptian origin, as it fitted well with preconceived notions. In 1775-1776 in the Vienna Gazette are written forty articles by an anonymous Hungarian author (Fraser, 1992: 190), seem to have been based upon the suggestion from Istvan Vali in the 1760’s. Pastor Vali had allegedly attended Leiden University to study religion (there is no record of him there), and came across a group of Indian or Sinhalese students, from whom he collected about 1,000 words. He ‘discovered’ similarity comparing these with the language of the Gypsy labourers on the family estate in Raab. Jacob Bryant published some  material that he collected at a Windsor fair in 1776. Other examples of Romani were collected by Jacob Rüdiger, a German scholar, from a Gypsy woman in Halle and compared it with a variety of Indian languages, noting the similarities especially with a dialect of Lahnda called “Multani”.                                                              H.M.G.Grellman’s Dissertation on the Gipsies was the most important work of the late eighteenth century (1787, English edition), originally published in Leipzig in 1783. In addition to the usual material describing the Gypsies in terms of stereotypes and prejudices, Grellman synthesised the earlier Weiner Anzeigen articles and the work of other scholars, arguing for a clear relationship between Romani and Indo-Aryan languages, and was most closely related to Gujurat. He also posited a date of departure from the Indian subcontinent at the time of the incursions by Timurlenk (Tamerlane) into the Delhi sultanate in 1398 (2nd edition, 1807). The new science of comparative philology guaranteed the interest of scholars in Romani and the origins of the Gypsies as an example of change and development in an Indo-Aryan related language. Agustus F. Pott, in his monumental The Gypsies in Europe and Asia (Die Zigeuner in Europa und Asien, 1844) and his later work on the Gypsies of Turkey (date ?:321-335), drew on the material that had by then proliferated about the Gypsies and their language to write the primary scientific works on Romani. Franz X. Miklosich, another scholar (1872-1881) wrote two volumes of history of the migrations of the Gypsies, based upon the philological evidence, and can be said to be the first to re-construct (or construct?) the ‘long march West’ of the Romani peoples.
Subsequent works investigating the origins of the Gypsies, and especially the Romani people have all followed Grellman, Pott and Miklosich to a greater or lesser extent, apart from a few who have sought to redefine the debates in ways that have reflected the concerns with the “social construction” of ethnic identities. Okely’s challenging The Traveller-Gypsies, sought to deconstruct the ‘myth’ of the Indian origin in regard of English Gypsies and demonstrate that the ‘link’ to India was a product of European Orientalism (following Said’s thesis), an attempt to exoticise a socially excluded and marginalised group (1983). Willems, Lucassen and Cottaar (1998), brought their own “socio-historical approach” to bear and have developed a critique of the ‘traditional’ perspective of Romani Studies, arguing that the Gypsy identity is a product of Grellman, Pott and others since who have taken a widely disparate series of groups, who may or may not share a number of characteristics and constructed a composite called “Gypsies”. Mattijs van de Port tooked the notion of the “imaginary Gypsy” even further and has argued that “Gypsy-ness” is an “instance of the Wild”, an aspect of societal discontent expressed in a cultural form and a concomitant to “civilization” (1998), in Serbia especially. The ‘Dutch’ school, with the work of Ger Duijzings (1997), speaks about the “making of Egyptians” in the context of the Balkan conflicts in the last decade. He affirmed that identities can be reconstructed as necessity and extreme circumstance demands, this being a kind of psycho-historical analysis that Justin McCarthy suggested in his analysis of the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Ottoman Muslims from the region, 1821-1922 (1995), when individuals traumatised by war and loss sought refuge in the ‘safety’ of a marginal identity. Underlying thesis shared by these and other works we can say that like Americans and many other modern ‘ethnic’ identities, “Gypsies” can be made and are not necessarily “born”.
Tring to establish the history of the Gypsy peoples based to the existing linguistic evidence in the formative lands of the Ottoman Empire, rather than to construct it from such as Miklosich and others have done has demonstrated the extent to which the Romanies (and consequently other Gypsy groups) are a composite people, from a variety of origins and the product of complex social, economic and political factors. The argument that they were ‘forged’ in the borderlands of Anatolia between the hammer of the Seljuk Turks and the anvil of the Byzantine Empire in the twelfth-century is becoming widely accepted. In 1018 the Sultan Mahmûd of Ghazna tries to define the point of departure and demonstrates the extent to which there is a ‘new Romani historiography’ and expanding at the same time the knowledge about Gypsy origins and history and confront some of the more extreme and ultimately untenable ‘myth-making’ that has passed for scholarship until now.
The key factor to the existence of the Gypsy peoples (Rom, Dom and Lom, Irish Travellers, Yenische, Resande and others)is represented by their ability to exploit particular economic niches in sedentary society, whether as commercial nomads, horse-dealers, farmers, metal-workers, miners, gun-powder makers, canon-founders and carpenters or a host of other occupations that Gypsies have undertaken to provide themselves and their families with a living. The musicians and metalworkers of the Dom peoples of Egypt, Syria and the Middle East have adapted to their environment as it has changed to meet the challenges facing them in a way that other groups haven’t   been able to do it. The same treatment have the Roma from South-Eastern Europe facing the horrors of ‘ethnic-cleansing’ and persecution, mostly from the Balkans in the last decades, fleeing when possible and adapting to new environments in Sweden, the United Kingdom, Germany and France amongst other states. The ‘resident’ Gypsies (Romanichals, Resande, Irish Travellers, Sinti, etc.) of these nation-states have sought to maintain their distinctiveness vis-à-vis these newer groups of Roma, building relationships through political and cultural organisations to challenge the common problems of discrimination, poor resources and marginalisation of all Gypsy communities. The position of those groups adopting an exclusivist and separatist identity is mirrored by those who seek a to re-affirm a ‘Swedish’ or ‘English’ Gypsy identity as ‘more’ legitimate in the context of the nation-state, but there is the notion of a more definite ‘Indian origin’ and therefore ‘more Romani’. In the sixteenth-century starts in Western Europe the search for the ‘true Gypsy’,providing the ideological justification for the genocidal policies of emergent nation-states over the next two centuries, as it did in the period of Nazi Germany, 1936-1945. In most nation-states of Europe this notions remains part-and-parcel of the discrimination towards Gypsies.The origins of the Gypsy peoples has tried to be establish by the scholarship that refrain from ‘buying into’ such racist paradigms in following the patterns of nationalist myth-making and nation-building adopted after the advent of Romanticism in late eighteenth-century Western Europe and exported with such lethal results elsewhere today. The origins of Gypsies, in all their variation, should be positively acknowledged, held up as an example to challenge the absurdly reductive notions of the ‘Swedish’, the ‘Norwegian’, ‘Danish’ or the ‘English’ and other nations, because of their diversity and complexity. Essential for the survival of the Gypsies has been the particular genius for adaptation and flexibility standing against the rigidity of the notions of the nation-state,  appearing archaic and much closer to the fearful. To seek to separate out, to identify with ‘archaic’ notions of ethnicity and territoriality, through tracing particular origins for their own sake, seems irrelevant.