EXCLUSIVE: Beyond slavery: Pakistan’s Sheedis trace a 2,000-year African legacy — Part I

By Akhtar Pathan

KARACHI, Pakistan (MNTV) — In southern Pakistan, the story of the Sheedi community is often told as a story of slavery.

But that is only part of it.

The history of Africans in South Asia stretches back at least 2,000 years, to an era when merchants and sailors moved across the Indian Ocean between East Africa, Arabia and the Indian subcontinent.

Some Africans arrived as slaves. Others came as merchants, sailors, soldiers, mercenaries, religious figures, court officials, musicians and domestic workers. Some were descendants of earlier African migrants.

For the Sheedis of Pakistan, that distinction matters. Their history is not simply a story of people brought from Africa in chains, but of a community shaped over centuries by trade, migration, military service, political power, slavery and, eventually, discrimination.

An African presence predating slavery

Africans had contact with the Indian subcontinent by the first centuries of the Common Era, and possibly earlier.

The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a mid-first-century Greek account of Indian Ocean commerce, describes regular maritime trade linking western India with the Red Sea and the African coast. It also refers to Sindu and the Indus region as part of this wider commercial network.

The trading system connected western India with ports in East Africa, including Adulis in the Aksumite sphere.

That evidence establishes sustained interaction between Africa and South Asia, but not necessarily permanent African settlement in Sindh or elsewhere in India.

Modern scholarship therefore places the roots of the Afro-South Asian presence at least two millennia ago while cautioning against treating the earliest commercial contacts as proof of a settled African diaspora.

Clearer evidence of Africans actually living and serving in South Asia emerges during the early medieval period.

Known by names including Habshi, Sidi, Siddi and Kafri, Africans entered military, maritime, domestic and courtly life across the region.

One genetic-historical study places the first documented record specifically associated with Siddis in India at about 1100 CE. But Africans had already been entering South Asian political and military structures before that period.

By the 13th century, substantial numbers were being brought into Indian states as soldiers and slaves. By the 15th and 16th centuries, some Africans had risen to extraordinary political power.

The most famous was Malik Ambar, an Ethiopian-born African who became the powerful regent of Ahmadnagar in the Deccan.

African military and political elites also emerged in Bengal, Gujarat and other parts of the western Indian Ocean world.

Sindh and the Indian Ocean

There is a strong historical case for an African presence in the wider Sindh and Arabian Sea world long before the modern Sheedi community emerged.

There is, however, no securely documented date for the first African arrival in Sindh.

The region’s position along ancient maritime routes made interaction inevitable. Ships and people moved between the Indus, the Arabian Peninsula, East Africa and the Red Sea.

But trade links alone cannot establish that an African community was permanently settled in Sindh in the first century CE.

The evidence becomes stronger during the Islamic and medieval periods, when Africans participated in military and commercial networks extending from East Africa and Arabia into Sindh and western India.

The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History traces the roots of Afro-South Asian communities that later became identifiable as Habshis and Sidis back at least two millennia, while stressing that Africans reached South Asia in many different capacities.

Did Africans arrive with Muhammad bin Qasim?

One date frequently associated with the history of Africans in Sindh is 711 CE, when Arab forces under Muhammad bin Qasim conquered the region.

Some historical accounts say Africans were among the forces involved in the conquest. A historical account published by Dawn, for example, says the Arab army that entered Sindh included African soldiers.

That has led some modern accounts to identify 711 as the beginning of an African presence in Sindh.

But historians caution against equating such an early military presence with the emergence of the modern Sheedi population.

For the ancestors of many present-day Sheedis, the decisive period appears to have come centuries later.

The Zanzibar-Muscat-Karachi connection

The 18th and 19th centuries were particularly important in the formation of the African population that eventually became part of Sindh’s Sheedi community.

During the Talpur period, Sindh became increasingly connected to the Oman-Zanzibar-Arabian Sea trading system.

Richard F. Burton, writing about Sindh in the 19th century, described two categories of Africans in the region: those born into households and those imported from Muscat and other Arabian ports.

He reported that under the Talpur Amirs (Sindh’s rulers), about 600 to 700 Africans were imported annually, including people identified as Zanzibaris, Bambasi and Habshi.

Karachi also became an important point in this network.

A Dawn historical investigation reported that the slave trade through Karachi peaked in the 1830s, with Africans transported from Zanzibar through Muscat to Karachi.

It cited British naval officer Commander Thomas Greer Carless, who reported that more than 1,500 enslaved people arrived in Karachi from Muscat in 1837.

The routes were not always direct. The Indian Ocean functioned as a vast network through which people moved from East Africa to Zanzibar, then to Muscat and Karachi or Sindh, as well as through other Arabian Sea and Makran routes.

This later movement of East Africans, both enslaved and otherwise, contributed substantially to the ancestry of today’s Sheedi communities.

From royal courts to social margins

The history of Africans in South Asia was not confined to slavery.

Some became soldiers and commanders. Others entered royal courts or established themselves as political elites.

Sheedis rose to prominent positions as generals and leaders during the Mughal period, when the empire controlled large parts of South Asia.

But their fortunes changed.

Discrimination during British colonial rule weakened their social position and contributed to the erosion of their traditions. After Pakistan was created in 1947, Sheedis remained largely excluded from the country’s elite political and military circles.

The prejudice did not disappear with independence.

Sheedis say they continue to face stigma because of their African ancestry in a society where lighter skin is often associated with beauty, status and social acceptance.

Their association with slavery has added another layer to that discrimination.

A fading African heritage

Today, estimates of Pakistan’s population of African descent vary dramatically, from about 50,000 to nearly 1 million. Some estimates put the figure at around 250,000.

Whatever the precise number, Pakistan is home to one of Asia’s largest communities of African descent.

Sheedis are concentrated mainly in southern Pakistan. Estimates suggest about half live in lower Sindh, 20% in Karachi and 30% in Balochistan.

Most are Muslims and have developed a distinctive cultural identity that blends their African heritage with the traditions of the societies in which they have lived for generations.

Many Sheedis trace their lineage to Hazrat Bilal, the freed Ethiopian slave who became Islam’s first muezzin.

Yet their own history has often been poorly documented.

For many Sheedis, including some whose ancestors arrived in Pakistan relatively recently, tracing their family origins beyond a few generations is difficult, if not impossible.

As knowledge of Africa and ancestral migration routes has faded, so have elements of the community’s heritage.

Vestiges of Swahili once spoken in parts of Karachi have largely disappeared.

But echoes of Africa remain.

In Badin and elsewhere in Sindh, Sheedis continue to perform the leva, a traditional dance associated with East African heritage, and play the tall mugarman drum at festivals.

Elders still remember fragments of African languages once spoken by their ancestors.

Music, rhythms, clothing and celebrations preserve connections to an African past that many younger members of the community have never experienced directly.

Yet those traditions are under increasing pressure from mainstream culture.

Organizing for change

Efforts to improve the community’s social and economic position began decades ago.

One of the earliest organizations was Al-Habsh, founded by Muhammad Siddique Musafir in 1961.

It sought to promote social reform, preserve Sheedi heritage and improve education and economic opportunities.

In 1965, it expanded into All-Sindh Jamaat Al-Habsh, opening membership to people connected to the community through their mothers who had previously been excluded.

But Sheedi community politics later became divided.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the movement fractured into three groups along nationalistic and ideological lines. The organizations experienced periods of activity before eventually falling silent.

A new phase began in 2004 with the formation of Sindh Sheedi Ittehad by its founding chairman, Yaqoob Qambrani.

The organization sought to unite a divided community, secure recognition from government institutions and promote self-reliance.

In Badin, the Young Sheedi Welfare Organization for a time attracted international donors and advocacy groups and operated along nonprofit lines. But it later became embroiled in infighting and disputes over the use of funds.

From the margins to the assembly

The struggle for greater recognition eventually moved into mainstream politics.

In 2018, Tanzeela Qambrani became the first Afro-Pakistani lawmaker elected to the Sindh Provincial Assembly.

Her election was a milestone for a community whose history has frequently been overlooked or reduced to slavery.

The broader historical record tells a different story.

Africans were crossing the Indian Ocean long before the Atlantic slave trade. They entered South Asia through multiple routes and under different circumstances. Some were enslaved, while others came voluntarily or rose from servitude to become soldiers, commanders and political leaders.

For Sindh, there is no single date that can confidently be called the beginning of its African history.

There are indications of contact with East Africa and the Red Sea as early as the first century CE. Africans participated in the region’s military and commercial networks during the centuries that followed.

The largest documented influx linked to the ancestors of many present-day Sheedis came much later, particularly during the 18th and 19th centuries, when the Zanzibar-Muscat-Sindh trade expanded.

What emerged was not merely a community of former slaves, but an African diaspora shaped by centuries of movement, adaptation and survival.

Today, the Sheedis of Sindh are trying to preserve what remains of that heritage while seeking greater access to education, health care, livelihoods and political representation.

Their story is therefore not simply about where they came from.

It is also about how they survived, how they became part of South Asia and how, centuries after their ancestors crossed the Indian Ocean, they continue to fight for recognition in the land they now call home.