Romani

The Romani are an Indo-Aryan people from northwestern India, whose name may descend from the Doma, a caste of musicians and dancers. Migrating west from about 1000 through Persia, Armenia and the Byzantine Empire, they were recorded in Constantinople in 1068 and reached the Balkans and Crete by the fourteenth century.

The friar Symon Semeonis described Romani migrants at Candia in 1322, and around 1360 Corfu held a fief worked mainly by Romani serfs. As the Ottomans overran the Balkans, many settled in Thrace and Macedonia, while others moved west. Expulsion edicts began in 1416; Romani were enslaved in Wallachia and Moldavia, with the first recorded sale in 1385.

Persecution continued into the eighteenth century, including the Spanish round-up of 1749, though Ștefan Răzvan became prince of Moldavia in 1595. Romani kept its Indo-Aryan core while absorbing other languages' words.