Known variously as the Sidi, Siddhis, Seedhis and Habshis, these tall, well-built black people were originally brought from many East African countries like Ethiopia, Zanzibar, Somalia, Sudan and Mozambique. Over the centuries, implanted in a foreign land, they have become one racially distinct but culturally ambivalent community that makes them quite unique in several ways. According to Mahmood Mamdani, who has written an immensely absorbing introductory essay for the book, the Sidi experience is quite different from that of other communities of African origin, like those in the US or South America, mainly because slavery was not prevalent in the scale and form in India as it was in the Americas. Besides, there was a history of Sidis in India prior to the advent of European colonialism. While many might have been brought here as slaves, there were a significant number that came for or found employment in the armies and administrations of successive sultans, badshahs and nawabs from the time of Razia Sultan’s famous slave-confidant Jamal-ud-Din Yaqut—an African Sidi slave-turned-nobleman—in the 13th century.