The history of the Gypsy people is surrounded by many legends and theories that tell their stories from North Africa and the Middle East, all the way to India.
According to many writers, some tribes arrived in Spain in 755 BC, following Abderrahman, the first king of Cordoba, from Yemen and the Caliphate of Egypt. After the fall of the thrones of Seville and Cordoba, the defeated Mohammedans were almost all "egipcios," which is why this name was given to all those wandering groups.
Other scholars claim that they are descendants of Jews who then moved to Europe through Egypt; like the historian Joannis Aventinus, the first to provide information on the Gypsies, confirming their passage also through Turkey and Hungary, starting from the Middle East and North Africa.
Much more credited, however, are the theories about their Indian origins. Bataillard, the first anthropologist to study the Gypsies, states that thanks to them iron arrived in Europe and that they are descended from the Aryans.
Their place of origin is believed to be the banks of the Sind River, between Pakistan and the Rajasthan region in India. The French missionary Dubois states that a caste dedicated to the art of fortune-telling lived on the banks of the Sind River and that, due to numerous wars in Asia, they moved in 1440 towards a new land that could welcome them.
