Brahui people
A photograph from 1910 with the caption reading "Brahui of Quetta".
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| Languages | |
|---|---|
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Brahui Balochi, Sindhi, Urdu, Arabic, Persian spoken as second languages |
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| Religion | |
| Sunni Islam (Hanafi) | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Dravidian people of South India, Nearby Balochis |
The Brahui (Brahui: براہوئی,) or Brahvi people are a Pakistani ethnic group of about 2.2 million people with the vast majority found in Baluchistan, Pakistan. They are a small minority group in Afghanistan, where they are native, but they are also found through their diaspora in Middle Eastern states. They mainly occupy the area in Balochistan from Bolan Pass through the Bolan Hills to Ras Muari (Cape Monze) on the Arabian sea, separating the Baloch people living to the east and west. The Brahuis are almost entirely Sunni Muslims.
The ethnonym "Brahui" is a very old term and a purely Dravidian one. The fact that other Dravidian languages only exist further south in India has led to several speculations about the origins of the Brahui. There are three hypotheses regarding the Brahui that have been proposed by academics. One theory is that the Brahui are a relict population of Dravidians, surrounded by speakers of Indo-Iranian languages, remaining from a time when Dravidian was more widespread. Another theory is that they migrated to Baluchistan from inner India during the early Muslim period of the 13th or 14th centuries. A third theory says the Brahui migrated to Balochistan from Central India after 1000 AD. The absence of any older Iranian (Avestan) influence in Brahui supports this last hypothesis. The main Iranian contributor to Brahui vocabulary is a northwestern Iranian language, Baluchi, Sindhi and southeastern Iranian language, Pashto.
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Wikipedia