In the last decade there has been a veritable explosion of scholarship on Habshis and Sidis in India. This book is a contribution to this growing field, but with a difference. Its focus is on the elite of Sub-Saharan African-Indians who attained prominence in various parts of India between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries, and on Africans who served at the courts of Indian monarchs as servants, slaves, eunuchs, or concubines.