Romani, Balkan

The Balkan Roma are the branch of the Roma people that settled in the Balkans and Anatolia. Roma ancestors left northern India about a thousand years ago and reached the Byzantine Empire by the 11th century; the Balkan Roma are the descendants of those who stayed in Thrace, Anatolia and the southern Balkans while other Roma moved on into central and western Europe. They speak, or once spoke, the Balkan dialects of Romani, such as Arli, Erli, Sepečides and Rumelian, an Indo-Aryan language related to Hindi and Punjabi. They call themselves Rom or Roman, while their neighbours call them by names such as Çingene, Tsigani or Gypsies. Under Ottoman rule many became Muslim (the Xoraxane) while others stayed Orthodox Christian (the Dasikane), and the community has since spread from the Balkans to Western Europe, Ukraine and Australia. Small offshoots live far from the Balkans: the Zargari of Iran, said to descend from goldsmiths brought from Ottoman Rumelia in the 1740s, still speak a Balkan Romani dialect. In many countries, above all Türkiye, most Balkan Roma now speak the majority language as their first language, yet they remain a distinct people who marry within the community and are set apart by their neighbours.

Balkan Roma life centres on the extended family and on marriage within the community, often arranged young. Families traditionally followed occupations such as music, metalwork, basket weaving, horse trading, flower selling and seasonal farm work; today many work in informal trades, recycling, street selling and day labour. Roma musicians shaped the popular and wedding music of the Balkans and Türkiye, with brass bands, clarinets and the darbuka. The spring feast of Ederlezi (Hıdırellez, St George's Day, around 6 May) is the community's great festival from Bulgaria to Istanbul. Most live in their own urban quarters or settlements, many of them poor, with low school completion and frequent discrimination in housing and work.

Balkan Roma usually share the religion of the country around them: Orthodox Christianity in Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and Romania, and Sunni Islam in Türkiye, Kosovo and North Macedonia, with Twelver Shia Islam among the Zargari of Iran. Folk practice runs through both faiths: saints' days, Ederlezi rites, protection against the evil eye, vows and visits to shrines, and fortune-telling by women. Muslim Roma in Türkiye often follow Sufi orders, with Alevi-Bektashi influences. Since the 1990s Pentecostal and other evangelical churches have grown quickly among the Roma of Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia, many of them led by Roma pastors and worshipping in Romani.

The complete Bible is available in Balkan Romani (2010-2015), with the New Testament since 2008 and portions since the early 20th century. The Jesus Film and Global Recordings Network audio recordings are available in Balkan Romani. Roma-led evangelical churches are numerous in Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia, but Muslim Roma in Türkiye and the southern Balkans have few known believers, and where Roma speak only the majority language, resources in that language reach them better than Romani ones.