The First Firangis: Remarkable Stories of Heroes, Healers, Charlatans, Courtesans & Other Foreigners Who Became Indian

The volume presents an account of the life of little-known foreigners from the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries who began to live in the Indian subcontinent. In the centuries before the British Raj was set up in the Indian subcontinent, when the Mughals reigned, many foreigners made India their home. The book presents their stories: the stories of healers, soldiers, artists, ascetic, thieves, pirates, slaves and others who were not powerful or privileged and were escaping poverty and religious persecution. It narrates how some joined the military; some became part of religious communities; healers adapted their medical practice to local traditions; and artisans worked as part of the Mughal kings’ ateliers. It covers the experiences of Portuguese physician to the sultan of Ahmadnagar, Garcia da Orta; dissident English Goan priest Thomas Stephens; the Basque jeweller Augustin Hiriart; the English fakir Thomas Coryate and Nicole Manucci who wrote a history of the Mughal emperors.