Peripatetics of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Sudan, and Yemen - History

It is thought that many of these groups originally came from the east, probably from some part of the Indian subcontinent, and entered Persia between the fifth and seventh centuries A . D . Further migration probably took place from Persia toward Turkey on the one hand and Syria on the other, after the Arabian conquest of Persia in the seventh century. The Juki are supposed to have migrated into the Latakia region of Syria and thence into Lebanon from the area of the Nur Mountains of Turkish Anatolia. The earliest Arabic reference to "peripatetic" is probably to be found in a thirteenth-century shadow play written by the ophthalmologist Idn Daniyal (1248-1310) in Cairo, in which a woman named Sani' a appears. It is likely that similar figures were known to the public much earlier. The various communities have their own legends of origin, some of which are connected with well-known regional epic heroes, such as Zir Salem.