KARACHI: Dancing and chanting in Swahili at a crocodile shrine outside Karachi, hundreds of Sheedis swayed barefoot to the rhythm of a language they no longer speak -- the celebration offering a rare chance to connect with their African roots.

For many Sheedis, the swampy crocodile shrine to Sufi saint Haji Syed Shaikh Sultan -- more popularly known as Mangho Pir -- is the most potent symbol of their shared African past, as they struggle to uncover the trail that led their ancestors to Pakistan.

Many, like 75-year-old Mohammad Akbar, have simply given up the search for their family's origins.

The descendants of Africans who have been arriving on the shores of the subcontinent for centuries, the Sheedis rose to lofty positions as generals and leaders during the Mughal Empire, which ruled swathes of South Asia.

But, actively discriminated against during British rule, their traditions began to fade, and they found themselves wholly shunned when Pakistan was created in 1947, absent from the country's elite political and military circles.

Figures are scant but it is generally accepted that Pakistan holds the highest number of Sheedis on the subcontinent, upwards of around 50,000 people.

But their history has been scantily written, making it difficult if not impossible for Sheedis -- including even those like Akbar whose ancestors arrived in Pakistan relatively recently -- to trace their antecedents. "I came to know in the 1960s that my grandfather belonged to Zanzibar, and we contacted the Tanzania embassy to find our extended family," Akbar told AFP outside his home in Karachi.

"We were told that we can never reach them until we can identify our tribe, which we don't know," he said. "I never tried again."

His plight is common, with little in the way of documentation or scholarship on the community.

What is available suggests many arrived as part of the African slave trade to the east -- a notion rejected by many Sheedis, most of whom now reside in southern Sindh province.

"We don't subscribe to the theories that someone brought us as slaves to this region because Sheedis as a nation have never been slaves," argues Yaqoob Qanbarani, the chairman of Pakistan Sheedi Ittehad, a community group. Others say the community's origins can be traced back to the genesis of Islam, claiming a shared lineage with Bilal -- one of Prophet Mohammad's closest companions. As the knowledge of their origins has faded, so too have many of their traditions, including the vestiges of Swahili once spoken in parts of Karachi.

"Swahili has been an abandoned language for some generations now," says Ghulam Akbar Sheedi, a 75-year-old community leader.—AFP