India is home to a countless number of languages, religions (both major and tribal), and ethnicities: Millions of South Asians can trace their ancestries back to Afghanistan, Tibet and China, and Saudi Arabia and Persia. Tomorrow, the Sundaram Tagore Gallery hosts a lecture about a less-talked-about population that once held political sway over the country: sub-Saharan Africans who traveled to the country as merchants, mercenaries, or slaves during the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. The lecture is being held to celebrate the release of “African Elites in India: Habshi Amarat,” a collection of scholarly essays edited by a psychiatrist and Indian art collector, Kenneth Robbins, and the chair of the department of history at the University of Louisville, John McLeod. Mr. Robbins will speak at the Thursday event, presenting slides of artworks featured in the collection.

The words “Habshi Amarat” translate to “Abyssian nobility” — “habshis,” up until recently, referred to Indians of African heritage, although in modern times, habshis are considered to have fully integrated among the South Asian population. Those Africans who successfully rose to some amount of power did so among the ranks of regional empires, including various Mughal dynasties. “India is the only place where Africans ruled over non-Africans,” Mr. Robbins said in a phone interview yesterday. “Some were slaves, and some were mercenaries. There was a weird phenomenon in Muslim countries where slaves became rulers in ancient times.”

In Mr. Robbins’s perspective, there are three major incidents that define the complete nature of African domination in India. In 1486, a group of African mercenaries that fought for the sultan of Bengal eventually overthrew the ruler, and governed the country for seven years. In the 17th century, two island states were created with African leadership, Sachin and Janjira, and became home to the Indo-African population known as Sidis.

The major moment of African success in India, however, was the rise and rule of Malik Ambar in the late 1500s and early 1600s. Once a slave nicknamed “Chapu,” Malik Ambar was freed after his master died in 1574. While working for another sultan, he began acquiring a number of troops to take over the failing Nizam Shahi kingdom in the Ahmadnagar region of the mid-western Deccan territories. In 1560, he successfully took over the kingdom.

Malik Ambar, according to Mr. Robbins, was the most important ruler of African descent in India. “He’s really the only one that stands out,” Mr. Robbins said. “He was a builder and city founder, he created a revenue system that lasted until the time of Indian independence, he was a great general, and was successful at guerrilla warfare.”

Mr. Robbins — who has collected Indian art since noticing a painting in a window of a Madison Avenue gallery in 1968 — first became interested in this topic when he saw images of Africans cropping up in his collection and elsewhere. “The thing I was interested in was the tremendous number of representations of slaves in these paintings,” Mr. Robbins said. “I saw there were 17th-century paintings of Africans, and from there I saw coins issued by African rulers. I’m trying to take things that collectors do and the intricate details they know, and I’m trying to bring all these different pieces of information together.”

Mr. Tagore himself is pleased that this relatively unknown piece of Indian history will be discussed in his gallery. “India is such a multicultural society from way back, when you look at it,” he said. “It’s a constant flow of people, it’s a multicultural background society, and that’s why India does so well.”

jdaniel@nysun.com