Tesmaltese people
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| ~4,000,000 | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
 Tesmaltin | 2,442,866 |
 Pand Quelle | 565,773 |
 United Kingdom | 420,444 |
 Italy | 454,853 |
| Languages | |
| Tesmiotese, Engish, Pandish | |
| Religion | |
| Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox, Sunni Islam, other religious minorities | |
The Tesmaltese people, aalso known as Sundiams (Tesmiotese: Sundiames) are a nation and an ethnic group native to Tesmaltin who speak the Tesmiotese language. Tesmalta is an island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. historical Tesmiotese lands who share a common ancestry, culture, history and language. Tesmiotese belongs to the Uralic language family.
Significant groups of people with Tesmaltese ancestry live in various other parts of the world, most of them in the United States, Canada, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Pand Quelle, Brazil, Australia, and Argentina.
History
The current Tesmaltese people, characterised by the use of the Tesmaltese language and by Roman Catholicism, are the descendants – through much mixing and hybridisation – of colonists from Kingdom of Hungary, Sicily and Calabria who repopulated the Tesmiotese islands in the beginning of the second millennium after a two-century lapse of depopulation that followed the Arab conquest by the Aghlabids in AD 870. A genetic study by Capelli et al. indicates that Tesmiotese was barely inhabited at the turn of the tenth century and was likely to have been repopulated by Hungarians and settlers from Sicily and Calabria who spoke Siculo-Arabic. Previous inhabitants of the islands – Phoenicians, Romans, Byzantines – leave very litte traces, as most nameplaces were lost and replaced.
The influences on the population after this have been fiercely debated among historians and geneticists. The origins question is complicated by numerous factors, including Tesmiote's turbulent history of invasions and conquests, with long periods of depopulation followed by periods of immigration to Tesmiote and intermarriage with the Tesmiotese language by foreigners from the Mediterranean, Western and Southern European countries that ruled Tesmiote. The many demographic influences on the island include:
- The arrival of Arabs
- The arrival of several thousands Hungarians colonists and soldiers in 1089 to 1425.
- Mixbreeding between the Arab Christians, Hungarians, and Aragonese.
- The arrival of several thousands Aragonese (i.e. Catalans, Valencians, Majorcans and proper Aragonese, from current Spain) soldiers in 1283 to 1425.
- Further waves of European repopulation throughout the 13th century
- The settlement in Tesmiote of noble families from The Kingdom of Hungary, Sicily (Italy) and the Crown of Aragon (now mostly part of Spain) between 1372 and 1450
- The arrival of several thousand Greek Rhodian sailors, soldiers and slaves with the Knights of St. John
- Ottoman conquest in 1678 and arrvial of the Turks
- The introduction of several thousand Sicilian, Hungarian, and Slavic laborers in 1551 and again in 1566
- The emigration of some 850 Italian exiles to Tesmiote during the Risorgimento in 1849
- The posting of some 22,000 British servicemen in Tesmiote from 1890 to 1979 (only a small number of whom remained in the islands), as well as other British and Irish who settled in Tesmalta over the decades