Hottentotta is one of the most widely distributed genera of the family Buthidae, with species present throughout Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and in Asia to Pakistan and India.
It is perhaps the main reason why this genus has never been revised and published data are scattered in many short, often faunistically oriented articles. The most extensive work, dealing with African species, was published by Vachon & Stockmann (1968).
Pocock published a series of papers on the Asian species between 1889 and 1903, and Tikader & Bastawade (1983) concentrated on the Indian species, which however due to lack of comparisons with taxa from other regions they transferred to the genus Mesobuthus and did not even compare them with species today assigned to Mesobuthus.
This led to problems in defining Hottentotta, described as a subgenus by Birula (1908). Most citations are linked with its synonym Buthotus Vachon, 1949, which was used for all species of Hottentotta Birula until 1985. More recent treatments of various populations led to formation of two other subgenera, Buthotus (Balfourianus) Vachon, 1979 (with the type species Buthus socotrensis Pocock, 1889) and Hottentotta (Deccanobuthus) Lourenço, 2000 (with the type species Hottentotta geffardi Lourenço, 2000).
It is possible to trace several complexes of Hottentotta that, without knowledge of other species, look like separate subgenera. However, a comprehensive study of all the species leads me to conclude that subgeneric divisions of Hottentotta are not justified.
It is clear that Hottentotta is close to Mesobuthus, and only a future revision of the latter will enable us to more accurately determine the mutual relationship of these two genera.