Captives and Companions

A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World

Justin Marozzi

The definitive history of the slave trade in the Islamic world—a story that has been overshadowed by its notorious, but shorter-lived, Atlantic counterpart.

Slavery in the Islamic world has a long, complex, and controversial history. In the earliest days of Islam, Arab Muslims enslaved men, women and children as the spoils of war. In the following centuries, young boys were imported to imperial Islamic courts in enormous numbers. Some were castrated to serve as eunuch guardians of sacred spaces, from the imperial harem of Istanbul to the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina. Others were "harvested" by the Ottomans to serve as Janissaries, the sultan’s elite infantry unit. Some even rose to the highest levels of political and military command, making a mockery of their slave status. For wom leading concubines became powerful figures in their own right. In the ninth-century Golden Age of Baghdad, the most beautiful and accomplished courtesans were among the richest, most celebrated figures of their day. In the twentieth century, more than a thousand years later, their cosmopolitan counterparts were still entertaining Ottoman sultans.

Yet it was Africa which bore the brunt of the Islamic world’s insatiable demand for slave labour. Slavers plied its Mediterranean, Atlantic and Indian Ocean coasts, traders raided inland for human cargo, and millions of enslaved Africans trudged across the Sahara into captivity. Meanwhile, North African corsairs turned the Mediterranean into a slaving free-for-all between Muslims, Christians and Jews.

The sheer longevity of slavery was no less surprising. Arab Muslims adapted and regulated this practice within an Islamic context. Sanctioned by the Prophet Mohammed, legitimated by the Quran and holy law, slavery endured for fifteen centuries. Abolition had few champions and came late in the day—hereditary slavery continues even today in Mali and Mauritania. Captives and Companions takes the reader on an extraordinary historical journey across deserts, continents and oceans, from Baghdad to Bamako, Tripoli to Timbuktu, Istanbul to the Black Sea, and reveals a hidden but vital chapter in our understanding of world civilization.

Justin Marozzi is a former Financial Times and Economist foreign correspondent. His previous books include South from Barbary, Tamerlane, Conqueror of the World, and The Man Who Invented History. His last book, Baghdad: City of Peace, City of Blood won the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize.

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Endorsements & Reviews

"A powerful and important book. A masterly and thoughtful study of human cruelty and endurance." Gerard Russell Financial Times

"An elegant and ambitious synthesis, serving up a scintillating compendium of lives. Gliding through the ages, Marozzi's prose recalls an older tradition of history writing - the effortless fluidity of a John Julius Norwich of Jan Morris. Reading him, one thinks of Tintoretto: vast canvases, mannered style, high drama, narrative drive." Pratinav Anil The Times (London)

"A scrupulously fair, fearless and detailed history." Christopher Hart The Daily Mail

"Superb. A remarkably humane work, written in urbane and polished prose." Bartle Bull Literary Review

"The long history of slavery—far from America’s shores. Journalist Marozzi regrets that Islamic scholars have largely ignored the subject of slavery. In his detailed history, he emphasizes that neither the Bible nor the Koran objects to the institution. [An] expert history." Kirkus Reviews

“An elegant and ambitious synthesis, serving up a scintillating compendium. Marozzi’s prose recalls an older tradition of history writing—the effortless fluidity of a John Julius Norwich or Jan Morris. Reading him, one thinks of Tintoretto: vast canvases, mannered style, high drama, narrative drive.” The Times (London), a Book of the Week

"Impressive, fascinating and even-handed history." The Times, Best Books so Far

"Parts of Justin Marozzi’s Captives and Companions are hard to read and that’s as it should be. We are obsessed with the Atlantic traffic but the mass trade carried on in the Islamic world, sanctioned by the faith, gets far less attention. This book is a necessary corrective." Evening Standard, a "Book of the Week"

"An unsentimental unveiling of a subject that has long been shrouded in scholarly purdah...An elegant and ambitious synthesis, serving up a scintillating compendium of lives. Gliding through the ages, Marozzi's prose recalls an older tradition of history writing - the effortless fluidity of a John Julius Norwich of Jan Morris. Reading him one thinks of Tintoretto: vast canvases, mannered style, high drama, narrative drive." Pratinav Anil, Lecturer in History at the University of Oxford

"A bold, brilliant and timely history that confronts one of the most neglected and uncomfortable subjects in global history. Justin Marozzi brings to life the complexity and humanity of the Islamic world’s entanglement with slavery using an extraordinary range of sources, across more than a millennium and across sweeping geographies. Not just a mesmerizing book, but a profoundly important one too." Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads: A New History of the World