Captives and companions : a history of slavery and the slave trade in the Islamic world /
Historian Justin Marozzi traces fifteen centuries of slavery across the Islamic world -- an institution as vast and enduring as it was complex. From the early Arab conquests to the Ottoman Empire and beyond, enslaved men, women, and children filled roles as soldiers, eunuchs, courtesans, and concubi...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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New York, NY :
Pegasus Books, Ltd.,
2025.
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| Edition: | First Pegasus Books cloth edition |
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| Summary: | Historian Justin Marozzi traces fifteen centuries of slavery across the Islamic world -- an institution as vast and enduring as it was complex. From the early Arab conquests to the Ottoman Empire and beyond, enslaved men, women, and children filled roles as soldiers, eunuchs, courtesans, and concubines, with some rising to positions of immense power. Marozzi explores how the Islamic slave trade shaped societies from North Africa to the Middle East and Asia, with Africa bearing the greatest toll as millions were captured and sold across deserts and seas. Drawing on sources from Baghdad to Istanbul and beyond, this sweeping history uncovers a long-overlooked system of bondage that persisted for over a millennium and continues to echo in parts of the modern world. "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." -- |
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| Physical Description: | xxxvi, 524 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : maps, illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 459-487) and index. |
| ISBN: | 9781639369737 1639369732 |