Captives and Companions
A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd
Publishing:2nd Jul '26
£16.99
This title is due to be published on 2nd July, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
This paperback is available in another edition too:
- Hardback£35.00(9780241522158)
Slavery in the Islamic world has a long, diverse and controversial history. Captives and Companions is a brilliant synthesis of history and contemporary reportage that brings to life the voices of the enslaved in stories of eighth-century concubines and ninth-century revolts, thirteenth-century slave soldiers who established dynastic rule over Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, eighteenth-century corsairs and twentieth-century pearl divers in the Gulf. It also has first-hand accounts of this legacy in the twenty-first century, including the depredations of Daesh and continuing hereditary slavery in Mali and Mauritania.
Justin Marozzi traces the extraordinary variety of enslavement in the Islamic world, which ranged from agricultural labour and domestic toil to elite concubinage, guardianship of sacred spaces, political leadership and even military command. He shows how Africa bore the brunt of the demand for slave labour, fuelled throughout the nineteenth century by expanding global markets and commodity chains. Slavers plied African coasts, traders raided inland for human cargo, and millions were marched across the Sahara into captivity. Meanwhile, North African corsairs turned the Mediterranean into a slave-raiding ‘free-for-all’ between Muslims, Christians and Jews.
Taking the reader on an extraordinary historical journey from Baghdad to Bamako, Tripoli to Timbuktu, Istanbul to the Black Sea, this is the riveting human drama of those caught up in one of history’s most remarkable stories.
Drawing on the work of a new generation of Turkish and north-African historians who have challenged “the default setting of denial,” [this] is a monumental revisionist work that will alter views on slavery inside and outside the Islamic world -- Christopher de Bellaigue * Wall Street Journal *
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 mesmerising book, but a profoundly important one too -- Peter Frankopan
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 * The Times *
A remarkably humane work, written in urbane and polished prose. A rare combination of the erudite and the adventurous, the author... provides first-person glimpses into contemporary slavery in Mali, Libya, Tunisia and Mauritania. Marozzi has once again made a meaningful and enjoyable contribution to historical debate -- Bartle Bull * Literary Review *
ISBN: 9780141997650
Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 35mm
Weight: 500g
560 pages