While much attention is rightly given to the transatlantic slave trade, a darker, often ignored chapter of history involves the enslavement of over one million white Europeans by Muslim powers
from the 1500s to the 1800s.
Historian Justin Marozzi’s book Captives and Companions reveals the brutal reality of this trade. Thousands of Europeans—including Britons, Spaniards, Icelanders, and even Japanese—were captured in coastal raids by North African pirates, particularly from Algiers, and sold into slavery across the Islamic world.
One such captive was Thomas Pellow, an English boy seized at age 11 and enslaved for 23 years by Moroccan Sultan Moulay Ismail, who kept tens of thousands of European and African slaves. Pellow endured torture, forced conversion, and later led slave-hunting expeditions himself under compulsion.
Muslim slave traders not only targeted Europeans but also conducted a massive African slave trade, predating and outlasting the Atlantic one. Eunuchs—boys castrated for harem service—were in high demand, despite the procedure killing tens of thousands yearly.
Marozzi and others argue this history is often downplayed due to modern political sensitivities. Yet, slavery in the Muslim world persisted into the 20th century—and in some places like Mali, it still exists. Marozzi met a former slave named Hamey, who described being beaten and cast out for resisting the system that had enslaved his family for generations.
British efforts in the 19th century, including naval patrols, helped suppress both Atlantic and Arab slave trades. But the legacy—and reality—of slavery in some Muslim regions remains.
As historian Robert Tombs notes, “At one time, everyone knew about it. Today, most people are completely unaware.”
l Captives And Companions: A History Of Slavery And The Slave Trade In The Islamic World, by Justin Marozzi, is published by Allen Lane.
Photo by Wikimedia commons.
