Captives and Companions: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World

by Justin Marozzi

A startling exploration of slavery in the Islamic world from the 7th century to the present

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 overlooked stories.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Islam, Middle East, Religion, Africa, Politics

560 pages, Hardcover

Published July 10, 2025

About the author

[Excerpt from http://www.justinmarozzi.com/about/]

Justin is a travel writer, historian, journalist and political risk and security consultant. He has travelled extensively in the Middle East and Muslim world and in recent years has worked in conflict and post-conflict environments such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Darfur. He graduated from Cambridge with a Starred Double First in History in 1993, before studying Broadcast Journalism at Cardiff University and winning a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania to read a Masters in International Relations. After working in the BBC World Service on ‘News Hour’ and BBC Westminster on ‘Today in Parliament’, he joined the Financial Times as a foreign correspondent in Manila, where he also wrote for The Economist. During his time in the Far East, he shared a Winnebago with Imelda Marcos, a helicopter with the Philippine president and his mistress, and a curry with Aung San Suu Kyi whilst under house arrest in Rangoon.

His first book, South from Barbary, was an account of a 1,200-mile expedition by camel along the slave routes of the Libyan Sahara, described by the desert explorer and SAS veteran Michael Asher as “the first significant journey across the Libyan interior for a generation”. His second, Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World, launched in Baghdad in 2004, was the best-selling biography of the world’s greatest Islamic conqueror and a Sunday Telegraph Book of the Year: “Outstanding… Justin Marozzi is the most brilliant of the new generation of travelwriter-historians.”

In 2006, he wrote Faces of Exploration, a collection of profiles of the world’s leading explorers. He has contributed to Meetings with Remarkable Muslims (an interview with the Afghan mujahid hero Ahmed Shah Massoud), The Seventy Greatest Journeys, and most recently The Art of War (essays on Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan and Tamerlane).

His latest book, published in October 2008, is The Man Who Invented History: Travels with Herodotus, based on extensive research in Turkey, Iraq, Egypt and Greece. Apart from a year working for a British security company in Iraq, an encounter with the Grand Mufti of Egypt and an investigation into outwardly religious girls performing oral sex in car-parks in Cairo, one of the many highlights of the Herodotean trail was a retsina-fuelled lunch with the nonagenarian war hero and writer Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor.

Justin is a regular contributor to a wide range of national and international publications, including the Financial Times, Spectator, Times, Sunday Telegraph, Guardian, Evening Standard, Standpoint and Prospect, where he writes on international affairs, the Muslim world and defence and security issues, and has broadcast for the BBC World Service and Radio Four.

Justin is a former member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, where he has also lectured, and an Honorary Travel Member of the Travellers Club.

Reviews

[Bagus · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's the second book I picked up from the 2025 Baillie Gifford Prize's longlist. Justin Marozzi opens this book with a visit to Bamako, Mali, in November 2020. There, he listens to the story of Hamey, a former slave from a village near Kayes, where hereditary slavery is still observed in some rural communities. Hamey recounts how, in August 2018, he was attacked by a group of young men armed with wooden batons and leather whips. What is most disturbing is not only the violence itself, but the public reaction. Instead of intervening, bystanders reportedly cheered and filmed the assault in broad daylight. By beginning with this contemporary account, the author makes clear that slavery is not merely a historical phenomenon but a living issue in certain parts of the world.

The book then takes a broad historical approach to trace the development of slavery in the Islamic world and to explore why vestiges of it persist into the 21st century, despite formal abolition in most modern states. The author is careful to note that slavery long predated Islam and existed in nearly every ancient civilisation, from the Mediterranean world to Africa and Asia. Slavery was already deeply embedded in Arabian society before the rise of Islam in the 7th century. This context is important, as it frames Islam not as the origin of slavery, but as a religious system that emerged within an already slave-holding society.

Early in the book, the author focuses on Bilal ibn Rabah, a former slave of Ethiopian origin who became one of the closest companions of the Prophet Muhammad and is traditionally regarded as Islam’s first muezzin. Bilal was reportedly tortured and persecuted before being freed by Abu Bakr, who would later become the first caliph. His rise to prominence within the early Muslim community illustrates one of the complexities of slavery in Islamic history, namely the possibility, at least in certain cases, of social mobility and integration after emancipation. Bilal’s story is often cited as evidence that early Islamic teachings encouraged the humane treatment and manumission of slaves.

The author argues that Islamic scripture and law regulated slavery rather than abolishing it outright. The Qur’an repeatedly encourages the freeing of slaves as a virtuous act and provides legal frameworks governing their treatment. At the same time, slavery remained permissible under Islamic law. In a society where slavery was already economically and socially entrenched, immediate prohibition may have been unrealistic. However, over the centuries, successive caliphates, sultanates, and empires from the Umayyads and Abbasids to the Ottomans used these legal frameworks to justify and sustain large-scale slave systems. What may have begun as regulation within a particular historical context evolved into institutionalised practice across vast territories.

One of the more debated aspects of the book is its comparison between slavery in the Islamic world and slavery in the Americas, particularly in the 19th-century United States. The author discusses the argument that slavery under Islamic regimes sometimes allowed for manumission and social advancement, citing examples such as former slaves who rose to high office, including several Grand Viziers in the Ottoman Empire. However, he also acknowledges the limits of this comparison. Much of the historical record is derived from elite or slave-owning sources, meaning that the perspectives of enslaved people themselves are often missing. The relative “mildness” sometimes attributed to Islamic slavery must therefore be treated cautiously, especially given the existence of brutal practices such as military enslavement, concubinage, and large-scale slave trading across the Sahara and the Indian Ocean.

Ultimately, the book is well-researched and draws on both Islamic and Western scholarship. It does not shy away from uncomfortable debates about theology, law, empire, and memory. Most importantly, by beginning and ending with contemporary examples, the author reminds us that slavery has not entirely disappeared. Despite formal abolition across the Muslim world in the 19th and 20th centuries (mostly due to Western pressure), forms of hereditary servitude and exploitation persist in some regions.

[Pierre Rembert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Captives and Companions, History of Slavery in the Islamic world by Justin Marozzi
Marozzi’s book on slavery in the Islamic world takes a comprehensive look at how slavery has
been a traditional, constant part of Muslim societies since the religion’s inception. Of course,
the institution pre-existed Islam and has been widespread on all continents and many, if not
most, societies since civilizations began.
As the author points, most attention today goes to the Atlantic slave trade as if it were
somehow unique or the beginning of something rather than, in fact, the ending. Nevertheless
Marozzi is careful to hedge his account with the fact that many Muslim historians claim that
their slavery was different, less terrible — often with similar arguments to what I heard in the
American south in the 1950s.
And in fact, there were differences, principally for slaves who were placed in royal or sultanic
courts, and from there often graduated through complex political intrigues to positions of
power. Particularly notable were enslaved concubines and the eunuchs who guarded the
harem as well as the slave armies that wielded power as sorts of Praetorian guards.
While there was no parallel route to power in the Atlantic plantation structure, there is little
indication that the vast majority of slaves in the Arab empires were any better off than those
sent to America.
As for those who claim the Atlantic slave trade was unique for its racial basis, the book totally
destroys that idea. Subsaharan Africa provided the largest source of slaves for a very long
time, with Arab raiders and local potentates regularly grabbing thousands of black people and
shipping them off to the Middle East or North Africa. To be sure the Arabs and Turks also
enslaved many white Europeans, either raiding the northern Mediterranean coastline or slave
trading with the Caucausus and Asian steppes, particularly for their preferred Circassian
women.
Abolition of slavery was pretty much totally a result of European morality movements. The main
actor was Britain. As the hegemonic world power due to its naval superiority, Britain was the
agent of freedom. One feels that Marozzi is nervous in stating this incontrovertible truth, no
doubt as he worries about his place in the modern academy for whom anything positive about
European colonialism is anathema. So he repeatedly brings up the idea that Britain’s motives
for enforcing abolition were mostly just an excuse to expand its empire. Muslim historians
particularly push this theory. However, it’s clearly mere obfuscation of the fact that Britain’s
zealous anti-slavery stance was a result of overwhelming public opinion at home that
politicians simply couldn’t ignore. It was a grass roots movement originating with evangelical
Christian groups and spreading from there.
Needless to say, Arabs, Ottomans, and other Muslim polities were mystified by the abolitionist
movement and chalked it up to a European superiority complex that created false narratives
about them. This attitude continues today among many Muslim historians and their allies in
Western academia. Even in the face of the evidence that slavery still persist in African, in
places like Mauretania and Mali, there is little recognition of how Islam has historically had a
deep tolerance for slavery.
Marozzi reveals all this and more. I was particularly fascinated by the roots of the current,
brutal, wars in Sudan, and the total racial divide there that harkens back (not very far) to that
country’s centrality in the slave trade.
He mentions, but does not attempt to include other slaving societies such as those in China
(past and present) or the Americas. But as a history of what was probably the biggest and
longest-lived slave culture, his book is well worth a read.

[Yalman Onaran · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shocking history of slavery in the Muslim world. But perhaps a little too wide a net cast for describing today’s work conditions as slavery.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

An ingeniously conceived book that is as much a compendium of historical sultanates and interesting personalities in the Islamic world as it is a discussion of the slave trade. Very informative and well written.

[P. Rohrer-Walsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Confession: I read only the prologue, introduction, and final chapter on modern slavery.

I read this amidst the abduction of Savannah Guthrie's 84-year old mother's abduction, which is certainly a captivity.

I applaud Marozzi's courage to catalogue and analyze the history of slavery in the Islamic World, departing from the already well-documented Atlantic slave trade (as well as others). It's frightening how convince some claim to be that Allah sanctions such torture, rape, demoralization, etc. of our fellow human beings, who are not perceived to be practicing and subscribing to the Islamic faith. Of course, this belief doesn't represent the vast majority of Moslems (and certainly none that I know); but it is another case of ab/using religion for economic and personal gain.

The book ends with 2 massive sections: notes & bibliography. One has to wonder how long it took Marozzi to research this history.

quotes and comments:

One person's legitimate historical inquiry is another's unpardonable offence to the Prophet. xxxii
But what are the enslaved themselves? Where are their voices and why are they invariably crowded out by western, mostly European sources? The fact remains that, for all the strides made by historians in recent decades, the documentary evidence overwhelmingly privileges these external commentators. When they do appear, which is all too infrequently, the voices of enslaved men and women can merge with extraordinary force and clarity, whether it is a full-length captivity narrative published in the USA, A1 paragraph manumission statement delivered to a British official in the Gulf, or testimony given to police investigators in Cairo. Yet a fundamental caveat remains: even when they do appear, such voices tend to make themselves heard indirectly, mediated by mostly European and American travelers, explorers, diplomats, officials, abolitionists, journalists, editors, and publishers. Xxiii-xxxiv

" It is probably true to say that for every gallon of ink that has been spilt on the transatlantic slave trade and its consequences, only one very small drop has been spilt on the study of the forced migration of black Africans into the Mediterranean world of Islam and the broader question of slavery within Muslim societies.” ~ John Hunwick

It does not include the populous Muslim nations and communities of South Asia and Southeast Asia, whose long histories of slavery could easily fill another book in their own right. 2
It remains the case, however, that “relatively little” is known today about agricultural slavery and further research in this area is needed. In the absence of more information, it is inevitable that there has been far greater focus on “elite” forms of slavery, including royal concubines, eunuchs and slave soldiers. 5

Why Should any of this matter? Why is this apparently obscure history worthy of attention? These are questions a reasonable person might well ask period to which the answer must be that it is essential to understand this immense network of human trafficking for a number of reasons. First, it's sheer scale shows that this was no fringe affair. In terms of the numbers of people enslaved it was on a par with the slave trade to the Americas. Second comment it was not a short lived business that fizzled out after a brief flourish long ago. It lasted almost 1400 years, far longer than the Atlantic trade. And finally, it is necessary to examine it because it continues--and even flourishes--in parts of the Muslim world today, openly in some places, behind closed doors and through private messages on smartphone apps in others. This will be discussed in the final chapter in modern slavery. Islam did not conceive slavery in the Middle East, any more than Christianity advised it on the shores of the Atlantic. It is just as wrong to call this phenomenon the Muslim slave trade as it would be to call its Atlantic version the Christian slave trade. Muslim Arabs, surrounded by the ancient slaving civilizations of the Byzantines and Persians, inherited the traditions of slavery from their Pagan Arabian forebears and then adapted and refined the institution in the Islamic contacts. One of the defining features of slavery as it evolved in the Islamic world, which contributes greatly to its extraordinarily rich and compelling history, was the sheer fluidity of slave status. This dynamic environment, in which manumission and the prospect of freedom so often hung within reach, enabled some men and women to shrug off their servitude and rise to the commanding heights of society--as political leaders and military commanders, as singers, poets, and musicians, who could be the richest figures of their age. Unlike the plantation model of the American South, slavery here was also, in the words of one recent study, “indescribably various and differentiated.” It encapsulated the broadest, at times bewildering, range of occupations, from crippling agricultural work, highly skilled artisan labor and domestic drudgery to elite concubinage, guardianship of sacred spaces, political leadership and military command .8-9

Language Evolves continually. In recent years, the language of slavery studies, overwhelmingly focused on American slavery and the Atlantic slave trade has moved away from the ward “slave” to “enslaved person.” “Slave” normalizes and ratifies the condition of slavery as a state of being, rather than an active process of dehumanization and bondage imposed on a person or people,” says the National Catalog of the USA. “In contrast, “enslaved person” and it's variance emphasized the condition in which kidnapped Africans and their descendants were kept while reinstating their person hood, and often their gender, age, or profession. Mindful of readers tackling a book of this length, I use both terms throughout. 11

Daesh: Syria & Iraq—"This is not “modern slavery,” its’ the resurrection of chattel slavery the ownership of humans y others,” William Wiley, the executive director of CIJA, tells me. 395
Although she had previously worked in several violent conflicts, Bangura said she had never witnessed anything like this period the sadism and inhumanity were incomprehensible. We Struggled to understand the mentality of people who commit such crimes,” she said. Only when listening to the perpetrators in their own words, perhaps, does their mentality become easier to comprehend, if not to hear. In their own minds, perverted or not, they were merely following the practices allowed by their religion and sanctioned by holy law. 395

Source: Daesh (ISIS) terrorist group’s English language Dabiq magazine article: “One should remember that enslaving the families of the juffar [infidels] and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the Sharia that if one were to deny or mock, he would be denying or mocking the verses of the Quran and the narrations of the Prophet…and thereby apostatizing from Islam.” 398

Irrespective of the published rules, the supposedly ordered system predictably degenerated into a vicious sexual and financial free for all in which many fighters raped and abused numerous women and then enriched themselves by extorting money from the girls and women's families who were desperate to buy back their children and relatives. It was a human tragedy and a tragedy on an incalculable scale. 399

Although it has been formally abolished in almost every country on earth, the systematic practice of slavery still lingers in some parts of the Muslim world and far beyond. For all the treaties and legislation defined internationally, slavery, like the most resilient weeds, has proved especially difficult to root out. In recent years the problem has gone deeper underground, much of it in the Middle East. There is no talk yet in the Arab world, or in Turkey, of reparations. 4/02
According to the same report, there were an estimated 1.7 million people living in modern slavery in the Arab world in 2023. … The Global Slavery Index records 1.1 million living in modern slavery in the USA and 122,000 in the UK. 403

This is due in part to the widespread kafala, or sponsorship system, in which workers have traditionally not been allowed to change jobs without their employer’s permission, leaving them vulnerable to abuse, exploitation and forced labour. 403

The BBC Team was offered Fatou, a 16 year old girl trafficked from the West African nation of Ghana. The seller boasted that during her six months as a domestic worker she had been given no time off, her phone and passport had been confiscated and she had not been allowed to leave the house alone--all of which were illegal in Kuwait. The UN's Bhoola described it as “the quintessential example of modern slavery. Here we see a child being sold and traded like channel, like a piece of property.” 404

… Saudi government clerk Sheikh Saleh al Fawzan had offered a trenchant and unequivocal defense of the institution in a secretly recorded lecture. “Slavery It's a part of Islam,” the religious leader declared. “Slavery Is part of jihad, and jihad will remain as long as there is Islam.” He dismissed those who argued that Islam had worked to abolish slavery. “They Are ignorant, not scholars. They are merely writers. Whoever says such things is an infidel.” 405

No would argue that pro slavery views are either widespread or mainstream in the Muslim world. They are not. Where they do tend to rise, however, is on the deeply conservative or extremist fringe--in lectures or sermons delivered by clerics, either secretly recorded or publicly proclaimed in mosque or via their online channels. 405

[Doortje · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super interessant boek! Ik wist niet dat slavernij in de islamitische wereld zo sterk verschilde van die van bv. de transatlantische slavernij. Ik zou persoonlijk het boek liever in het Nederlands lezen, omdat het niveau van het Engels samen met de dichtheid aan info soms wel wat veel is, maar omdat het zo interessant was, blijf je uiteindelijk toch doorlezen. Aanrader voor iedereen die wat meer wil leren over deze blinde vlek.

[Rita]

Good summary/review in NRC 13 nov 2025
'Een onthullend boek over hoe religie en racisme slavernij vormgaven in de islamitische wereld'
by Bart Funnekotter

Author born 1970, educated Cambridge. Did lots of journalism.
Several history books.
'Baghdad: City of Peace, City of Blood (2014)' seems the most mentioned.

[Philip · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible read. The history of slavery that is never taught or talked about. Astonishing level of detail about slavery in the very DNA of Islam from day one with the slave owning founder of the religion. A must read.

[Rinie Altena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zo nu en dan te pijnlijk om te lezen maar wel zeer boeiend over de slavernij in de islamitische wereld. Wel in de beargumentering iets teveel herhaling. En juist de werkelijkheid van de slaven zelf in de dagelijkse werkelijkheid van het leven als slaaf in de Arabische wereld onvoldoende doordacht.

[Umar Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good historical overview free of romance

[Redmar Huisman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Een erg goed boek over de vele verschillende vormen van slavernij in de Islamitische wereld. Een absolute aanrader.

[El-Jahiz · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well-researched, thorough and unbiased documentation of slavery in the Muslim world that is seldom discussed. And very readable too!

[Jon Olver · Rating 5 out of 5]

Concise and yet still long, as the history is long. Still, I hope someone does a summary. People need to be more aware that this remains a problem.

[Karwan Fatah-Black]

Mijn recensie verschijnt tzt in Zem Zem.