The History of Islamic Slavery Should be Better Known
11th September 2025
The ultimate in status differentiation is the slave relationship. The slave has no agency, while the slave-owner has full agency for two. Leaving aside the special case of contract slavery, the general point about enslavement is that it reduces human freedom to the point where only death can exceed it in terms of general freedom reduction.
The anti-slavery movement is one of the very, very few good causes which the sane majority in civilised countries almost unanimously supports. The mystery for most people is that we are told the worst slavers were the Europeans who transported slaves from Africa to America for three hundred years when in fact slavery in the Islamic world has lasted since the time of the Prophet, which was fourteen hundred years ago. Over the piece, many more people were enslaved by Arabs and Turks than by Europeans. So why have we heard so little about Islamic slaving?
I cannot answer that question, but I can point to an excellent book which tells the story: Captives and Companions: a History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World, by Justin Marozzi. Published in July this year, it could hardly be more up to date. The author is an experienced Islamologist and traveller in Arab lands. Marozzi’s base is the University of Buckingham where he is “Senior Research Fellow in Journalism and the Popular Understanding of History.” For myself, I never knew that there was any significant popular understanding of history—otherwise how could the slavery issue have become so distorted in the public mind?
I have to laugh every time I see a black person with an Arabic name.