The Forgotten History of Slavery in the Islamic World

Justin Marozzi is a historian and travel writer whose work has long explored the history of the Islamic world. In his new book, Captives and Companions, he turns to a subject that remains surprisingly under-examined: the history of slavery across Islamic societies. Stretching from the time of the prophet Muhammad to the modern era, the system he describes spanned three continents and lasted for more than a millennium, yet it remains far less familiar to Western audiences than the history of the Atlantic slave trade.

In this conversation, Marozzi and I discuss the scale and complexity of that history and why it has often received comparatively little attention from scholars. We talk about the religious and legal frameworks that governed slavery in Islamic societies, the trans-Saharan caravans that carried enslaved Africans north across the desert, and the Mediterranean world of Barbary corsairs and Christian captives. We also explore how slavery functioned across different Islamic empires, the roles of eunuchs and concubines in royal courts, and the ways economic incentives often shaped the institution as much as theology did.

The conversation also turns to the politics of historical memory. Why has the Atlantic slave trade come to dominate Western discussions of slavery, while other systems receive far less attention? And what happens when historians begin to examine subjects that have long been treated as taboo? Marozzi argues that understanding the full global history of slavery requires looking beyond familiar narratives and confronting uncomfortable facts wherever they appear.

Finally, we discuss the troubling reality that slavery has not entirely disappeared. In places like Mauritania and Mali, forms of hereditary slavery still persist despite being formally illegal. For Marozzi, confronting that reality is part of telling the full global history of slavery—one that extends beyond the Atlantic world and, in some places, into the present.