Slavery in the Islamic world
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Slavery in the Islamic world has a diverse and controversial history. In this episode of a History Extra podcast, historian and journalist Justin Morozi speaks to Emily Briffitt about some of the stories at the heart of his latest book, Captives and Companions, tracing networks of enslavement that stretched from sub-Saharan Africa to Central Asia. He reveals how those who were enslaved became soldiers, labourers, concubines and courtiers, and considers what this complex history tells us about power, faith and human experience across the centuries, right up to the modern day. Slavery has had a long history across a wide geographic spread. So you've chosen to speak about in your book in the context of
the Islamic world. Why do you think slavery in the Islamic world hasn't had the attention that perhaps the transatlantic slave trade has had in more recent years? Why has it been perhaps overlooked? I think there are a number of reasons for that. One, I think, in if you're looking at it from a Western perspective, I think we can say there has been an element of parochialism
And much greater fixation and focus on the Atlantic slave trade, as you've suggested. I mean, in the last 50 years, there have been enormous strides made in our understanding of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the American antibellum South and so on. Correspondingly, there has not been so much progress in the level of historical detail that has come out on slavery in the Islamic world. I think one exception is in the academic world, but that is already by definition a much more select and elite sort of readership, much smaller.
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