Captives and Companions: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World by Justin Marozzi instant download

Captives and Companions: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World by Justin Marozzi instant download

The definitive history of the slave trade in the Islamic world—a story that has been overshadowed by its notorious, but shorter-lived, Atlantic counterpart.
Slavery in the Islamic world has a long, complex, and controversial history. In the earliest days of Islam, Arab Muslims enslaved men, women and children as the spoils of war. In the following centuries, young boys were imported to imperial Islamic courts in enormous numbers. Some were castrated to serve as eunuch guardians of sacred spaces, from the imperial harem of Istanbul to the Prophet's Mosque in Medina. Others were "harvested" by the Ottomans to serve as Janissaries, the sultan's elite infantry unit. Some even rose to the highest levels of political and military command, making a mockery of their slave status. For wom leading concubines became powerful figures in their own right. In the ninth-century Golden Age of Baghdad, the most beautiful and accomplished courtesans were among the richest, most...