Captives and Companions

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,