Justin Marozzi

Historian and journalist Justin Marozzi explains the often-overlooked history of slavery in the Islamic world, which ranged from agricultural labour and domestic enslavement through to concubinage, political leadership and even military command.

Marozzi says Africa bore the brunt of demand for slaves, and millions were marched across the Sahara Desert into captivity. North African pirates turned the Mediterranean into a slave-trading free-for-all between Muslims, Christians and Jews. Marozzi recounts stories of 8th-century concubines,13th-century slave soldiers who ruled over Egypt and 20th-century pearl divers in the Gulf. He also tells of 21st-century slavery including the depredations of Daesh and continuing slavery in Mali and Mauritania.

Marozzi has spent most of his professional life in the Muslim world and is a senior advisor to the Middle East Association. His previous books include South from Barbary: Along the Slave Routes of the Libyan Sahara and Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World. Here he talks to Professor Eugene Rogan, professor of modern Middle Eastern history at the University of Oxford and author of The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, 1914-1920.

Part of the festival’s programme of Islamic literature and culture.