Slavery is one of the oldest and most persistent institutions of humankind. It was already well established four millennia ago when it was mentioned in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Today it has been formally abolished almost everywhere, but there are still reckoned to be some 30 million people living in some form of forced labour. For most of human history slavery was regarded as an economic necessity, one of many relationships of dependence which were accepted as facts of life.

The current obsession with British and American involvement has concentrated attention on the Atlantic slave trade. This has masked the involvement of other significant actors. Foremost among them are the Islamic kingdoms of the Middle East. Islamic slavery is poorly documented. Anecdotal evidence is plentiful but may be untypical. Reliable statistics are scarce. But there is little doubt that the slave markets of North Africa and Constantinople were for centuries by far the largest in the world. Justin Marozzi’s Captives and Companions is a successful attempt to fill this gap.

The Quran has a lot to say about slavery. It deprecates the ill-treatment of slaves and attaches a high moral value to their emancipation. But it acknowledges the legitimacy of slavery and of the sexual exploitation of enslaved women. When challenged by European powers in the 19th century, Islamic rulers often cited the authority of their faith. In our own day, the so-called Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, and Boko Haram in northern Nigeria, have both justified their revival of slavery and forced concubinage on the founding texts of Islam.

The Arabs, like later generations of Europeans, looked down on black Africans as inferiors for whom slavery was thought to be a natural fate. But, unlike Atlantic slavery, which was exclusively sourced from sub-Saharan Africa, Islamic slavery was racially........

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