Thomas Pellow, a Christian slave of Muslims

Many parts of the Muslim world are dangerous places for Westerners to visit today.

They could be captured, tortured, killed or at best ransomed. In one sense history is repeating itself.

In the centuries between 1480 and 1830 up to one and a quarter million Westerners were captured by North African pirates - the Barbary Corsairs - who terrorised European and American shipping, raided European islands and coastal towns, including the British Isles, and even as far north as Iceland to steal Christians for slavery in Algiers, Morocco, Tripoli and Tunis. Corsairing was partly a reaction to the expulsion of the Moors from Spain in 1492 and thereafter (especially in 1610, as Milton observes, p.12), p. xxv, 'creating an implacable enemy', and so there was 'always an element of revenge'. The expellees 'reinvigorated' North Africa. Perhaps this is a warning against Islamophobia.

Robinson Crusoe

Incredibly, this history is largely forgotten. Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) has a chapter charting the hero's captivity in the Moroccan Corsair port of Sale: 'Our Ship making her Course towards the Canary Islands... was surprised ƒ by a Turkish Rover of Sallee... we ... were carry'd all Prisoners into Sallee, a Port belonging to the Moors... I ... was kept by the Captain... and made his slave'. It was much more likely that a Briton would be captured by the Corsairs than shipwrecked. Perhaps this amnesia is because of political correctness: it does not suit fashionable 'victimology' to remember Africans enslaving and abusing Europeans, rather than vice versa.

'Pirates' is probably the wrong word, since their activities were licensed by the North African rulers who took a share of the spoil in what can only be described as state-sponsored terrorism. Indeed, as Heers observes, the Barbary Corsairs were 'admirals in a total war against Christendom' (p.32). This was particularly true of those who operated under Ottoman leadership in the years up to the 1571 Battle of Lepanto when a pan-European navy crushed the Ottomans, but, even after that, corsairing was an expression of jihad. Heers quotes the most famous corsair, Kheir ed-Din Barbarossa, as stating his desire 'to persecute the Christians'. Milton notes this (p.13), observing that corsairs were termed al-ghuzat - the holy warriors 'engaged in a religious war against the infidel Christians'. Unlike modern Islamist terrorism, which by self-definition is defensive jihad, corsairing was offensive jihad - and theologically, this allowed Muslims to raid Europe as an act of religious war to benefit the Muslims and weaken the infidel 'House of War'.

A Cornish lad

One victim of this jihad was an 11-year-old Cornish lad, Thomas Pellow, sailing for the first time to the Mediterranean on his uncle's ship in 1715, only to be captured and enslaved and brought to Sale, the same port as in Crusoe's story. Milton's book centres on his story, and reads like a gripping novel. It is so moving, enthralling and dramatic that I would ask anyone with contacts in TV or the film industry to urge it be turned into a movie. It is the personal history of what it meant to be a Christian slave in North Africa.

Everything one might have read of the humiliating and cruel aspects of the slave auction of Africans in America was visited on Christians in Barbary. In an analogy with Iraq, many slaves were bought in the hope of their families ransoming them (Milton, p.69). However, to enable his mass construction projects, Sultan Moulay demanded all slaves for himself. Once slaves arrived they were shackled at the ankles and subjected to punches, missiles and religious insults from the crowds (p.72). This was a common feature across Barbary, when locals thanked Allah for their victory over 'Christian dogs'.

Eventually Thomas ended up as a slave to the Moroccan Sultan himself, Moulay Ismail, a kind of Islamic Stalin in terms of tyrannical cruelty, who ruled through terror. Usually Christians were made either galley-slaves, or forced labourers, such as building the Sultan's massive palace that ranged for miles, and it should be noted that Moulay's black overseers treated Thomas's adult crewmen even worse than he suffered, severely whipping them in forced labour works (p.95) - an ironic reflection of the American plantation image.

Protestant faith

However, Thomas avoided this by being given to one of Moulay's sons, another maniac, who 'often prompted me to turn Moor', even bribing him to do so, but Thomas, having been 'brought up in the Protestant faith... abhorred the idea of apostasy, even at the promise of better treatment', and was 'thoroughly resolved not to renounce my Christian faith' (p.80). This enraged the prince who for months proceeded to brutally torture the lad, beating him repeatedly on his feet (the bastinado), starving him, but he lost his fear of death therein, anticipating the prospect of dying 'a martyr, and probably gained a glorious crown in the kingdom of heaven' (p.82). However, the repeated tortures had their effect on the young lad; eventually he succumbed, but he did so 'calling upon God to forgive me, who knows that I never gave up the consent of my heart'.

Under duress

'Pellow would always protest that he had converted under duress and that he had not wished to abjure his Christian faith', and we must remember both his age, his isolation from family and compatriots, and the sadistic torture the Prince imposed on him before we lament his actions. Strictly speaking, it is un-Islamic to force the conversion of any save Arab pagans, so we must be careful to avoid sectarian judgements as well. He certainly continued to show pluck even after his enforced circumcision, by refusing for 40 days to don Moorish garb, until the pressure became too much.

His conversion meant better treatment, but not freedom; it also closed the prospect of ransoming. Once apostatised, the convert forfeited his citizenship. We can only imagine the anguish of a youth enslaved, tortured and deprived of the only hope of release. American captives were usually sincere Christians, and a group released from Algiers in 1681 informed the famous Boston divine Cotton Mather how 'in their slavery, enjoyed the liberty to meet on the Lord's Day Evening' praying together (p.133) and warning each other against apostasy. British slaves in Morocco did likewise, but they were handicapped by Moulay's inability to understand Protestant freedom from ritualistic legalism (p.134f).

After the prince fatally displeased his father, Thomas became a harem guard, and a servant to a royal wife. His devotion to duty impressed the Sultan (p.124) after he even refused the Sultan himself admission to the harem after hours! This was a test of obedience, and the Sultan was delighted that Thomas, unlike other courtiers, had passed with flying colours. Like Joseph, Thomas also declined amorous affections from another of Moulay's wives (p.126). One of Moulay's bizarre eccentricities was a kind of racial eugenics, since mulattos were his most trustworthy slaves, and he 'often forced his white slaves to wed black women' to this end (p.128), but Thomas, when confronted by this demand, facing eight new enslaved women from tropical Africa, boldly beseeched him for a girl of his own colour, and received a pale-skinned pretty Moorish girl of good family. Apparently it was a happy marriage, and she eventually bore him a daughter (p.168), who brought him much comfort and joy. He dreamt of bringing them home to Cornwall - his daughter once said 'that she and her mother would go with me to England and live with her grandmother', but sadly both died before his escape, p. 241.

Thomas went on to be a soldier for the Sultan, leading a brigade of 300 renegades (converts to Islam) fighting rebels. Many renegades had, like Pellow, converted for purely expedient purposes. This is clear from their hunting for boar and procuring of wine from local Jews on their expedition, p. 139. A British Muslim group has published a leaflet boasting that during Elizabeth I's reign, '5,000 English converts were resident in Algiers alone.' It does not reveal in what circumstances most conversions occurred. Others, like the Italian Ali Bicnin, were simply pirates who 'converted' to participate in the plundering of Europe (Wilson, p.43). Some were homosexuals who came to enjoy the relaxed sexuality of Algiers and whose motives for purchasing young captives can be imagined, as can those who took female captives into their harems. They will answer for their offences on the Last Day. Milton notes that true renegades were often the harshest in their treatment of Christian captives. This should remind us that Western converts fighting for the Taliban or Al-Qaida are simply continuing a tradition; whether a noble one depends on one's perspective.

Escape

It was not until 1738, after trekking through the mountains, suffering assault and near death, that Thomas managed to escape, when he reached a port where an Irish captain agreed to aid his escape. On reaching Gibraltar, 'I went to church and returned thanks to Almighty God before the congregation for my deliverance', which deeply moved the congregation (p.263). Eventually he returned to Cornwall, to be greeted by the entire village and his now middle-aged parents, like Jacob weeping in joy for their long-lost son (p.267), who had prayed for his return. Thomas was sure of the source of his survival: 'The almighty protection of a great, good, all-seeing, most sufficient, and gracious God...' (p.268). Writing his account of his slavery, Thomas stated the following:

'The exceeding love and great compassion of God towards mankind in general, shows us how good, gracious and merciful He is to all who love, fear and steadfastly believe in Him, and his son Jesus Christ, our Lord: and how of his great providence, He contrary to all human imagination, and even our own expectations bringeth the prisoner out of captivity, as He hath, of His infinite mercy (in His own appointed time) delivered me, His poor unworthy servant, out of the hands of cruel and bloodthirsty men, after a long and grievous slavery, for the space of almost twenty-three years, in South Barbary, bringing me by the right way to the city where I dwelt, thereby delivering me from my prison and chains, and probably from everlasting death. For ever and ever blessed be His most holy name. AMEN.'

Multi-national force

The finale to this story occurs nearly 80 years later in 1816. Following the Napoleonic Wars, the Concert of Europe finally decided to act against the Corsairs. Europe despatched a British-led multi-national force to end white slavery under Sir Edward Pellew - a Cornishman from the same family as Thomas, and who knew his story. If this were a novel I would think it too far-fetched. Pellew bombarded Algiers - the main corsair port - in the name of 'the cause of Christianity' against 'a horde of fanatics' (p.275), destroying it so thoroughly that the Dey surrendered and released all 1,642 European slaves and forswearing future hostility. Shaken by the display of force, Morocco, Tunis and Tripoli followed suit (p.277).

When we consider how many Europeans and Americans were enslaved, and forcibly converted, it is worth anticipating the fact that when Jesus returns, and the dead in Christ rise, many graves in North Africa will also be opened, and many Thomas Pellows who never escaped Barbary slavery will know the warm embrace of Christ's love and salutation - 'enter into the joy of your Lord!'.

Bibliography
White Gold by Giles Milton (Hodder & Stoughton, 2004), 352 pp.
The Barbary Corsairs: Warfare in the Mediterranean, 1480-1580 by Jacques Heers (Greenhill Books, 2003), 288 pp.
Pirate Utopias: Moorish Corsairs & European Renegadoes by Peter Lamborn Wilson (Autonomedia, NY, 2003), 219 pp.