These narratives recount the harrowing experiences of Englishmen abducted by the Barbary pirates of North Africa. After being sold into slavery, the narrators succeeded in returning to their homeland where their stories were printed. Never before available in a modern, annotated edition, these tales describe combat at sea, extraordinary escapes, and religious conversion, but they also illustrate the power, prosperity, and piety of Muslims in the early modern Mediterranean. Each narrative is preceded by a brief introduction, and Nabil Matar's genera introduction provides important new information about the historical context of captivity and slavery in North Africa.

At last available in a modern, annotated edition, these tales describe combat at sea, extraordinary escapes, and religious conversion, but they also illustrate the power, prosperity, and piety of Muslims in the early modern Mediterranean.

About the Author
Daniel Vitkus is assistant professor of English at Florida State University. He is the editor of Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England (Columbia, 2000).

Reviews
Piracy, slavery, captivity, and redemption were compelling subjects in the sixteenth and seventeenth century; Daniel J. Vitkus and Nabil Matar have, in this well-edited volume of early English images of the Islamic world, made them equally fascinating to twenty-first-century academic and lay readers... [This] books does a fine job of making primary source material available to, and readable by, a wide audience. -- Carolyn S. Knapp The Historian [T]his collection transcends geographical and disciplinary boundaries, and researchers... will find Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption to be both a useful and timely volume. -- Donna Amelia Vinson Renaissance Quarterly



Book Information
ISBN 9780231119054
Author Daniel Vitkus
Format Paperback
Page Count 416
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press