Serving the Master

This work uses a wealth of sources to paint a practical picture of the experiences of slaves in 19th-century Morocco. Mohammed Ennaji brings to life a panoply of figures, with court cases, travel accounts, and archival documents, demonstrating the cruelty of an institution whose benign features some writers have overemphasized. In contrast to slavery in the Americas, he argues that only a fine line separated the fluid categories of slave and free, and he reveals how slaves' dependence on their masters paralleled free Moroccans' dependence on patrons for survival and social mobility. "Muslim Slavery" offers a clear, readable history that tells the devastating story of slavery in this region, and uses slavery's gradual disappearance in this century as a metaphor for Morocco's move into modernity.