Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption - Annotated by Daniel Vitkus (Paperback)

About the Book

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.

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

[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"

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"

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).