by Giles Milton
He and the other six were also placed under the command of a black guard. They were then marched across the courtyard and escorted to a large door that opened onto an underground passage. This, in turn, led into a storehouse called the Koubbat el-Khayyatin, a subterranean labyrinth “where the tailors work and the armoury is kept.” Built on an impressive scale, it contained enough military hardware to equip the sultan’s 150,000-strong standing army. A English visitor described it later as being “near a quarter of a mile long” and filled with “great quantities of arms in cases.”
Thomas Pellow and the others were “directly employed in cleaning the arms.” Moulay Ismail was immensely proud of his arsenal, much of which had been pillaged from captured Christian vessels, and demanded that every pike and musket be kept in immaculate condition. From dawn till dusk, Pellow and his comrades worked alongside hundreds of other European slaves employed in repairing weaponry and cleaning gunlocks. The work was carried out in near-darkness, for the only light came from tiny holes that perforated the great vaulted ceiling.
Pellow was not kept in the armory for long. Just a short time after he had been sent there, a guard arrived and ordered him to lay down his tools. “I was taken out of the armoury,” he later wrote, “and was given by the emperor to Muley Spha, one of his favourite sons.”
This was the worst possible news. Moulay es-Sfa was a most unsavory individual who displayed a sneering contempt toward his European slaves. It is not clear as to why he selected young Pellow to join his household, for he had no need for any more slaves. Pellow was given futile tasks to perform, “run[ning] from morning to night after his horse’s heels.”
Moulay es-Sfa kept a close eye on his new captive and soon realized that he was an uncommonly bright young lad. Instead of beating him, as was his custom, he amused himself by trying to convince Pellow to convert to Islam. “He often prompted me to turn Moor,” noted young Thomas, “and told me, if I would, I should have a very fine horse to ride on and I should live like one of his esteemed friends.” But Pellow steadfastly refused to consider converting to Islam. He had been brought up in the Protestant faith of his forefathers and abhorred the idea of apostasy, even at the promise of better treatment.
Moulay es-Sfa grew irritated by Pellow’s stubbornness and offered him bribes in return for his conversion. But still his young slave refused to countenance the idea and told him so quite bluntly. “I used to reply that as that was the only command wherein I could not readily gratify him, I humbly hoped that he would be pleased, of his great goodness, to suspend all future thought that way.” He added that he was “thoroughly resolved not to renounce my Christian faith” and said that he would continue to resist his pleas, “be the consequence what it would.”
Pellow’s obstinacy needled Moulay es-Sfa, who was accustomed to being obeyed by his slaves. One day, after Pellow had once again refused to convert, Moulay es-Sfa decided to punish his recalcitrant captive. “‘Then,’ said he, in a most furious and haughty manner, ‘prepare yourself for such torture as shall be inflicted on you, and the nature of your obstinacy deserves.’” Suddenly fearing for his safety, Pellow begged to be spared a beating. When Moulay es-Sfa dismissed his pleas with a contemptuous sneer, Pellow entreated him, “on my knees, not to let loose his rage on a poor, helpless, innocent creature.” But Moulay es-Sfa had lost all patience with this pertinacious Cornish ship boy and relished the opportunity to make him suffer for his faith. “Without making any further reply,” wrote Pellow, “[he] committed me prisoner to one of his own rooms, keeping me there several months in irons, and every day most severely bastinading me.”
This punishment, used widely throughout Barbary, inflicted terrible pain. Almost every surviving slave account mentions it, and there were very few captives who avoided a bastinading. The ankles of the condemned slave were strapped together with rope, and he was suspended upside down so that his neck and shoulders were just resting on the ground. “Then comes another lusty, sturdy knave,” wrote William Okeley, a British captive in Algiers, “and gives him as many violent blows on the soles of the feet as the council shall order.” Slaves elsewhere in North Africa were accustomed to receive forty or fifty blows; in Morocco, they were often given many more. On one occasion, Moulay Ismail ordered two slaves to be given 500 bastinadoes each. “[This] put the hip of one of them out,” wrote Father Busnot, who was a witness to the event, “but it was set again some time after by the violent operation of a second bastinado.”
Pellow’s beatings were brutal affairs. They were personally administered by Moulay es-Sfa, who took delight in thrashing him senseless. He would work himself into a terrible rage, “furiously screaming in the Moorish language, ‘Shehed, shehed! Cunmoora, Cunmoora! In English, Turn Moor! Turn Moor,’ by holding your finger.” This simple signal—raising one finger to the sky—was all that was required by Christian slaves to show that they agreed to apostatize. To many Muslims, it was a signal that they denied the Holy Trinity.
For week after week, Moulay es-Sfa tormented his young slave, beating him until his skin was bruised and welted. “Now is my accursed master still more and more enraged,” wrote Pellow, “and my tortures daily increasing.” He was denied food for days on end. Then, when he was eventually allowed to eat, he was given only bread and water. “I was,” wrote Pellow, “through my severe scourging, and such hard fare, every day in expectation of its being my last.” After months of abuse, the prospect of death no longer frightened him. “I should certainly then have dy’d a martyr, and probably thereby gained a glorious crown in the kingdom of heaven.”
Moulay es-Sfa’s treatment of Pellow—and his desire to secure his conversion to Islam—was not unusual. Throughout Barbary, there were slave owners who pressurized their slaves into renouncing Christianity and adopting the religion of their new land. They paid particular attention to their younger captives and gained great kudos from owning slave converts, particularly if they were masons, blacksmiths or professional soldiers.
Pellow was unfortunate in having a slave master who was determined to achieve his conversion to Islam, even if it resulted in his death. “My tortures were now exceedingly increased,” he wrote, “burning my flesh off my bones by fire, which the tyrant did, by frequent repetitions, after a most cruel manner.” After months of ill treatment, young Thomas Pellow was unable to endure any more pain. Battered and half starved, his spirit was as broken as his wretched body. When Moulay es-Sfa next came to torment the lad, Pellow broke down in tears. “I was at last constrained to submit,” he wrote, “calling upon God to forgive me, who knows that I never gave up the consent of the heart.”
Pellow would always protest that he had converted under duress and that he had not wished to abjure his Christian faith. Yet he surely knew that this event marked a turning point in his life. In raising his forefinger to the sky, albeit unwillingly, he had forever turned his back on his family, his country and his past. He had also forfeited the right to be redeemed by his home government, who considered those who apostatized to be beneath contempt.
This was something that the Algiers slave, Joseph Pitts, had discovered to his cost. “You must know,” he wrote, “that when a Christian slave turns Mohammetan, there can be no ransom for him.” Nor was he likely to be set free by his owner, as many converts wrongly assumed. “‘Tis an error among some,” continued Pitts, “ … that as soon as ever a Christian turns Turk, he [thinks he will be] emancipated or become free.” He said it was extremely rare for slave converts to be released. “I have known some that have continued slaves many years after they have turned Turks,” he wrote, “nay some, even to their dying day.” Very few were treated with any respect after converting to Islam; Pitts cited his own case as an example and a warning. “[I] suffered a great deal of cruel usage,” he wrote, “and was then sold again.”
It was nevertheless common for slave converts to be accorded much pageantry on the day of their apostasy. Germain Mouette describes how in Morocco they were “walk’d about
the town on horseback in triumphant manner, with the noise of drums and trumpets.” In Algiers, and elsewhere in North Africa, such ceremonies were even more extravagant. The new convert was given splendid new clothes and loaned a finely caparisoned horse. “He is also richly habited and hath a turbant on his head,” wrote Pitts.
He was then marched around the city accompanied by stewards and sergeants. These held “naked swords in their hands, intimating thereby … that if he [the convert] should repent, and show the least inclination of retracting what he had declared … he deserved to be cut in pieces.” Some slave converts reported having to perform a humiliating renunciation of Christianity before the ceremonies were over. They were made to “throw a dart to the picture of Jesus Christ in token of disowning him as the saviour of the world.”
Thomas Pellow’s apostasy had been made under duress, depriving him of any right to such pageantry. The only tangible sign that he had converted was his forced circumcision, a humiliating and painful operation that was often performed in public. Father Pierre Dan was the first to write about such surgery—more than eighty years earlier—informing his readers that in Algiers the surgeon “cuts the foreskin of the unfortunate renegade in the presence of everyone.” He added that unlike the Jews, who “only cut a little bit of the skin of the foreskin,” the Barbary Muslims were prone to “cut it entirely, which is extremely painful.”
The operation was usually a botched affair and a cause of such loss of blood that the convert was obliged to take to his bed for several weeks. Only when fully recovered did he get to enjoy the Muslim slave woman he was invariably given as a wife.
Moulay es-Sfa continued to beat Thomas Pellow as he was recovering from his circumcision, in punishment for his refusal to wear Moroccan dress. “I was kept forty days longer in prison,” wrote Pellow, “on my refusing to put on the Moorish habit.” When fresh beatings opened old sores, he decided that his “very foolish obstinacy” was futile. “Rather than undergo fresh torments, I also complied with it [the dress], appearing like a Mahometan.” His head was shaved, his old clothes were taken away and he was given a long woolen djellaba.
News of Pellow’s conversion eventually reached Moulay Ismail, who was always delighted to hear of slaves who had abjured their Christianity. He ordered him to be released from prison and suggested that Pellow should be “put to school, to learn the Moorish language and to write Arabic.” But Moulay es-Sfa ignored this request and continued to mistreat his slave, cursing him for remaining a “Christian dog” and thrashing him at regular intervals. This infuriated the sultan, who summoned Moulay es-Sfa to his palace. Scarcely a word passed between them before Moulay Ismail motioned to his black guard and Moulay es-Sfa was “instantly despatched, by … breaking his neck.” Pellow suggested that this summary execution was punishment for the treatment that Moulay es-Sfa meted out to his slaves, but it is far more likely that the sultan was disgusted by his son’s disobedience, which he would have viewed as a direct challenge to his authority. Anyone who refused to defer to Moulay Ismail was in danger of losing his head. Moulay es-Sfa was not the first of the sultan’s numerous sons—nor would he be the last—to be killed on an apparent whim.
SULTAN MOULAY ISMAIL’S slaves came from virtually every corner of Europe. There were Frenchmen and Dutchmen held in Meknes, as well as Greeks, Portuguese and Italians. A few came from Ireland and Scandinavia; some were from as far afield as Russia and Georgia. But the largest group was formed by the sultan’s Spanish slaves, which usually numbered several thousand.
These men and women were also the most miserable. Many had been seized more than a decade earlier, and some of the younger captives had spent the greater part of their lives in Meknes. The most wretched of all was the handful of survivors who had been seized during the siege of Mamora. The stories of their capture—which had occurred in 1681, thirty-five years earlier—would haunt all who were brought to Meknes in the summer and autumn of 1716.
The garrison fortress of Mamora had been one of a string of Spanish settlements on the Moroccan coastline. Now known as Mehdiya, it occupied a strategic position on the country’s Atlantic shore and also stood guard over the mouth of the River Sbu, which curled inland almost as far as Meknes. The troops posted to Mamora quickly discovered that they were encircled by well-equipped forces who launched constant attacks on their undermanned defenses. They were also dependent on Spain for all their military supplies and provisions. Food was on occasion so scant that the soldiers only kept starvation at bay by eating dogs, horses, cats and rats.
In the blinding heat of midsummer, the sluggish river cast a terrible spell over the Spanish garrison. The sticky mudflats provided a breeding ground for swarms of malarial mosquitoes, and disease and sickness lurked in stagnant pools and marshy backwaters. “The excessive heat renders the air very infectious,” wrote Simon Ockley, “so that in summertime, ‘tis a most unwholesome and pestilential place.”
According to the Mamora survivors, the story of their capture began in the spring of that fatal year. The heatwave had set in unusually early and men had begun to weaken before April had run its course. One member of the Spanish garrison was so fearful of a lingering death in this pestilential hellhole that he defected to the Moroccans and confirmed to Moulay Ismail “that most of the garrison was ill and dying of hunger, and with a little effort he could take it.” The sultan acted immediately. He ordered Kaid Omar—still smarting over his defeat by English forces outside Tangier—to head for Mamora with a battalion of crack troops.
Kaid Omar had learned much from his battles against the English. His tactic against Mamora was to break the enemy’s spirit with a lightning attack on their outer ring of defenses, then to offer the garrison inside the option of surrender or death. He advanced on the town with great swagger. First, “he forced the spiked palisade which stretched from the city walls to the river banks.” Then, as darkness descended, he succeeded in capturing two of the shoreside towers.
The Moroccan commander knew that the garrison was demoralized and hoped to seize the rest of the town without firing another shot. He sent an extraordinary offer to Mamora’s governor, Don Juan Penalosa y Estrada, promising that the Spanish soldiers would not be sold into slavery if they surrendered unconditionally. “Although they would be captives,” he said, “they would spend their days without working, until the first redemption.”
It was a shrewd move on the part of the kaid. When the sickly garrison heard they would be treated as prisoners of war, rather than slaves, they agreed with one voice to surrender. The Spanish governor was horrified and urged them to fight, but his remonstrance fell on deaf ears. So did the pleas of the resident monks, who warned the troops not to trust Kaid Omar’s promises. They insisted that everyone would be put in chains and would “either die in the irons of cruel captivity, like those in Meknes, or lose their souls.” The soldiers refused to listen, and the governor was left with no option but to hoist a white flag. Kaid Omar entered the city that same day and reiterated his promise to free all of his captives just as soon as ransom money arrived from Spain.
Moulay Ismail was delighted when he received the news of Kaid Omar’s success. He presented the messenger with one hundred gold ducats, then set out with his cavalry for Mamora. The Spanish governor was forced to congratulate the sultan on his military success and suffered the indignity of having to kiss his boots. He then watched in silence as Moulay Ismail entered the citadel in triumph and formally took possession.
Moulay Ismail was amazed by the arsenal of captured weapons, which included eighty-eight bronze cannon, fifteen iron cannon, firepots, muskets and gunpowder. “It was more,” wrote Mouette, “than he had in the rest of his kingdom.” The sultan prostrated himself and gave thanks to God for his victory. He then sent the Spanish governor to Larache, sixty miles to the north, to inform the garrison that it was his next target.
Moulay Ismail was particularly pleased by the captured Spanish troops and civilians, who included “fifty poor girls
and women.” He saw no reason to honor Omar’s promises and had no intention of allowing these 2,000 captives to be redeemed. He needed them for his construction works at Meknes and sent them to the imperial capital. The majority converted to Islam after being brutally beaten by their slave-drivers. A large number had died, but a handful of survivors were still being held in the slave pens when Captain Pellow and his men arrived in the autumn of 1716.
The capture of Mamora provided a huge boost to Moulay Ismail, for it proved that the great European powers were no longer invincible. The sultan’s soldiers were exultant in victory and, according to one English witness, became extremely “sawcy.” They began drawing up plans for the capture of Larache.
The Larache campaign was delayed by years of civil war and it was not until 1688 that the sultan was able to pitch his forces against the citadel. Hoping to cow the Spanish garrison into submission, he dispatched a massive force under the capable command of Kaid Ahmad ben Haddu al-Rifi. The kaid ordered his forces to undermine a section of the battlements, then detonated a huge quantity of gunpowder. The ensuing fireball enveloped the Spanish powder magazine, causing a terrific explosion. As the dust settled, Kaid Ahmad’s troops poured through a large breach in the walls.
What happened next is unclear. Several accounts assert that the town’s Spanish priests urged the garrison to capitulate. The English writer John Braithwaite claimed that the most vocal calls for surrender came from “the friars, who began to be a little pinched in their bellies.” Others blamed the Franciscan padre Gaspar Gonzales who had been sent to Meknes to negotiate with the sultan. He returned with the news that Moulay Ismail promised to release everyone in Larache if they handed over their citadel to his forces.
The 1,734 Spanish soldiers and civilians surrendered unconditionally—an indication of just how miserable conditions were in Larache. “‘Tis a terrible life,” wrote Braithwaite, “little better than slaving, to be obliged to live in such a small garrison, always in war … and no supplies of provisions but by sea.” The surrendering soldiers clung to the hope that the sultan would honor his word but soon realized that they had made a terrible misjudgment. They were “disarm’d, beaten and very ill us’d,” before being sent to Meknes under armed guard. These Moroccan guards forced their captives to drag behind them the great guns of Larache, along with all the other weaponry, muskets and powder. These war trophies included one monumentally large cannon, known to the Moroccans as al-kissab (the reed), which was thirty-five feet long and took four men—arms outstretched—to encircle its breech.