The roar of vehicles broke the silence. The chariots were not yet visible, hidden as they were by the walls of the fortress of Meknes, but the rumbling grew louder and louder. No one moved in the ceremonial courtyard. The Guardsmen stood erect, their curved damasks glistening in the light. The courtiers were on their knees, their foreheads touching the ground. A few seconds later, Sultan Moulay Ismail of Morocco rode into the courtyard in his gilded chariot. But his chariot was not drawn by horses, but by eunuchs and women.
When the Sultan jumped down from the chariot, he was immediately approached by two large black men. One of them was fanning the flies off the body of the consecrated ruler, the other was holding a large parasol over his head. This was the customary ritual at the audience, and the Sultan took hair-trigger care that they never broke protocol.
On this summer morning, Moulay Ismail hardly noticed the courtiers crawling on the ground. His gaze was fixed on the far corner of the courtyard, where 52 Englishmen stood in a huddle, barefoot and in tattered clothes. They had been captured by Berber pirates and taken to the interior of Morocco to be sold as slaves to the Sultan.
Their fate caused outrage in their homeland, but at the same time demonstrated the impotence of the British government and its navy. It was not the first time such a thing had happened. White slaves from Europe had been traded in North Africa for almost a century.
Among the English captured was the captain of a small ship, Francis John Pellow. Before sailing from Cornwall to Genoa, he had been warned of the dangers lurking in the waters of the Mediterranean, but he did not heed the warnings and included his nephew Thomas Pellow in his crew of six. The boy was only 11 years old when he said goodbye to his father, mother and two sisters.
On that day, the pirates had captured two other ships besides the Francis, and now their terrified crews were huddled in a corner of the yard. “Bono, bono,” the Sultan shouted cheerfully as he groped the sailors’ muscles and looked into their teeth. He was glad that they looked healthy and that he could expect many years of hard work from them. When he came to young Thomas, he whispered something to the guards and the boy was taken away and the others were taken to the fortress. Thus began the first day of the 23-year captivity of the white slave, forgotten by his homeland.
The Sultan’s Palace was huge, called simply Dar Kbira (The Great), and was just one part of a large complex of buildings. The other fifty interconnected buildings housed the Sultan’s 200 concubines, the eunuchs and grand viziers and 10,000 soldiers of the personal guard, there were mosques and gardens full of flowers. Courtyards and paths between buildings were paved with handmade geometric mosaics. All were the work of Christian slaves whose working day lasted fifteen hours.
But Morocco was not the only place in North Africa where white slaves worked. In Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, auctions were held to sell captives from all over Europe; men, women and children. There are even a few manuscripts on their fates. But the most interesting accounts are those written by the slaves. Most of them ended their lives in captivity, but a few managed to escape this fate and return to their homeland. Writing helped them to survive the shock of their return and to reintegrate into a society they thought had forgotten them.
One such extraordinary story was written by Thomas Pellow, who experienced and survived the barbaric splendour of the Sultan’s court and felt the ruthlessness of this ruler. As the Sultan’s personal slave, he witnessed all the court intrigues and took part in expeditions to equatorial Africa as a harem guard. Three times he tried to escape and twice he was sentenced to death.
The pirate town of Salé
In 1627, observers on the Cornish coast watched in amazement as an unknown fleet approached. This was the first time that Berber pirates had landed on the south coast of Cornwall and attacked the villages there. Dressed in Moorish robes and wielding curved handguns, they plundered, raped and took prisoners, spreading fear and trembling among the population. The captives were transported to the fortified town of Salé on Morocco’s Atlantic coast, at the northern mouth of the Bou Regreg river.
The ancient city of Rabat stood at the southern end of the Bou Regrega estuary. It was almost deserted around 1600 and would have slowly fallen into ruin had it not been for the expulsion of one million Moors from Spain by King Philip III of Spain in 1610 – the last act of the Spanish Reconquista. A few thousand of the expelled Moors settled in the abandoned Rabat, rebuilt it and called it New Salé. The exiles did not forget the injustice done to them by the Spaniards. They allied themselves with pirates from Algeria and Tunisia, attacked settlements on the Spanish coast and plundered passing merchant ships.
Around 1700, there were so many English prisoners in Morocco that King Charles I of England sent his envoy John Harrison to Salé to negotiate the release of the captives. This was an extremely dangerous journey. Harrison had to make sure that he was not caught by pirates and that he made his way to Salé undetected and made contact with the pirates. He disembarked at Tetouan on the Mediterranean coast and, disguised as a Moor, set off on foot southwards.
Hungry, barefoot and always thirsty, he arrived in Salé in March 1726. He was very surprised to be received with the greatest courtesy. After much negotiation, he took home only 190 exhausted and sick English prisoners instead of the 2 000 he had calculated to be in Morocco. Where were they, he asked, and learned that many had died, others had been taken to Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli and sold, and many English slaves had been bought by the Sultan of Morocco. These, according to the story, were the worst off.
For years, the English have been trying to free their captured compatriots. As early as 1637, a fleet of six battleships was sent over Salé, bombarding the town and returning home with 230 freed Englishmen. Others tried to ransom them in Algeria, Tunis, Cairo and even Istanbul. Some were found to be unreachable in Arabia and even in Yemen. The English hoped that better times would come after 1672. The reigning Sultan of Morocco had died, and Europe hoped that in the chaos that was emerging, it would finally be able to put an end to the white slave trade.
He hurried through the night over rocky landscapes and dry riverbeds. With a sharp stick, he urged the camel to race faster and faster. Shortly before dawn on 14 April 1672, he finally saw his goal. In the distance, he saw the moonlit fortified gates of Meknes and its minarets. He drove deep into the souk until he came to the nailed gates of the Viceroy. He woke the sleepy guard and demanded to be taken before the Viceroy, Mula Ismail.
Twenty-six-year-old Mulaj Ismail was not known for his good humour, but he could not hide a slight smile this time. His brother – the reigning Sultan – was dead through no fault of his own. He celebrated the end of Ramadan with a lavish feast, helping himself to good cheer with a forbidden bottle of alcohol. He then mounted his horse, rode through the gardens of his Marrakech palace, fell from his horse and hit his head on a stone pillar. By the time his attendants arrived, Sultan Moulay al-Rashid was dead.
Mullah Ismail knew he had to hurry and act wisely to secure his throne. He had 83 brothers and half-brothers and countless nephews. Although he was considered the heir apparent, he knew that the Sultan’s death would cause rebellions and killings among his brothers, and he was not sure that he would be the victor.
He was not wrong. After hearing that Moulay Ismail had declared himself Sultan, one of his brothers and one of his nephews did the same. But after five years of turmoil and warfare, Moulay Ismail defeated his opponents and consolidated his power over much of Morocco. Even the pirates of Salé recognised him as their ruler, and Moulay Ismail knew that they would provide him with valuable slaves from the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean.
He already had plans for how he could get new slaves. The entire coast of Morocco was dotted with enclaves and fortified outposts of Europeans. Tangier, Ceuta, Larache, Mamora, Erzila and Mazagan had a total population of around 10,000, and it was these that Moulay Ismail intended to enslave.
Captivity
The Francis leaves Falmouth almost unnoticed. There were no waving crowds and no mothers wiping their teary eyes. She weighed anchor, the sailors pulled the ropes on board, and within an hour the Cornish coast had disappeared over the horizon. She was bound for Genoa, where she would deliver a cargo of sardines. Seven other people were on board, alongside the experienced captain, John Pellow. Eleven-year-old Thomas Pellow, the captain’s nephew, was at sea for the first time. He could no longer bear the sitting and discipline of school benches. His parents objected to his departure, but in the end they had to give in. Everyone on board realised how dangerous the voyage was, as the pirates of Salé began to reappear in the Atlantic.
The most dangerous part of the journey, even in calm weather, was the passage through the Strait of Gibraltar. But Francis landed happily in the port of Genoa, sold her cargo of sardines and bought things to sell for a profit in Holland. The return journey through the Strait of Gibraltar was also uneventful, and the ship soon entered the Bay of Biscay and met the English ship George, full of oil which she had bought in Genoa. The sailors were looking forward to seeing the English coast.
The notorious Captain Ali Hakem sailed from Salé with Captain el-Mediouni. Both knew that surprise was the main weapon of success. They had been in pursuit of the Francis and the George for a long time. They knew that the low pirate ships could not be seen by the English and were careful to keep a safe distance.
As was the custom before the attack, the pirates sacrificed a sheep for a successful attack. The captain first cut off the sheep’s head, the crew threw it into the sea with its intestines, skinned the sheep and split it in two. One half was thrown into the sea on the starboard side of the ship, the other on the port side. After this ritual, the pirates began to approach the two English ships. The pirate flag was only hoisted when they were close to their prey.
The crews of the Francis and the George were taken completely by surprise and had no weapons to defend themselves. But already a third, much larger English ship, the Southwark, full of grain, appeared on the horizon and rushed to their aid. She had a crew of 20 and eight guns on board. The pirates were surprised, as attacked ships did not usually defend themselves. But they were too strong and after a few hours of resistance, the crew of the Southwark surrendered.
What happened to the prisoners in the following hours, Thomas Pellow refused to say later. He said, “We were desperate. A few hours before we were free men, now our fate was uncertain in the hands of pirates.”
The pirates turned around and approached the port of Salé, which was difficult to reach because the entrance was blocked by dunes of silt carried into the sea by the Bou Regreg river. This made access impossible for larger ships, which had to wait for the tide to allow smaller ones to slip past the dunes into the safe shelter of the harbour. A pirate ship with prisoners was also waiting for the tide in front of the dunes. A sail appeared in the distance and after a while the pirates realised that it was an English warship with 20 guns on board. The prisoners were looking forward to being rescued, but the pirates were waiting impatiently for the tide.
The English ship was getting dangerously close, so they took the risk and sailed for the harbour. The risk did not pay off, there was a creaking sound and the ship ran aground with the prisoners on board. The tide grew stronger and stronger and the waves crashed against the stranded ship, causing it to break apart. What happened next was described by the French Consul in Salé de Madeleine, who watched from the shore, and Thomas Pellow.
First the rudder was torn off, then the planks started to break and the boat tilted and the mast broke off. Pirates and prisoners jumped into the sea and tried to save their lives by swimming ashore. Thomas was a poor swimmer, so he clung to the broken mast and was carried by the tide towards the shore. When he got ashore, he looked to see where the English ship was. She had already turned, for she could not go on, and her sail was slowly disappearing over the horizon.
Thomas was under the impression that Salé was built for defence. There were fortresses with cannons on both sides of the river’s mouth and artillery nests on the shore. The houses of the slave traders were large and beautiful, but otherwise the town was very dirty and the streets were littered, and the fortress walls were also used as latrines by the townspeople.
The captured sailors were paraded through the streets of the city, taunted, scolded and pelted with garbage by the residents. They were then taken to underground cells, each holding 20 men. The only opening through which light and air could penetrate was a grate in the ceiling. On the rare occasions when they were allowed to get air, ropes were lowered through them and the prisoners had to climb down them to get air.
Food was scarce, usually just bread and water. Sometimes, those European merchants who were allowed to trade in the city would ask permission from the pirates to bring some food to the prisoners. The prisoners were French, Spanish, even a few Swedes and Africans. The slave market in Salé was the largest on the Atlantic coast. European slaves were always sold quickly, often bought by wholesalers and then resold. For this reason, European slaves were called ‘white slaves’.
The feeling of being sold was frightening and humiliating, as the prisoners were chained in chains. Traders wanted to see a slave’s teeth first. If they were strong and healthy, the price went up noticeably. A slave with bad or no teeth could not eat, so could not work and was not worth his money. The prices varied depending on age and physical strength. Family background also played an important role. European slave families were often willing to pay a high ransom for the freedom of their family members.
But by the time Thomas Pellow was wondering what fate would have in store for him in Salé, the slave market was already in decline. While they continued to flourish in Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, Sultan Moulay Ismail had imprisoned him here. Not out of pity for the unfortunate, but because he wanted to keep all the slaves for himself. All the recently captured slaves had to be transported from Salé to Meknes, so that the Sultan could see them and decide their fate.
So, after a week in underground cells, 52 men from the Francis, George and Southwark set off for Meknes, 180 kilometres away. The countryside through which they travelled was almost uninhabited. The poor peasants they met on the way were unfriendly, if not hostile, because they disliked unbelieving Christians. After the caravan had moved on, they burned olive branches behind the slaves to purify the places where unbelievers were. They did not see the minarets and the walls of Meknes until the fourth day.
Palaces of Meknes
As the sun began to rise in the sky, the prisoners were taken through the city gates into the city. Word spread quickly that the hated Christians were coming, and soon a crowd of townspeople surrounded them, insulting them, pulling their hair, kicking them and beating them with sticks. The guards brutally repelled some of the most ardent enemies of the Christians, and the slaves soon entered the area of the Sultan’s palace where access to the city dwellers was forbidden.
Sultan Moulay Ismail woke up at first light, said his morning prayers and then went to see the construction work in his palace. The work was taking place in so many different places that he could not see it on foot, but on horseback or in a cart pulled by women and eunuchs. While he watched the progress of the work, he received his courtiers and visitors and foreign ambassadors, often sitting on the scaffolding. He was always accompanied by a group of twenty black bodyguards who made sure that no uninvited person approached him.
The people of Dvorje knew from experience that they had to approach him with the utmost respect. As soon as they saw him, they fell to their knees and kissed the ground. When they had been informed in advance that the Sultan wished to speak to them, they put on the special dress that marked a slave and took off their shoes. They knew that the Sultan was the master of their lives and property and that he could kill them whenever he liked. They also knew that they had to pay attention to the colour of the Sultan’s clothes. If he wore green, it was a good sign for everyone, but if he wore yellow, it meant that they should prepare themselves for his wild outbursts and, if possible, stay out of his sight.
The day began as usual – what colour his clothes were, we do not know – except that the Sultan was informed that 52 white slaves were arriving, captured on three English ships. He immediately went to see them. The captain of the pirate ship, Hakem, dropped to his knees, kissed the ground and received ten copper novels for each slave, far less than he usually extracted for each slave. Of course, it did not occur to him to object.
El-Mediouini then approached the Sultan to accept his share of the payment. The Sultan drew his sword and cut off his head. Such a bloody event left the English prisoners breathless. They later learned that el-Mediouini had to pay with his life for not attacking an English warship in Salé. The execution showed that the nearly 60-year-old Sultan was still at his best.
After seeing the slaves, the Sultan chose six, including Thomas Pellow, and the rest were taken away. Thomas did not find out what had happened to them until several weeks later. He and the others were led through a courtyard to a large wooden gate that led to an underground passage that ended in a large warehouse with enough weapons to equip 15,000 soldiers.
The Sultan was very proud of his stock of weapons. It always had to be ready for use and cleaned, so Thomas and others spent days cleaning it in the semi-darkness, as the only light entering the warehouse was through holes in the ceiling. But he was not in the armoury for long. Soon they came to him and he learned that the Sultan had given it to one of his favourite sons. This was bad news, because Mulay es-Sfa was known to despise his European slaves.
But the Sultan’s son soon noticed that Thomas was a bright young man and began to persuade him to convert to Islam, telling him of the bright future that awaited him. Thomas refused steadfastly, so much so that Mulay es-Sfa became angry and threatened him with torment in line with his stubbornness. He was locked in a room and chained up and beaten every day. Bastonade, the punishment of caning on the soles of the feet or on the back, was a popular method of punishment in North Africa.
They tied his legs together and hung him upside down from the ceiling, with his head and shoulders touching the floor. Then they beat him on the soles of his feet with a long stick. Fifty strokes were usually enough to knock the victim unconscious. The soles of the feet would swell, the skin would burst and blood would start gushing. Mulaj es-Sfa himself was stroking him, shouting, “Become a Maver, become a Maver, raise your finger!” A raised finger would mean that Thomas had repented and changed his faith. But he was ready to die. They gave him no food, only a little bread and water. Occasionally, he was burned with a red-hot iron. This ill-treatment lasted for weeks.
Finally, he could no longer bear the pain. He was crushed in his soul and his body was crushed, and he raised his finger. He broke with his past and renounced his homeland. He could no longer expect that attempts would be made to rescue him or that someone would offer a ransom for him. Nor was it likely that he would ever be a free man again, as some Europeans who had converted to Islam thought. Converts to Islam were extremely rarely set free. In Morocco, they were usually dressed in white robes, put on horseback and led in procession around the city to the sound of drums and whistles.
Thomas did not experience this, but was circumcised as is customary. The circumcision of the sexual organ of converts was still public at that time. He was knocked on the head, stripped of his clothes and dressed in Moorish robes. But Mulaj es-Sfa did not live long. One day the Sultan ordered his black slave to strangle him. Why he did so is not known, but it was assumed that the son had disobeyed his father in some matter and that punishment had followed. But the Sultan still had enough sons.
The Sultan’s European slaves came from everywhere, including Scandinavia and Iceland, Russia and Georgia. But most were Spanish, even by the thousands. It was these who fared worst. Many had become slaves decades earlier and had spent most of their lives in Meknes. So the captain of the ship Francis, John Pellow, and his meagre crew were separated from Thomas Pellow and imprisoned in a slave quarters outside the city walls and far from the glitter of the Sultan’s palace. It was surrounded by walls and four watchtowers. They were housed in barracks with 125 British slaves and slaves from other parts of Europe, about 3 000 in all, housed in barracks.
Captain Pellow and his comrades soon discovered that they had become part of a well-organised and disciplined system whose main task was to exploit the labour power of slaves to the limit. There was, of course, not enough food – only 150 grams of black barley bread a day and some oil. There was never any meat, but they could occasionally get some lard and gristle from the many European converts in Meknes. The bread was usually mouldy and half-baked in the middle. The water was stagnant.
The black guards who supervised them and were responsible for discipline and punishment were extremely harsh. Beatings of the unfortunate were the order of the day and soon more slaves were unfit for hard labour. Sick slaves who could no longer stand on their feet were sent to a small infirmary nearby. It was built in 1690, when Moulay Ismail gave the King of Spain a small hut in which 12 Franciscans lived.
Slaves spent fifteen hours a day building the new buildings that made up the Sultan’s palace. Sickness, poor food and excessive work left them exhausted, so that even the Sultan became worried, as fewer and fewer of them were fit for work. He consulted the overseers and they told him that the reason for the high death rate and the many illnesses of the Christians was that they were not getting any wine and spirits here as they were in their homelands. “They would work better and more if they were regularly given a cup of wine or two.”
The Sultan listened to them, sent for a Jewish merchant and ordered him to immediately buy four large jugs of wine and distribute it among the slaves. The slaves were also given some grapes and figs to make their own brandy.
Envoys at Sultan Moulay Ismail
But all these hardships would have been bearable if it had not been for the daily drudgery. When Moulay Ismail ascended the throne, Meknes was a provincial city. It had never been a capital like Rabat, Fez or Marrakech, and this was a shortcoming that the Sultan now wanted to remedy. The reconstruction of the city began soon after he came to the throne. He had part of the Kazbah and the eastern part of the city demolished, as well as the remains of the Roman settlement of Volubulis, where fortifications and palaces were now beginning to sprout from the ground. Palaces and mosques, linked by gardens, stretched as far as the hills and valleys of Meknes.
Visitors to Meknes later claimed that Sultan Moulay Ismail wanted to surpass the construction of Versailles in his building zeal. Both King Louis XIV of France and Moulay Ismail – who ruled at the same time – personally supervised the construction of their palaces and both despised their workers. One French visitor to Meknes had the courage to tell the Sultan that he would never reach his role model if he did not stop killing slaves. “That is true,” said the Sultan, and continued, “but King Louis commands men, and I command animals.”
These “animals” were forced to work on never-finished palaces and walls, mixing mortar and lifting marble slabs. Although the Sultan always had thousands of slaves at his disposal, there was still a shortage.
The first palace to be built, after three years of work, was the Dar Kbira in 1677. All the Sultan’s governors had to attend the inauguration ceremony. At midnight, the Sultan killed a wolf in front of the front gate, cut off its head and embedded it in the front door. The Sultan always appeared at the building sites before the sun rose and gave instructions on what was to be built that day. As soon as work was finished on one palace, it was already starting on another. They had been under construction for 40 years before Thomas Pellow and the other crew members of the Francis arrived in Meknes, but there was still no end in sight.
One spring day in 1717, Joseph Addison, one of the two Secretaries of State at the Foreign Office in London, hurried through Whitehall at a brisk pace. Over the last few months, Salé pirates had captured more than 10 English merchant ships, taken the crews as slaves to Meknes and demanded ransoms for their release. King George I showed no interest in paying it. He was German and had only come to London three years earlier after a complicated succession. His English was poor, and what bothered the British even more than that was that he had brought his entourage, which included two Turks, Mehmed and Mustafa, to London. One of them even managed the King’s private wealth.
At the beginning of the year, King George I received a letter from the families of the crew of the Francis, asking him to help them ransom their husbands. But George I was not interested and left the matter to Joseph Addison. The latter knew that it was difficult to negotiate with the Sultan. England declared a blockade of all Moroccan ports, but to little avail. Addison was convinced that England must send an envoy to Marrakech. He now rushed this proposal to a cabinet meeting, where it was discovered that the funds being spent on the blockade were much higher than those being spent on a negotiator. So Addison wrote in the minutes of the meeting: “We are sending a negotiator to Morocco.”
Why Coninsby Norbury, one of the Royal Navy’s captains, was chosen as negotiator was never clear. Probably no one wanted to volunteer for this dangerous assignment. But a more unsuitable negotiator could not have been chosen. Norbury was a notoriously arrogant and argumentative man who immediately offended everyone he met. As soon as he landed in Tetouan in northern Morocco, he also insulted Kaid Ahmed, one of the Sultan’s closest officials.
Kaid Ahmed met him at the harbour with a large entourage, but Norbury simply ignored him. The Moroccan ignored the insult, but wrote to the English government to complain. Sultan Moulay Ismail received Norbury kindly, expecting him to bring gifts, but Norbury began to threaten him with what he would do if he did not release the English slaves, slamming his foot on the ground three times and saying, “Be damned”.
The Sultan went berserk and, according to the testimony of Thomas Pellow, who was present at the reception, began to beat with a whip all those standing around him. The Norbury mission was a disaster. The only positive thing was that the Sultan agreed to the presence of the English Consul in Tetouan. Consul Hatfield was a successful businessman, had worked as a consul for many years and had tried to help all the Europeans who had become slaves. However, he was rather unsuccessful in this.
While the English prisoners suffered during the construction of the Sultan’s palaces, Thomas Pellow’s situation improved considerably. He was almost fifteen years old and had been in Morocco for four years. After the death of the Sultan’s son, Moulay es-Sfai, he was given to one of the Sultan’s courtiers, whose task it was to teach the servants how to behave in the presence of the Sultan. He became a slave-servant in the Sultan’s palace, one of many who were in constant contact with the Sultan.
It quickly became apparent that he is one of the few who can inhabit this role. A few weeks later, he was put in charge of a group of six other converts and sent to the Sultan’s palace to start clearing paths in the Sultan’s garden.
But this task was not without its dangers. Sultan Moulay Ismail demanded that no one should see his wives except him and the eunuchs. When he roamed the gardens and paths, the inhabitants of the palaces had to stay indoors. Whenever the Sultan went for a walk, the eunuchs would run ahead of him and warn random walkers. Whenever someone was surprised by the Sultan’s arrival and could not hide in one of the palaces, they had to lie down on the ground with their face turned to the sand until the Sultan was far away. Looking up towards one of the Sultan’s wives would have earned him death.
Thomas followed the same rule, but made a mistake that could have cost him his life. He was clearing leaves that had fallen on the walkway when one of the Sultan’s four main wives, the beautiful Halima el-Aziza, walked into the garden unannounced. He had no time to hide, nor to throw himself face down on the ground. She looked at him and laughed. Instead of asking the Sultan to punish him, she asked him to assign him to her household. This gave him the position of chief key to a series of doors leading to Halima’s rooms and finally to the Sultan’s harem.
This inner part of the harem rooms was protected by a group of black eunuchs. The harem was actually a collection of rooms, the courtyards of which were surrounded by colonnades surrounding a large marble pool in the centre, bubbling with spring water piped from a well nearly three kilometres from the city.
How many concubines were in the Sultan’s harem is anyone’s guess. There were probably several hundred, and the Sultan is said to have had as many as 120 children in his long life. Thomas never set foot in the harem because he could have been killed for it.
The concubines spent most of their lives in their rooms, cut off from the outside world. Many of them grew tired of this life and bribed eunuchs to bring them wine from Christian slaves. Others sometimes got out of control and visited friends in other parts of the palace. When they were caught, their front teeth were pulled out as punishment. European slaves captured by the Salé pirates were often in the Sultan’s harem. Many of them refused to accept the Muslim religion, so they were whipped until they were unconscious and repeatedly whipped until they abandoned Christianity in despair.
Thomas had to make sure that no one approached these outdoor spaces unannounced from dusk until first light. He was soon put to a serious test. One day, just as it was getting dark, he heard a knock at the door he was guarding. No one had announced that he was coming, so he was almost certain that it was the Sultan himself knocking. What could he do when he had been told in no uncertain terms not to open the door after dark? In case the visitor refused to leave, he was even given an old musket to ward off the intruder. He was supposed to shoot at the door with it, but he knew he could not do any serious damage as it was made of thick wood.
He knew that the guard at the outer gate had to allow the visitor to enter and that the intruder was a sultan. But what if they had set a trap for him and only wanted to check his loyalty? He decided not to open it. The stranger kept pounding on them. Thomas took his musket, pointed it at the door and pulled the trigger. It burst, splinters flew in all directions, and then all was silent. The next morning, he and the guards of the outer gate were summoned before the Sultan. The guards were punished with mutilation, and he was given a fine horse as a gift from the Sultan.
The Sultan’s Servant
Thomas was then in daily contact with the Sultan and briefly accepted as a slave into his inner circle. He was first a servant of the Sultan’s unpredictable son, Moulay Zidan, then a servant of his mother, a kindly old lady. When he turned 17, Sultan Moulay Ismail took him in, seeing that he was a bright young man and knew how to obey. His task was to kneel humbly and bareheaded at the entrance to the Sultan’s quarters every morning, waiting for his orders. When the Sultan went on his daily tour of his building sites, Thomas accompanied him at a respectful distance. He was horrified to see the Sultan’s brutality, for he was not content with beating his subjects, but often beheaded them with his sword or ordered his guards to do it for him.
The Sultan also liked to amuse himself by marrying his white slaves to black ones brought from the heart of Africa. He considered their mulatto offspring to be the most reliable and loyal servants. He chose the mates himself. This method of reproduction was not confined to Morocco. It was also known in Algeria, and a French slave, de Boye, told of how one day his master sent him and a eunuch to an estate near Algiers, where there were about twenty slaves. He was locked in a room with four of them and only released a week later when the eunuch reported to his master that the Frenchman had done a good job.
Thomas also had to marry, and the Sultan, who was in a good mood at the time, gave him a mulatto girl to marry. He received 15 ducats from the Sultan, but had to spend most of it on buying gifts for the bride and paying for the marriage certificate. The bride’s family had a privileged position among the slaves, as one of her relatives supervised the work of 1500 slaves. Thomas was now convinced that he would never return to England.
But just a few months later, Mullah Ismail decided to send several thousand men – all European converts to Islam – to the desert outpost of Kasbah Temsna, 300 kilometres south of Meknes. Thomas had to say goodbye to his pregnant wife and take command of a detachment of 300 Christian converts. The desert outpost was behind God’s back, on a hill with a beautiful view of the surrounding countryside. They had enough provisions for six months, and the surrounding Jews brought them pork and wine. This was a clear violation of Muslim law, but who was going to control them in this wilderness.
But they were not without work in the outpost, as several Arab tribes in the mountainous Atlas Mountains rebelled and refused to pay their taxes. Thomas had to join the Sultan’s army with a detachment of 200 men, which went on a battle march. It was in February and it was very cold at night high up in the mountains where the Sultan’s army was penetrating. Everyone wanted to return to the warm Kasbah Temsna as soon as possible.
The battle for the main rebel stronghold in the mountains of Yahua ben Belayd was short and fierce. The Sultan’s soldiers dug a tunnel under the fortress and filled it with dynamite. A violent explosion shook the fortress, a wide crack appeared in the walls and the Sultan’s army and Thomas’s group stormed it. It was Thomas who, after the battle of Meknes, brought the captured rebels before the Sultan, and the executioner – he was a European, a French butcher – immediately beheaded three of them.
Although the Sultan was fond of using converts as executioners and to fight his enemies, he trusted only his black army of several hundred thousand men. It was made up of very young slaves – buccaneers – originally from Guinea and equatorial Africa. They were devoted to him and totally reliable, having been trained for the task from the age of ten. The Sultan also had special breeding estates where young African women gave birth to new black soldiers. When they were ten years old, they were taken to Meknes and, after years of training, they were turned into excellent soldiers and estate managers.
Thomas Pellow returned to the Kasbah, his wife arrived there and he learned that he had become the father of a daughter. This daughter was his source of joy and love for all the years that followed.
Back to your homeland
Although Thomas’s father and mother had no news of their son’s fate since he sailed from Falmouth in 1715, rumours of his ill fate reached them. They were poor fishermen and of course could not raise a ransom for him, and the ship’s owner, Francis, had no interest in the fate of the crew. The English Consul in Tetouan, Anthony Hatfield, has also sent some news of what is happening in Morocco. Thus, in 1719, he managed to obtain a list of 188 Englishmen who were in Meknes in slavery to the Sultan. His report confirmed that 26 English ships and their crews had been captured by pirates over a period of five years. Most of the sailors had converted to Islam and the Anglican Church was now at a loss what to do when some of them returned to England, and some did return.
The English consul in Tetouan was powerless to help the English slaves. So London decided to send another mission to the Sultan of Morocco, and in September 1720 Commodore Charles Stewart, a determined man who could keep his nerve even in the most difficult moments, set off. He was met in Tetouan by Bey Basha Hamet and together they set off across the desert towards Meknes, settled in and awaited reception by Moulay Ismail.
Stewart watched the Sultan carefully, about whom he had heard so many things, and was surprised that he didn’t seem scary at all. He was approaching eighty, had lost almost all his teeth, was breathing heavily as if he had lung problems, and coughed and spat frequently. His crooked nose, which had once been so prominent, was now surrounded by sunken cheeks. His grey beard was stubbly and sparse. Stewart was surprised to see that the Sultan’s dress was simple and identical to that of his courtiers, except that he carried a curved sword studded with precious stones.
He handed the Sultan a royal letter, sealed and tied with a silk ribbon, conveyed the friendly greetings of King George I of England, and pointed out that it would be a fine token of the friendship between the two countries if the Sultan were to release the captured British citizens.
It may have been a coincidence that Thomas Pellow was in Meknes at the time, or he may have been called in to be an interpreter. He was 17 years old and had been in captivity for six years. Stewart’s first task was to rescue the English who were then in the Sultan’s dungeons, and only after that was done could he talk about the liberation of the English who had to convert to Islam, of whom there were hundreds in Morocco. The Sultan listened to the envoy negligently, then began to tell him about the greatness of his country and to show off the splendour of his palaces. The tour lasted several hours and Stewart and his entourage could hardly move from exhaustion.
It was several days before he received the Sultan’s reply on the fate of the English slaves. The Sultan released all the English prisoners who had been held in the dungeons of Meknes for several years. Among them were the three surviving sailors from the ship Francis. Many of the sailors had already died, many had been executed, and those who survived to see the day of freedom were completely exhausted. This is probably why the Sultan gave them their freedom. He had nothing to do with the sick who were not fit for work. But he did not release any converts to Islam, nor any English prisoners who were in jails in other places in Morocco. So Thomas Pellow realised with bitterness that he would continue to tremble for his life under the rule of a capricious Sultan.
On 1 December 1721, Commodore Stewart’s ship sailed into the Thames with over 100 former slaves on board. They were first taken to church for mass and then led in procession through the streets of the city by the city authorities. Some returned home to their families, others became sailors again because they had to live on something, and many decided to go across the channel to America.
Thomas Pellow was desperate to return to England, despite having to leave his wife and daughter behind. But escape was a very risky business. He had some contacts with European merchants from Salé, but they were not willing to risk helping him escape. Moreover, Meknes was several days’ journey from the Atlantic coast and would have had to cross a barren landscape. All the converts, including Thomas, were strictly controlled by the Sultan’s black slaves, so that escape was almost unthinkable. He could have hired a trained guide to take him to the gates of the nearest Spanish fort for money, but such guides sometimes robbed, killed or simply left the refugees alone in the desolate countryside.
It was only when he was transferred to Agoory, 30 kilometres from Meknes, that he decided to escape and head for the Portuguese fortress of Mazagan. He could not believe his luck when, after four days of travelling, he saw the walls of the fortress. He managed to evade all the guards and the Sultan’s spies. At night, he wanted to climb the fortress wall unnoticed and enter Mazagan. But he had the misfortune to encounter four Moors outside the walls of the fortress and, thinking they were Portuguese, he said that he was a Christian and wanted to escape from slavery. He was arrested, tied up and later bound in irons. He was sentenced to death, to be carried out in public in four days’ time, when a trade fair would be held in the town.
He was already being taken to the morgue and he saw the executioner sharpening a long knife. Suddenly, the execution was stopped because someone remembered that they needed the permission of the governor of the town, who was on his way to Tetouan. While the spectators shouted angrily because they had been robbed of a bloody scene, Thomas was taken back to the dungeon where he spent the next two months. As the governor still had not returned to the city, he was eventually released and returned to Agoory. How he justified his absence is not recorded in his memoirs.
Only a few years later, in 1729, he tried to escape again with an English slave. They set off for Salé, where they intended to steal a boat and sail it to Gibraltar. In Salé, they discovered a small schooner, sturdy enough to navigate the rough seas. But his companion suddenly changed his mind. He feared a new start in life in England, and Thomas knew that with his meagre knowledge of seamanship he would never make it to Gibraltar alive. He abandoned the thought of escape and returned to Agoory.
As the years passed, the Sultan’s health deteriorated. He was weak and pale, his head swaying back and forth uncontrollably. His closest advisers knew that he would never recover. He threatened the doctors again and again that he would kill them if they did not find a new cure for him.
The end came quickly. Suddenly, he could no longer feel his lower body. A few days later, as the muezzin was calling for the midday prayer, Sultan Moulay Ismail died. He was 80 years old. He had ruled Morocco for 55 years. He had caused the deaths of tens of thousands of people, around 1 000 of whom he had killed with his own hands. He ordered the execution of several of his sons and mutilated several of his wives. Before his death, he asked his courtiers not to inform anyone of his death, as he wanted his son Ahmed ed-Dehebi to prepare for a secret takeover. He therefore quickly arrived in Meknes. The court continued to function as if nothing had happened. But his second son Abdelmalek, who had hoped to take the throne, sensed that something was happening.
The courtiers announced that the Sultan was feeling better and that he would soon visit the mausoleum of Saint Moulay Idriss. And indeed, a week later, the closed stretcher in which the Sultan was supposed to be was moving towards the mausoleum, accompanied by a crowd of people. When they arrived at the mausoleum, everyone expected the Sultan to step out of the stretcher and pay his respects to Moulay Idris. But nothing happened and the crowd started calling the Sultan’s name.
The Chief Eunuch pulled back the curtain. The Sultan’s decomposing body lay in the stretcher, propped up with silk cushions. The eunuch announced that Ahmed ed-Dehebi was the new Sultan. He quickly took power into his own hands, lavishly endowed the black army to remain loyal to him and began to count how much money and gold was in the treasury. He had inherited from his father a mania for building, and the construction of palaces continued unabated.
It soon became clear that the new Sultan did not have all the power in his hands. The courtiers were horrified to see that he was often so drunk that he could not stand on his feet. He also came to pray at the mosque drunk. Some towns began to rebel against him and did not recognise his authority. Fez resisted him and the Sultan had to besiege it. Finally, the black army stood up to him and held him prisoner. He fled Meknes in panic and Abdelmalek was proclaimed Sultan.
Meanwhile, the fugitive and deposed Sultan gathered an army, laid siege to Meknes and took it. Thomas Pellow was one of the soldiers who stormed it, and he described the slaughterhouse the city had become. Abdelmalek fled Meknes and took refuge in Fez. A bloody civil war ensued, which ended with Ahmed ed-Dehebi having his brother strangled to death.
But he did not live long himself. He died four days after ordering the strangulation of his own brother. At a reception, he was given milk to drink, which was obviously poisoned, and he soon died. The new Sultan became one of the sons of Mulla Ismail. Meanwhile, Thomas Pellow was given the sad news. His beloved daughter had died, followed four days later by his wife. Now there was nothing to keep him in Morocco.
These were dangerous times, with towns rising up against each other, marauding gangs roaming the countryside and blood flowing in rivers. Thomas Pellow fought in several battles, was wounded several times and, just when he hoped for a little peace, the new Sultan sent him and his caravan to hunt for slaves in Guinea. There were several thousand camels and a thousand companions. On the way, they stopped at Berber villages to replenish their supplies, and then the villages were gone, leaving only the tents of nomadic tribes.
They reached the oasis of Oued Noun, where the Sahara with its sand dunes had already begun. 750 kilometres of desert separated them from Chingit, their final destination. Thomas was surprised to see that the guide who was supposed to lead the caravan through the desert was blind and only used his nose to lead them to the few watering holes.
It was only possible to move around the desert in the early morning hours, after which it got hellishly hot. Everyone was thirsty and the blind guide kept smelling the desert sand to find out where the watering hole was. They had been without water for six days and did not believe him when he told them they would get it in five hours. But four hours later, they did see something green in the distance. They rested for a few days and then moved on.
It took them five months to cross the desert before they reached the oasis of Chingit. The oasis, from where the Senegal River could be reached, was 2 000 kilometres from Meknes, but the Sultan’s rule still extended there. From here, the Moors went hunting for slaves, especially young boys and girls who could still be trained into loyal servants of the Sultan. The return journey was not easy either, as the caravan was constantly attacked by Bedouin tribes.
Why from Morocco
On a moonless spring night in 1737, Thomas Pellow secretly left Meknes. He was 33 years old and had been a slave for more than two decades. Nothing could keep him in Meknes any longer and he decided to escape. He spoke fluent Arabic and his complexion had darkened, so he could pass himself off as an Arab merchant. He arrived in Salé without much difficulty, but there were no European ships in the harbour, so he joined a group of pilgrims and headed south to the small port of Santa Cruz. But on the way there he had to cross the Atlas Mountains. He separated himself from the pilgrims and posed as a healer on the way, knowing that the local people believed that Europeans had special healing powers.
Six months later, he finally saw the waters of the Atlantic. But he was not so lucky on this voyage either. There were riots in the port of Santa Cruz and some European ships were anchored far out at sea. Heavy-hearted, he headed north along the coast to the port of Willadio. Travelling alone and unarmed, he was an easy target for robbers on his way over El Hedid mountain. He tried to escape, but was hit by a bullet in the leg. He tried to run on, but could not run. He fell to the ground and the robbers took everything he had, leaving him bleeding and unconscious.
Almost at the same time – it was 1738 – as Thomas Pellow lay wounded and unconscious, the capital Toobin was sailing off the coast of Morocco with a cargo he hoped to sell at a bargain in the Atlantic ports of West Africa. This was a dangerous task, as the Salé pirates were everywhere and it was almost impossible to talk to Arab merchants without a knowledge of Arabic.
Toobin was therefore delighted to hear in the port of Willadio that an Englishman could help him with the translation. That Thomas Pellow survived was indeed a miracle. He was helped by the locals and his wound was healed. With his help, the sale of the cargo progressed rapidly and on 10 July 1738 the ship sailed for Gibraltar. There, Tomas transferred to the Euphrates, which was bound for London.
Home at last. Thomas almost couldn’t believe it was true. He knew no one in London, but the story of his return soon spread around the city and a London newspaper published it. He left London and returned to his hometown, where he was greeted by a crowd of curious people. His father and mother hardly recognised him, so much had he changed over the years. A local lawyer heard about the story and, with Thomas’s help, wrote a book in two years entitled The History of the Long Captivity and Adventures of Thomas Pellow.
