Many people experience trouble and strife during their lives. We live in a broken, groaning world (Romans 8) and sometimes innocent people suffer greatly. We know that many Christians in the first century were persecuted for their faith in Jesus. Faithful followers of the Lord were imprisoned, tortured and killed for confessing Jesus as Lord. In the midst of suffering there is always hope that God can rescue us from miserable circumstances. Here follows a story about a young Christian boy who was forced to convert to the Muslim faith. Here is some important background to this story. We are indebted to the fascinating book White Gold by Giles Milton.
Slave markets flourished on the coast of North Africa, in what is modern-day Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia and Morocco between the 15th and the beginning of the 19th century. These slave markets bought and sold white European people who were kidnapped by Barbary pirates in raids on coastal towns in Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, England, Ireland and even Iceland. Men, women and children were enslaved to such a devastating extent that vast numbers of sea coast towns were abandoned due to fear of these brutal pirates. Some scholars argue that about one million Europeans were captured by these pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa and the Ottoman Empire between the 15th and 19th centuries. Many people are completely unaware of this white slave trade that destroyed so many lives.
Thomas Pellow was born in 1704 in the fishing port of Penryn just four miles from Falmouth. In 1715 he went on a ship to Italy. On the way back he was kidnapped by Islamic corsairs and taken as a slave to Morocco.
He was persecuted very brutally for his Christian faith. His master Moulay es-Sfa took great delight in thrashing him senseless. This cruel man would work himself into a terrible rage, ‘furiously screaming in the Moorish language…..Turn Moor! Turn Moor by holding your finger.” This simple signal – raising one finger to the sky – was the sign that the Christian would become a Muslim. In the end after sustained torture he gave in with great reluctance.
He was then circumcised. His head was shaved. His old clothes were taken away and he was given a woollen djellaba to wear. He then became the personal slave of the sultan Moulay Ismail (1645-1727). According to the Guinness Book of Records Moulay fathered 888 children with the help of his 500 concubines! He was also extremely cruel. Thomas watched in horror as the sultan murdered countless Christian slaves.
‘When he would have any person’s head cut off,’ wrote Pellow, ‘he demonstrated by drawing or shrinking his own as close as he could to his shoulders and then with a very quick or sudden motion, extending it’. His sign for a slave to be strangled to death was ‘by the quick turn of his arm-wrist, his eye being fixed on the victims’.
The sultan treated his horses far better than his slaves. He had 12,000 horses and they were spoiled rotten. Christian slaves were forced to carry pots and receive horse urine and poo in pots. Failure to do so would lead to death and torture. The sultan would sometimes kiss the horse’s tail and feet.
There were many slaves who were practising Christians. Joshua Gee, a puritan from Boston admitted that prayer alone had enabled him to survive his sufferings. He said: “I always find reliefe in seeking God when I could find it nowhere else’. It was a great relief to me that I had learned so much scripture by heart when I was young.’
On one occasion the sultan had a man (Larbe Shott) sawn in half. Moulay Ismail was filled with remorse on the day after the execution. Shott had appeared to him in a dream and revealed that God would punish him for his brutality. This caused the sultan so much concern ‘that he sent to the place of his execution for some of the dust his blood was spilt on, with which he rubbed himself all over as an atonement for his crime’. The blood ‘atoned’ for his crime. Even this brutal killer knew at some level that atonement for sin is important.
Pellow had no choice but to try to escape. This would be a difficult undertaking because informers were scattered across the country and his palace was five days’ march from the Atlantic. But Pellow had some advantages. His palace job meant that he was in reasonable health. He was also now a fluent speaker of Arabic and had tanned skin, which meant he could pass himself off as a wandering merchant. He made his first attempt in 1721 but was captured, and tried again in 1728 during a time of civil unrest in Morocco but was caught once more.
In 1729, his wife and daughter both died of a disease. Although it had been a forced marriage, it had been a happy one and he loved his daughter. Indeed, he had often thought that once he had escaped back to England alone, he would send for his wife and daughter, although given they were both Muslims and England was anti-Islamic, it is not clear how realistic he was being.
It was in 1737 that Pellow made his last dash for freedom. He was aged 33 and had been a slave for more than two decades. He set out pretending to be a travelling doctor and eventually reached the Atlantic coast after six months. On July 10, 1738, he was on board a vessel heading for London. His arrival there caused a great stir because so few slaves ever lived to tell their tale.
On October 15, 1738, he landed back at Falmouth. News of his escape had gone ahead of him thanks to the efficiency of the newspapers of his day. He was given a hero’s welcome in his village — including from his parents, who were now both in their 50s — and returned to being a Christian.
In 1740, he wrote the best-seller The History of the Long Captivity and Adventures of Thomas Pellow, which gave a fascinating insight into the horrors of white slavery in North Africa.
In terms of the cultural mandate the life and work of the brutal tyrant Moulay Ismail must be ranked as one of the worst responses to God’s calling in the history of the world. He filled the world with misery, injustice and despair.
Mark is a lively storyteller and the author of four books, including The Spy, the Rat and the Bed of Nails: Creative Ways of Talking about Christian Faith. His work is focused on storytelling and how this can help us to communicate the Christian faith. He has written many articles for the Baptist Times, RE Today, Youthscape, Direction magazine and the Christian Teachers Journal.
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1 Comment
Kevin · February 28, 2026 at 10:57 am
Thanks for this article Mark. It was interesting and horrifying at the same time!