and urban authorities did allow their subjects to take the war to their enemies. Sea captains and fishing-boat skippers turned to raiding against their enemies. Captives produced a great source of income for these raiders. Some ship owners became rich from this piracy, and their sailors lived well. This went little distance toward compensating for the terror that the isolated coastal dwellers and those who fished in small vessels had to live with throughout these centuries, never knowing if they would be caught and hauled off as captives to distant markets.60
Some Spanish cities benefited, nonetheless. Valencia and Alicante became important slave markets. Local raiders and other Christian raiders sold slaves there, and the slave population consequently boomed. As a result of the Christian raids in North Africa, seventeenth-century Cádiz had a large supply of slaves and a wide range of uses for them. Numerous Muslim slaves arrived there after having been captured in military action in the Mediterranean. In 1616 Cádiz contained some 300 Muslim slaves; that figure had grown to around 1,500 by 1654. In 1680 alone, following the Austrian victory over the Turks, about 2,000 captives were sold in Cádiz. Because of the influx of new slaves, the range of occupations for slaves was wider in Cádiz than other Spanish cities. They were employed in public works, such as repairing the city’s walls. They worked in provisioning the Indies fleets, and there were also galley slaves.61 Cartagena, too, benefited from the maritime hostilities. In 1670 Cartagena became the site of a permanent base for Spanish vessels patrolling the Mediterranean coast to prevent Muslim raiding. Local seafarers took advantage of the shield that the patrols provided to increase their own raids and their own trade to Spanish possessions in North Africa to secure slaves. The city of Oran was the principal enclave, in Spanish hands since 1509. When the Muslims retook Oran in 1708, some 5,000 Spaniards, soldiers and ordinary citizens, ended up as captives. When Spain captured Oran again in 1732, many Muslim captives were exchanged for Christian prisoners; others entered the slave markets.62
Conditions in the activities of corsairs changed in the seventeenth century, when the North Africans employed Dutch and English shipwrights to replace the galleys in their fleets with sailing ships. As these required far fewer sailors, the captives gradually ceased to be galley rowers and remained working on shore until they were ransomed. Raids did not stop, however. One spectacular example took place in 1618, when a Turkish raiding party brought thirty-six ships to the poorly defended island of Lanzarote in the Canaries. They took away some nine hundred captives. As the raiders tried to make their way back to Algiers, a Castilian fleet captured seventeen of the ships and freed some two hundred of the captives. The other seven hundred captives had to reside in Algiers and hope for eventual rescue. Some were redeemed, but others were not. Among the latter group, over a hundred decided to convert to Islam in order to be freed from captivity and live a free life in North Africa.63
In the War of Spanish Succession (1701–1714), Catalonia resisted the eventual winner Felipe V, and support for his opponents cost the Catalans dearly when the new king disarmed the population and dismantled fortifications. This made coastal defense against Muslim raids almost impossible, and a few years later the royal government permitted and supported the rebuilding of forts along the coast and the arming of merchant and fishing vessels. Change was slow in the early eighteenth century. Muslim pirates still threatened Spanish seaports and their citizens.64 Nevertheless, the eighteenth century saw a decline of raids and captivity in Catalonia, as in most other parts of the peninsula. Estimates for the number of Muslims captured in the period are less than a thousand, and a similar number of Catalans became captives of the Muslims.65
All commentators stress the harshness that the captives endured. They were quickly transported from the place they were captured, often with only the clothes on their backs, which might have to serve them as their only garments for months. More seriously, women captives faced the possibility or the reality of rape. Once in captivity, they suffered continued deprivations of food and shelter.66
The Muslims held their Christian captives under tighter control than slaves of other origins. Because many tried to flee back across the frontier, they had to be guarded closely to prevent flight. As they waited, the captives endured conditions described as “harsh,” “bad and painful,” and “sad.” They usually were locked up in closed cellars, often with leg irons, handcuffs, or other impediments to movement. As they worked as wood cutters, mill workers, harvesters, they could be chained together in gangs, and they faced harsh corporal punishment for infractions. Alvaro de Olid in 1439 described the prison for captives in Granada and wrote of the prisoners: “I swear to God that some of them lacked the appearance of a man, for they were nothing but skin and bone. . . . looking from head to foot one could count how many bones they had in the body, so great was their labor.”67 Pedro de Medina, writing long afterward in the mid-sixteenth century, recalled the tradition that late medieval Christian captives in the Muslim city of Ronda, built on high cliffs above the river, had to carry water in leather containers (zaques) up some fifty meters from the river to the city. This gave rise to Spanish commonplace expressions: “May God set me free from the zaques of Ronda,” and “That’s the way you die, carrying zaques in Ronda.”68
Existing documents recorded few voices of actual slaves, but we do have the words of the fifteenth-century poet ‘Abd al-Karīm al Qaysī, who was for a time held captive in the Portuguese city of Évora. His ode to Muḥammad related to his own captivity.
O, captive among foes, who enters through his chains upon humiliation and contempt, / whom God has ordained to live in captivity subjected to dreadful trials,/ endure patiently God’s judgment and comply with His decree, then your name will be written with Him among the chosen. / Plead for your deliverance because of the esteem of the most excellent Messenger, then you will see his miracles immediately.69
If not ransomed, captives were sold at auction. Some ended up as farm workers, and many others worked at urban tasks. The greatest peril for the Christian captives was to be sold to North Africa or other more distant parts of the Muslim world where they would be farther from possible redemption, and, because slave prices were higher in North Africa, the cost of their ransoms would be greater. Escape from North Africa was almost impossible, and unsuccessful attempts could be punished by mutilation of noses and ears.70
In such circumstances, with the existence of the captives in a precarious state and with the prospect of redemption uncertain at best, it is not surprising that stories of miraculous interventions transcended the religious frontier. A late ninth-century example involved the famous Muslim scholar of Córdoba, Baqī ibn Makhlad, who prayed on behalf of an impoverished mother with a captive son. Shortly afterward, the mother returned to the scholar with her son in tow. He told that his chains had miraculously broken and he walked home unimpeded. Various holy Muslims of the twelfth century were said to be able to free themselves or others by various miraculous methods, including changing the wind to blow a Christian ship with Muslim captives onto a Muslim shore where the captives were saved. Such stories about pious scholars and holy men intervening for captives continued across the religious divide into the sixteenth century and perhaps later.71
On the Christian side, the miracles attributed to Santo Domingo (St. Dominic) of Silos (d. 1073) included stories of miraculous interventions to free captives.72 One of the earliest stories, dating to fourteen years after Domingo’s death, involved the Castilian soldier Pedro, captured during a Christian raid into Muslim territory and held in captivity in Murcia. The saint appeared to him and offered him a way to escape. During a siesta one Friday, Peter
effortlessly took the iron fetters from his feet, and with the grace of the man of God, Dominic, going before him, in twelve days of good progress he reached the royal city of Toledo. When he got there, he told everybody all that had happened to him on St. Dominic’s account, giving clear proof that all he has said was true. . . . All who heard this marvelous miracle . . . encouraged Peter to go to the monastery [of Silos] where the Saint’s tomb was and there to tell all that had happened. This he duly did, and in the monastery of Silos narrated the great miracle from which he had benefited, gave
