ABSTRACT
The article focuses on two Arabic accounts of captivity in Malta in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These documents are rare instances of a North African, that is, Muslim perspective on Mediterranean slavery and captivity. The essay interprets passages of North African Muslims in European captivity. In contrast to the European literary genre of the slave narrative depicting vivid details in North African bondage, the Muslim world lacks a comparable text type. Nabil Matar shows that experiences of captivity in Europe only receive mention if the captivity in the hands of the infidels is “dignified captivity,” in which the captors treated their Muslim captives in a respectful manner. Via these Arabic accounts, Matar is able to pinpoint a fundamental culture-specific difference between Orient and Occident in the representation of early modern captivity.
