In the Mouth of the Dragon: Genoa, the Crusades, and the Mamluk Slave Trade

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, polemicists promoting the crusade movement accused the Genoese of supplying the sultan of Egypt with Christian slaves from the Black Sea. These slaves, called mamluks, were converted to Islam, trained as soldiers, and expected to defend Jerusalem against any future crusades. Thus, according to the crusade polemicists, the Genoese were betraying Christendom and undermining the crusades by ferrying unfortunate slaves into “the mouth of the dragon” of Islam. 

Such accusations raise many questions, of which my paper will address two. First, the Genoese were not as deeply involved in that slave trade as the crusade polemicists claimed. Arabic sources produced for a Muslim audience described the network of mamluk slave traders as being predominantly Muslim and coming from a variety of geographical origins. While the Genoese were clearly involved, they did not dominate the mamluk slave trade. Second, determining the religion of the slaves being sent to Egypt was not easy. The Black Sea was a religiously diverse region, populated by Christians, Muslims, and Jews of every kind as well as adherents of various animist or folk religions. Identifying an individual person, or even a group such as Circassians or Tatars, with a religion was fraught with complexity.

The mamluk slave trade, then, did not necessarily involve a mass conversion of Christians to Islam, nor did it necessarily involve the betrayal of Black Sea Christians by Genoese Christians. My paper will conclude with a discussion of how information derived from crusade polemics has been incorporated into the historiography of the mamluk slave trade, and how a re-examination of Genoese involvement and the religious identity of mamluk slaves might lead to changes in that historiography.