Joseph Pitts

Who is Joseph Pitts?

Joseph Pitts was an Englishman who was taken into slavery by Barbary pirates from Algeria in 1678 at the age of fourteen or fifteen. Little is known about Pitts aside from what is revealed in his narrative concerning his time held captive in Northern Africa, during which time he went through three masters ranging widely in their cruelty towards him over the course of more than fifteen years, with whom he traveled to Cairo and Alexandria. Though he escaped between the years 1693 and 1694, it was not until 1704 that Pitts first published his account. Pitts’s A True and Faithful Account of the Religion and Manners of the Mohammetans, with an Account of the Author’s Being Taken Captive includes descriptions of his capture and captivity, including some of the first English descriptions of Islamic rituals. Converting to the religion while a slave, Pitts was the first Englishman to record the proceedings of the hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam. Pitts also describes the people of seventeenth-century North Africa in detail, providing particulars on their manner of eating and dressing, the customs of their religion and marriage, and their economic and slave systems. Though its accuracy is debatable, Pitts’s narrative was the first and most detailed description of the religion of Islam and the manners of Muslims written by a European during the seventeenth century.