Islam's Black Slaves: A History of Africa's Other Black Diaspora Ronald Segal 241pp, Atlantic Books, £20 At a time when the United States, crusading Christianity's last outpost, is again mounting its mangy charger, along comes another book documenting a dark, half-forgotten and deeply unsavoury aspect of Islam. Until Ronald Segal, author of the excellent and similarly panoramic survey of the Atlantic slave trade, The Black Diaspora, began to pick at the scars Arab raiders and their black African outriders left on large parts of the continent over 14 centuries, this had been one of the great untold stories. /..../ Unlike...
