Suleiman the Magnificent

Slavery is one of the oldest and most persistent institutions of humankind. It was already well established four millennia ago when it was mentioned in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Today it has been formally abolished almost everywhere, but there are still reckoned to be some 30 million people living in some form of forced labour. For most of human history slavery was regarded as an economic necessity, one of many relationships of dependence which were accepted as facts of life. The current obsession with British and American involvement has concentrated attention on the Atlantic slave trade. This has masked the involvement of other significant actors. Foremost among them are the

Strategically located in the narrows of the Mediterranean between Sicily and Tripoli, with a fine natural harbour, Malta has attracted the attention of successive conquerors for two millennia: Phoenician, Carthaginian, Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Norman, Aragonese, French and finally British. In 1565, the island was occupied by a power that was already beginning to look anachronistic: the Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem. The Hospitallers were an aristocratic order of monk-knights, founded at the end of the 11th century to shelter Christian pilgrims and defend the Holy Land during the brief period when it was part of the crusader kingdoms of the Levant. Since then, they had progressively