"[12] Fortunately for Pitts, in the aftermath of the French fleet's bombardment of Algiers in 1683, Ibrahim lost his life in an attempt to become ruler and Joseph was sold by Ibrahim's widow to an old Turkish bachelor called Eumer [modern Turkish Ömer], by whom he was employed "to look after his house, dress his meat, wash his clothes, in short do all the things that are looked on as a servant-maid's work in England.
He became a bombacı, or specialist in mortars, and in 1688 participated in an attack on Oran in Western Algeria, at that time an outpost of Spain, and later joined an Algerian expedition against the Sultan of Morocco.
Even at this eleventh hour, Joseph admits to the call of Algiers "The loss of the profitable returns, which I might make of what money I had to Algier, and of receiving eight months' pay due to me there and the frustrating of my hopes and expectations which I had from my master who made me large promises of leaving me considerable substance at his death; and I believe he meant as he promised for I must acknowledge he was like a father to me … in short, he loved me as if I had been his own child, which made me sincerely to love him, I do acknowledge.
After 25 days quarantine, Pitts travelled on foot through Italy in the company of some Dutch slaves, who had arrived in Leghorn from Algiers after a ransom had been paid to free them.
")[18] Some scholars have cast doubt on whether people who claimed to have been forcibly converted to Islam were telling the truth,[19] and Pitts was clearly aware of this accusation as he went on in the 1731 preface to say, "I do not pretend to excuse what I did; but whether it was voluntarily, or I was a true Mussulman, let any judge when they have considered what hazard I ran in making my escape.
He also decided to publish a book detailing the story of his life in Algiers and his escape, while also describing those facets of Islam with which he was personally acquainted in the hope "to do some good … and also make some manner (at least) of restitution and reparation for my past defection".
[25] Middle Eastern captivity narratives are the (auto)biographies of Europeans who had been captured and enslaved anywhere in the Muslim World (most deal with North Africa) and had either by escape, ransoming or exchange of prisoners had returned to their homeland and had decided to describe their experiences.
Indeed, it is all the more credible[29] since Pitts does not present himself as just a "hardened Briton who had endured years of slavery and labour among the Muslims in order to preserve the integrity of his religious and national identity".
Some of the motifs he describes are common to other captivity narratives, for example, how slaves were sold in the market, methods of torture and punishment, the layout of the city of Algiers, the names and locations of other towns in Algeria, and the internal organisation of the Turkish civil and military government, although he often gives much more detail than other authors.
However, as well as being interested in public matters, Pitts was also a keen ethnographic observer of domestic issues, such as marriage, burial, children, dress, food (there are references, for example, to couscous, kebabs and köftes), and even wrestling.
His descriptions are fuller than most other captivity narratives and appear to be accurate inasmuch as they are rarely if ever contradicted by the accounts of contemporary travellers describing other regions of the Muslim world or later visitors to Ottoman North Africa.
A typical example of this is Thomas Shaw’s Travels or Observations Relating to Several Parts of Barbary and the Levant, first published in 1738 while Pitts was still alive.
In great contrast, Pitts describes the society in which he lived for fifteen years in a very personal way, particularly those domestic and military features with which he was best acquainted, often interspersed with his own memories and illustrated by mundane (and therefore all the more believable) anecdotes.
So Pitts can be found using phrases such as “false worship” to describe Islam and “vile and debauched imposter"[34] as an epithet of the Prophet Muhammad, while calling the Qur’an “that legend of falsities and abominable follies and absurdities”.
[36] He was also very impressed with Islamic piety and describes with considerable approval Muslims’ devotion to prayer and to reading the Holy Book,[37] but by far the longest, most detailed, most personal and most interesting of Pitts’ descriptions of Islam concerns the pilgrimage, and it is this section of his book which has intrigued scholars the most, since it includes the first detailed description in English of the ḥajj[38] and of the Muslim Holy Places, and the first by an English-speaking eye-witness.
Pitts was clearly impressed by the devotion of Muslim pilgrims, and often describes his own feelings during the rituals; however, Pitts makes it clear that he distinguishes between the religious zeal and ardour of Muslims, which he admires, and the religion of Islam itself, which he is unable to accept, as can be seen from two of the most famous passages in his book: “It was a sight, indeed, able to pierce one’s heart, to behold so many thousands in their garments of humility and mortification, with their naked heads, and cheeks watered with tears; and to hear their grievous sighs and sobs, begging earnestly for the remission of their sins”,[42] and again: “And I profess, I could not chuse but admire to see those poor creatures, so extraordinary devout, and affectionate, when they are about these superstitions, and with what awe and trembling, they were possessed; insomuch that I could scarce forbear shedding of tears, to see their zeal, tho’ blind and idolatrous”.
Nabil Matar considers Pitts’s book is a record of “a journey to the alien and a return to the familiar, a separation from England and a resumption of Englishness, a conversion to Islam on the ‘outside’, as he repeatedly affirmed, and an adherence to Christianity on the inside”.
Had Pitts been less honest, he could have suppressed all his comments on Islam which were not overtly negative, and could have omitted all the expressions of affection he had towards his third master Eumer; the fact that he did not, testifies to how he was never able fully to lay to rest his Muslim past, which continued to affect him deep into old age, as the third edition of 1731 makes clear, and Pitts's book remains one of the most accurate, observational accounts of Muslim worship by an Englishman of the period.