A True and Faithful Account of the Religion and Manners of the Muslims

Name: A True and Faithful Account of the Religion and Manners of the Muslims
Price: 1.99 USD
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Author: Joseph Pitts

Originally published as A True and Faithful Account of the Religion and Manners of the Mohammetans (1704)

by Joseph Pitts

About the text. In the free scan at least 1 word in 32 is garbled, and 1 in 11 carries the old long ſ (“myſelf”, “circumſtance”) — faithful to the original printing, and hard going now. We count it so you can judge the scan before you spend time in it. The full text is public domain and free — linked below.

Joseph Pitts, a teenage sailor from Exeter, was captured by an Algerian corsair in 1678 and sold into slavery in Algiers, where under beatings he outwardly converted to Islam — a guilt he carried throughout this narrative. His master took him on the Hajj to Mecca and Medina, making him the first known Englishman to perform the pilgrimage; his eyewitness account was unprecedented for English readers. He eventually escaped and returned home, writing both an exact description of Muslim worship and a deeply personal record of faith lost and reclaimed. First published 1704.

1698 engraving of a young sailor in hat and knee-breeches raising a glass — not Joseph Pitts, of whom no portrait survives — This is not Pitts — no portrait of him survives; he was a ship's boy from Exeter, not a gentleman who sat for painters. It is a 1698 engraving of a young common sailor, cut six years before this book appeared: the world Pitts shipped out into as a teenager, raising a glass beneath a printed rhyme that warned every voyage ends at heaven or hell. (Caspar Luyken, “Der Boots-Knecht,” 1698 — Rijksmuseum.)

The changed life

Pressed under torture into renouncing Christ, Pitts wrestled for years with a faith he believed he had betrayed — and his book is the testimony of a conscience that found its way back.

A note on the text. A True and Faithful Account of the Religion and Manners of the Muslims is in the public domain. The text below is free to read at the source we link. The original text is also available free here.

That free scan runs about 8.6 errors per 1,000 characters (OCR mistakes, stray marks, broken words), and carries the old long ſ on roughly 17 words per 1,000 — “myſelf”, “circumſtance” — which is faithful to the original printing and hard going now. We publish the measurement so you can judge the free scan for yourself.

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