•
Macuncuzade Mustafa Efendi (born 1550s), Ottoman qadi and poet who was enslaved in Malta after the ship he was on was captured by the
Knights Hospitaller in 1597. He was ransomed and freed in 1600, and he wrote a narrative about his captivity. •
Madison Hemings (1805–1877), son of
Sally Hemings and
Thomas Jefferson. •
Mãe Judith (died 1940),
West African woman who was taken to Brazil and became a
Mãe-de-santo (priestess) in the
disaporic Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé. •
Mae Louise Miller (1943–2014), American woman kept in modern-day slavery (peonage) until 1961. •
Malgarida (born 1488), black African woman and companion of the
conquistador Diego de Almagro. In 1536 she became the first non-indigenous woman to enter the territory of what is now
Chile. •
Malik Ambar, born in 1548 as
Chapu, a birth-name in Harar,
Adal Sultanate in modern-day
Ethiopia. He was from the now extinct
Maya ethnic group. As a child he was sold in slavery by his parents Mir Qasim Al Baghdadi, one of his slave owners, eventually converted Chapu to Islam and gave him the name Ambar, after recognizing his superior intellectual qualities. Malik was brought to India as a slave. While in India he created a mercenary force numbering up to 1500 men. It was based in the Deccan region and was hired by local kings. Malik became a popular Prime Minister of the
Ahmadnagar Sultanate, showing administrative acumen. He is also regarded as a pioneer in
guerilla warfare in the region. He is credited with carrying out a
revenue settlement of much of the Deccan, which formed the basis for subsequent settlements. He is a figure of veneration to the
Siddis of
Gujarat. He humbled the might of the
Mughals and
Adil Shah of Bijapur and raised the low status of the Nizam Shah. •
La Malinche ( 1496/1501– 1529), a
Nahua woman given as a slave to Spanish conquistador
Hernán Cortés. She became his personal interpreter, advisor, and mistress during the
Spanish conquest of Mexico. •
Mammy Lou (1804–after 1918), a formerly-enslaved woman who lived to extreme old age and acted in the 1918
silent film The Glorious Adventure. •
Manes, a man enslaved by
Diogenes of Sinope. He ran away shortly after his owner arrived in Athens, and Diogenes failed to pursue him on the grounds that if Manes could live without him, it would be disgraceful if he could not equally live without Manes. •
Manjeok, enslaved Korean person and leader of an abortive slave uprising. •
Manjutakin (died 1007), a Turkish-born enslaved soldier (
ghulam) and general of the
Fatimids. •
Mann, either of two men enslaved by Æthelgifu in Anglo-Saxon England and freed by the terms of her will. One was a goldsmith and the other's wife was freed at the same time. •
Marcos Xiorro, a man enslaved in
Puerto Rico who, in 1821, planned a revolt against the sugar plantation owners and the Spanish colonial government. Though the conspiracy was unsuccessful, he became a part of island's folklore. •
Marcia (died 193), mistress of Roman emperor
Commodus. •
Marcius Agrippa (late 2nd and early 3rd century), an enslaved man who was not only freed but eventually elevated to senatorial rank by Roman emperor
Macrinus. •
Marcus Tullius Tiro ( 103–4 BCE), Roman author, slave, and secretary of the Roman politician
Cicero, later freed. He invented a long-lasting system of shorthand and wrote books that are now lost. •
Margaret Garner (1835–1858), an enslaved woman in antebellum America infamous for killing her own daughter rather than see the child returned to slavery. •
Margaret Himfi (before 1380–after 1408), a
Hungarian noblewoman who was abducted and enslaved by Ottoman marauders in the late 14th century. She later became an enslaved mistress of a wealthy Venetian citizen of
Crete, with whom she had two daughters. Margaret returned to Hungary in 1405. •
Margaret Morgan, involved in the
Prigg v. Pennsylvania United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that the federal
Fugitive Slave Act precluded a Pennsylvania state law that prohibited blacks from being taken out of Pennsylvania into slavery, and overturned the conviction of Edward Prigg as a result. •
Marguerite Duplessis ( 1718–after 1740), a
Pawnee woman enslaved in
Montreal who, in 1740, unsuccessfully sued for her freedom. •
Marguerite Scypion ( 1770s–after 1836), an African-Natchez woman born into slavery in
St. Louis who sued for and eventually won her freedom. •
Maria al-Qibtiyya (died 637), also known as "Maria the Copt" or, alternatively,
Maria Qupthiya, an enslaved
Copt who was sent as a gift from
Muqawqis, a
Byzantine official, to the
Islamic prophet
Muhammad in 628, and became Muhammad's slave concubine. She was the mother of Muhammad's son
Ibrahim, who died in infancy. Her sister,
Sirin, was also sent to Muhammad. Muhammad gave her to his follower
Hassan ibn Thabit. Maria died five years after Muhammad's death in 632. •
Maria (died 1716), the leader of a slave rebellion on
Curaçao. •
Maria Bohuslavka (17th century),
Ukrainian woman enslaved in a
harem, and became a heroine of assisting the escape of 30
Cossacks from slavery. •
Maria Guyomar de Pinha (1664–1728),
Siamese royal chef of Japanese-Portuguese ancestry. •
Maria Perkins, an enslaved woman from Virginia who wrote a letter to her husband in 1852 about their son being sold away. •
Maria ter Meetelen (1704–after 1751), Dutch writer of a slave narrative, enslaved by pirates and sold to the Sultan of Morocco. Her 1748 biography is considered to be a valuable witness statement of the life of a former slave. •
Mariah Bell Winder McGavock Otey Reddick (died 1922), as a girl she was given as a wedding gift to
Carrie Winder when she married John McGavock in 1848 in
Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana. Mariah, born enslaved in Mississippi, was taken to
Franklin, Tennessee, where she lived for most of the remainder of her life. She was matched with Harvey Otey after his first wife Phebe died. They had several children, including two sets of twins, born into slavery. During the Civil War, she was sent to Montgomery to be far from Union lines and possible freedom. She has been featured in three novels:
Widow of the South and
Orphan Mother both by Robert Hicks and in a book by her great-grandson William 'Damani' Keene and his wife Carole 'Ife' Keene entitled
Clandestine: The Times and Secret Life of Mariah Otey Reddick. •
Marianna Malińska (died
after 1797), Polish serf and Royal Ballet Dancer, donated to the king of Poland by will and testament. Mark's body was displayed in chains publicly near
Charlestown, Massachusetts for twenty years. The gruesome display of his body was so well known at the time, the site where Mark's body was displayed is mentioned by
Paul Revere as a landmark, in his 1798 account of Revere's 1775 midnight ride. •
Martha Ann Erskine Ricks (1817–1901), an African-American born enslaved in Tennessee, later an Americo-Liberian quilter •
Marthe Franceschini (1755–1799), an Italian captured and enslaved by Corsairs and included in the harem of the Sultan of Morocco. •
Mary, mother of
George Washington Carver. •
Mary (died 1838), teenager hanged for the murder of Vienna Brinker, a two-year-old girl she was babysitting •
Mary Black, one of three enslaved women charged with
witchcraft during the
Salem witch trials of 1692. •
Mary Calhoun, white woman and cousin of
John C. Calhoun who was kidnapped by Cherokee. She never returned home. •
Mary Edmonson (1832–1853), along with her sister Emily, joined an unsuccessful 1848 escape attempt known as the
Pearl incident, but
Henry Ward Beecher and his church raised the funds to free them. •
Mary Eliza Smith, described in various records as "slave" or "former slave," common-law wife of Michael Morris Healy and mother of his children, including
James Augustine Healy,
Patrick Francis Healy,
Michael A. Healy, and
Eliza Healy. •
Mary Fields ( 1832–1914): the first African-American female star route mail carrier in the United States. •
Mary Mildred Williams, Nee Botts (born 1847), the original 'Poster Child' whose image was used to advance the abolitionist cause by propagandising 'White Slavery' in 1855. •
Mary Prince ( 1788–after 1833), the account of her life galvanized the
anti-slavery movement in England. • The
Master of Morton and the
eldest son of the Chief of Clan Oliphant, two Scottish nobles who were exiled from
Scotland after being implicated in the 1582
Raid of Ruthven. The ship in which they sailed was lost at sea, and it was rumoured that they had been caught by a Dutch ship. The last report was that they were enslaved on a Turkish ship in the Mediterranean. A plaque to their memory was raised in the church in Algiers. •
Masúd, initially
purchased as a youth by Khál-i Akbar, an uncle of the
Báb, Masúd would serve
Bahá'u'lláh in
Acre. •
Matilda McCrear ( 1857–1940), the last surviving victim in the United States of the
Transatlantic slave trade. Transported upon the slave ship
Clotilda. •
Mende Nazer (born 1982), a
Nuba woman captured in
Darfur and transported from
Sudan to London, where she eventually won refugee status and wrote the memoir
Slave: My True Story (2002). •
Menecrates of Tralles (1st century BC), Greek physician. •
Metaneira, a woman in ancient Greece described in
Against Neaera as the property of Nicarete, who prostituted her. •
Michael Shiner (1805–1880), enslaved laborer, painter entrepreneur, civic leader and diarist at the Washington Navy Yard. •
Miguel de Buría ( 1510– 1555), slave and rebel. •
Miguel Perez was the Spanish name of a boy of the
Yojuane people who was among 149 Yojuane women and children taken captive in 1759 during
an attack on their camp by an expedition of Spaniards and
Apaches along the
Red River in what is now northern
Texas. Many of the captives died of
smallpox while those who survived were enslaved. The boy was sold to a Spanish soldier who bestowed the Spanish name on him. Perez became an Hispanicized Indian of
San Antonio but he continued to maintain contact with the Yojuanes. In 1786, Perez was recruited to convince the Yojuanes and their
Tonkawa allies to go to war with the
Lipan Apache, which he did successfully. •
Minerva (Anderson) Breedlove, mother of
Madam C.J. Walker. •
Moses A. Hopkins (1846–1886), African-American diplomat, U.S. minister to Liberia. •
Muhammad el-Attaz (1631–1667), Moroccan prince who was enslaved in Malta from 1651 to 1656. He later converted to Christianity, adopted the name
Baldassare Diego Loyola and became a Jesuit priest. •
Murad Agha ( 1480– 1556), Italian-born Ottoman eunuch and naval officer who became
Beylerbey of Tripoli •
Mustafa ( 1708 – 1751/1763), Ottoman Pasha of
Rhodes who was enslaved in Malta after the
Lupa revolt in January 1748. He was freed in May 1749, and attempted to
instigate a slave rebellion in June 1749. •
Mustapha Khaznadar (1817–1878), born
Georgios Halkias Stravelakis, a Christian Greek on the island of Chios, captured by Ottoman troops during the 1822
Massacre of Chios, converted to Islam and given the name Mustapha, sold in Constantinople to an envoy of the
Husainid Dynasty. He was raised by the family of
Mustapha Bey, then by his son
Ahmad I Bey while he was still crown prince. Initially, he worked as the prince's private
treasurer before becoming Ahmad's state treasurer (
khaznadar). He managed to climb to the highest offices of the Tunisian state, married Princess Lalla Kalthoum in 1839 and was promoted to lieutenant-general of the army, made
bey in 1840 and then
president of the Grand Council from 1862 to 1878. •
Muyahid ibn Yusuf ibn Ali (11th century), leader of the
Saqaliba (slaves of supposed Slavic origin) in
Dénia, Spain (then part of Muslim
Al Andalus). Taking advantage of the crumbling of the
Caliphate of Córdoba, he and his followers rebelled, freed themselves, seized control of the city and established the
Taifa of Dénia, a city-state which at its peak extended its reach as far as the island of
Mallorca. == N ==