The ransom of captives has recently become a burgeoning theme among scholars of the early modern period. Most studies focus on the ransom of Christians from the Maghrib. The assumption is that since Algiers, Tunis, and Morocco didn’t develop ransom institutions similar to the French and Iberian Orders of Redemption (the Trinitarians and the Mercedarians), North Africans taken captive and enslaved in Christian lands had no hope of returning home. In contrast, this paper argues that in the seventeenth century, Maghribis employed various ransom procedures in order to liberate their dear ones and return them home. On the one hand, Algerian and Moroccan wives and mothers interacted with Christian women to negotiate the exchange of their own sons and husbands. On the other, Maghribi rulers – Moroccan sultans and Algerian pashas – negotiated with their Christian counterparts the exchange of large numbers of captives. In order to make the ransom procedures that Magribis employed visible, this article takes as its point of departure the moment of the exchange of captives or the negotiations that led up to that moment rather than captives’ religious confession. When examined from the Maghribi perspective, not only does it become clear that Maghribis made huge efforts to liberate their beloveds held captive across the sea but also that the captivity and ransom of Moroccans, Algerians and Tunisians and that of Christians from Iberia, France and Italy were entangled. In that sense, the value of focusing on such exchanges goes beyond the study of captivity and ransom as such, also shedding light on how the sea, a socio-political space linking Iberia and North Africa, emerged out of the flow of such transactions.