John Hamed, Jr. repeats as fact several myths about Muslims. The first one, discussed in the previous piece, is the claim made by the zoologist and amateur epigraphist Barry Fell, of an Arab presence in the New World as early as 700 A.D. This was followed by the three distinct claims made by Muslim “scholars” about Muslims and Christopher Columbus. These are: first, the assertion that Columbus’s navigator was an “Arab” and “Muslim”; second, that the Pinzon brothers, one of whom was captain of the Nina and the other the captain of the Pinta, were Muslims (or Moriscos, outwardly converts to Catholicism); third, that Columbus recorded in his papers having seen a “mosque” on top of a mountain in Cuba.
Let’s deal with that last claim first, that “mosque sighting” in Cuba. It was first reported by a certain “Dr.” Youssef Mroueh in an article in 1996. There is no record of a “Youssef Mroueh” receiving a doctoral degree, nor of any Youssef Mroueh with an academic affiliation. And in the article, “Dr. Mroueh” claims, without quoting the original words of Columbus’s papers, that he noted “seeing a mosque.” Here is Youssef Mroueh: “Columbus admitted in his papers that on Monday, October 21,1492 [sic] CE while his ship was sailing near Gibara on the north-east coast of Cuba, he saw a mosque on top of a beautiful mountain.”
Note that word “admitted,” as if Columbus had wanted to hide any evidence of a Muslim presence in Cuba.
Why did Youssef Mroueh not quote Columbus? Here’s why: Columbus wrote “Señala la disposición del río y del puerto…, que tiene sus montañas hermosas y altas…, y una de ellas tiene encima otro montecillo a manera de una hermosa mezquita.”
[unnamed editor] Relaciones y Cartas de Cristóbal Colón (1892), p. 49
In English: “Remarking on the position of the river and port…, he [Columbus] describes its mountains as lofty and beautiful…, and one of them has another little hill on its summit, like a graceful mosque.” — Clements R. Markham (tr.), The Journal of Christopher Columbus (1893), pp. 62-3
Columbus did not write that he had seen a mosque but, rather, that he had seen one hill atop another, looking “like a graceful mosque.” Youssef Mroueh surely knew this, but didn’t want to let his readers know it. So he didn’t quote from Columbus, changed the description from a simile (X is like Y, the hill is like a mosque) and made it a straight description (“there’s a graceful mosque on the hill”), and hoped he could get away with it. And in fact, his version has been accepted by some Muslims, including Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who claimed in 2014 that “In his memoirs [sic], Christopher Columbus mentions the existence of a mosque atop a hill on the coast of Cuba.”
Columbus never did.
And just as baseless, and absurd, was Erdogan’s claim in the same 2014 speech that “Muslims discovered America in 1178, not Christopher Columbus. Muslim sailors arrived in America from 1178.” Again, not a scrap of evidence. But such myths serve to feed Islamic pride. Many Muslims do believe such stories, and dismiss any attempts by Westerners to disabuse them not as truth-seeking but as examples of attempts to deny Muslim achievements.
Columbus and His “Arab” Navigator
The next claim made by Muslims is that Columbus had an “Arab” navigator.
Some Muslims have claimed that Columbus did employ two Muslims, on his own ship, one as a navigator, and another as an interpreter. They are flatly wrong. Let’s consider the claims made that Christopher Columbus included Muslims in his crew. Not only is there not a shred of evidence to support this, but what evidence there is goes the other way. Columbus undertook his voyages because he wanted to discover an alternate route for Europeans to Asia, i.e., India, with its spices, precisely because Muslims had, with the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, managed to seal off the old trade routes to the East from Christian Europe. Columbus, a devout Christian, who claimed the territories he discovered for “los reyes católicos” (the Christian monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella), would never have taken on members of the enemy camp (of Islam) for his crew, and especially would not have entrusted the critical job of navigator to a Muslim. But so effective has this Muslim rewriting of history been that in 2004, a State Department employee put out a claim about Columbus’s Muslim crew members: in a press release entitled “Islamic Influence Runs Deep in American Culture,” Phyllis McIntosh of the State Department’s Washington File claimed that “Islamic influences may date back to the very beginning of American history. It is likely that Christopher Columbus, who discovered America in 1492, charted his way across the Atlantic Ocean with the help of an Arab navigator.”
No, it is not “likely.” It never happened. The State Department was falsifying history, in order to win favor among Muslims, both here and abroad.
Why did McIntosh make this absurd claim, even though “may date back” and “it is likely that” are weasel words providing an escape-hatch of deniability? How did she make the leap from no evidence to “may date back” and from “may” to “likely”? And even if, which did not happen, one crew member had turned out to be an “Arab” and thus a Muslim, how would that allow us to conclude that “Islamic influence runs deep in American culture”? What kind of “Islamic influence” would a single crew member have had on Columbus’s voyages, with all the other crew members on all three ships being Christians (or conversos, Jews who had accepted Catholicism), or on the subsequent discovery and settlement of the New World? McIntosh was pulling rabbits out of an ahistorical hat. She, and the State Department for which she worked, either felt there was no harm in trying to curry favor with Muslims (history is silly putty to some; they shape it as they will), or were under pressure to rewrite history, possibly from Obama’s office (he was constantly prating about how “Islam has always been a part of the American story”), as part of a feelgood outreach campaign to American Muslims. But where did this particular story, about Columbus’s “Arab navigator,” come from?
It came from Muslims themselves. And it is based on a case of mistaken identity. For it was Muslims who, when they learned of an “Arabic-speaking Spaniard” on Columbus’s first voyage, decided that this must refer to a Muslim Arab. In fact, the reference was to one Luis de Torres, a converso (a Jew who accepted Catholicism). Luis de Torres knew Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, and some Arabic, and was taken on not as a navigator but as an interpreter by Columbus, who thought his knowledge of Hebrew would be useful if in Asia they ran into any Jewish traders (who were known to travel far and wide) or into members of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. But Muslims, in their eagerness to put themselves into the picture with Columbus, have committed two historical errors: first, they thought that the interpreter, the “Arabic-speaking Spaniard” Luis de Torres, was the navigator, and then they assumed that if someone on Columbus’s crew spoke Arabic, as Torres did, he must have been an Arab and a Muslim. Wrong on both counts.
The Pinzón Brothers Were Muslims
At some Muslim sites it is claimed that the Pinzón brothers, Martin Alonso Pinzón, the captain of the Pinta, and his brother Vicente Pinzón, the captain of the Nina, were Muslims. There is even the further claim that the Pinzón family were related to Abuzayan Muhammad III, the Moroccan Sultan of the Marinid Dynasty. I have read everything about the Pinzón brothers I could find online. Should you wish to do as well, you could start here.
Having done so, I have been unable to find a single Western historian who believes that the Pinzóns were Muslims, or of Muslim descent.
I did find a Muslim website that asserts the following:
“On his first voyage to India, Columbus had two captains with Muslim family backgrounds, Martin Alonso Pinzon, the captain of the Pinta, and his brother Vicente Yanez Pinzon, the captain of the Nina. The Pinzon family was related to Abuzayan Muhammad III, the Moroccan Sultan of the Marinid Dynasty (1196-1465).”
No sources are supplied for this claim. Just after this assertion, on the same Muslim website, comes another remarkable, because baseless, claim, about the Chinese admiral Zheng He, who was a Muslim:
“A Chinese Muslim, Admiral Zheng He, visited Americas during his seven maritime expeditions between 1405 and 1433.”
A link is then given to a story which, presumably, supplies the evidence for this assertion. I dutifully clicked on that link, here. Then I read it, and discovered that there is no reference — none — to Zheng He’s travels to “the Americas during his seven maritime voyages.” The article mentions only travels to Asia and Africa. There apparently were no travels by Zheng He to the Americas.
The Muslim writer of this website apparently believes that if he gives a link, many people will assume the supporting material is there, and not bother to check. He may be right.
The same writer makes several other, equally baseless, claims about the pre-Columbus landings of Muslims in America.
There is, for example, this: “In 1312, Muslim explorers from Mali and other parts of West Africa arrived in the Gulf of Mexico for exploration of Americas interior using the Mississippi River as their access route.’”
I again searched for any evidence for this claim; I could find nothing anywhere on the Internet, except the crazed paper by the notorious “scholar” Youssef Mroueh, who lists a series of claims about Muslims landing in America long before Columbus. He relies both on Fell and on his own vivid imagination. To understand the scope of his wild claims, read his paper on “Precolumbian Muslims in the Americas” here.
Thus, the same Muslim who wants us to believe without any evidence that the Pinzón brothers were Muslims, also wants us to believe, again without evidence, that Admiral Zheng He landed in America, though he never claimed to have done so, and to believe, also without any evidence, that in 1312, sailors — from the desert kingdom of Mali — arrived in the Gulf of Mexico, and then sailed up the Mississippi to explore the American heartland. Again, no evidence is presented.
These are all fables. But the truth doesn’t matter for Muslim propagandists. Let the story appear, at some website, an assertion without any evidence. Then let it be reposted, at another website, again without any evidence. And then let it be reposted yet again, still without evidence. By now it has appeared in enough places so that for many it becomes the truth. Why? Because when a story appears in several places, many think it must be true. For if it had been false, surely it would not have been reposted. And then there is the respect for authority. Barry Fell was a professor at Harvard. Few will have learned that he was a professor of invertebrate zoology. They will be impressed, unaware that he is regarded as a crazed crank and perhaps a deliberate fraud, in his epigraphic and archaeological claims, by all of the professionals who have reviewed his “evidence.” Then there is deliberate misreading: Columbus says a hilltop “looked like a mosque” becomes, for “Dr.” Youssef Mroueh, and then for Recep Tayyip Erdogan, “on a hilltop I saw a mosque.”
There is not just fake news. There is also fake history. And a lot of that fake history has to do with supposed accomplishments of Muslims, such as the discovery, exploration, and settlement of the New World. The next time you read the story of the Pinzón brothers being Muslim, ask yourself why this was never mentioned during the 500 years after Columbus’s first voyage, why not a single historian mentioned it even as a remote possibility, and why this story only appeared in the last two decades, when Islamic propaganda has been in full swing on the Internet.
It has to be repeated that Barry Fell was neither a trained archaeologist nor an expert in epigraphy. His studies in this area were completely rejected by those who were experts in these fields. They didn’t reject this or that aspect of Fell’s work, but rather, declared his study of “inscriptions” of supposed pre-Columbian Old World settlers in the New World to be completely without merit. Some believed he was carrying on a scam for fame and money (greater sales for his books such as the much-reprinted America B.C.); others deemed him self-deluded, a crackpot, which is what, having read as much of his stuff as I could endure, I take him to be.
Yet Muslims are prepared to accept his views, ignoring his professional reputation, because he places Muslim Arabs in America as early as 650 A.D. (in Nevada!). And in the same uncritical spirit, some accept Youssef Mroueh as an authority when he spins stories about Mandinka speakers from Mali in America in the fourteenth century, or Columbus sighting a mosque on a hilltop in Cuba. Or still others make up a story about the Pinzón brothers being either Muslims, or of Muslim descent.
The Istanbulian says
Well the good news is that if the Muslims were there first, then it was they who were destroying the indigenous peoples cultures. The westerners were only fighting other colonists.
Charles Martel says
Great point. In Portland, ME we have a sharia-adherent Muslim City Councilman, Pious Ali, who came here from Ghana only 17 years ago. He led the charge to change Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples’ Day claiming Columbus committed atrocities against the native Americans. How did the Muslim invaders conquer land from Spain to India? Handing out flyers?
Secondly, a Univ. of So. ME “researcher”, Reza Jalali, is teaching this same Muslims discovered America crap.Yet, no one at the school calls him on it.Political correctness at its best!
gravenimage says
Very disturbing–but not surprising.
UNCLE VLADDI says
Since Spain itself had been violently invaded, raped, genocided and conquered by islam for nearly 1,000 years previous to Columbus, the Spaniards and their colonial descendants were (and remain) technically both genetic Arabs and cultural muslims.
Which is why, of all the so-called “Christian” countries in the world, ONLY those descended from Spain have lazy, women-hating and “honour”-killing macho cultures.
Gae says
Muslims also claim that Adam, Moses and jesus were all Muslims..I do not know if they calim Einstein and other Jews as Muslims…
Mohamed taught all pious Muslims to use taqiyya and kitman-Islamic ctrategies of lying and concealing as tools of conquests of non-Muslims… DO NOT TRUST ANY MUSLIM as they believe that they are sereing Allah by lying…without blinking an eye…
Islam ITSELF does ot belong to any country that resepcts liberty, justice and human rights of all individuals.
Bodega says
Why do we keep John Hamed on our writers list? Tank him. He is a fabricationist.
Gbox says
These myths persist, in part, because of the closed minds of the left, and their belief that all cultures are equal and it’s racist to believe otherwise. So of course they would never question these myths that are also voraciously consumed and spread by ignorant Muslims everywhere. They have claimed ownership of many things, but my favorite is that Mozart was influenced by Islam. A reference to his Turkish March, I believe.
ConnectingDots says
Dennis Prager supports something that Hugh Fitzgerald wrote here: “The Muslim writer of this website apparently believes that if he gives a link, many people will assume the supporting material is there, and not bother to check. He may be right.” Dennis has repeatedly noted on his radio show that many links that he checks these days do NOT support what the writer — say, in The New York Times — claims in his/her article.
One correction: Phyllis McIntosh could NOT have been under the influence of the Obama administration in 2004, when George W. Bush was President.
Hugh Fitzgerald writes, “But so effective has this Muslim rewriting of history been that in 2004, a State Department employee put out a claim about Columbus’s Muslim crew members….”
I wondered about that 2004 reference, but I found this article by Robert Spencer that confirmed that McIntosh wrote her nonsense in 2004:
http: // www .nationalreview .com/article/212213/christopher-columbus-multicultural-robert-spencer
However, then Hugh Fitzgerald writes here, “She, and the State Department for which she worked, either felt there was no harm in trying to curry favor with Muslims (history is silly putty to some; they shape it as they will), or were under pressure to rewrite history, possibly from Obama’s office….”
That’s impossible, unless Barack Obama was pressuring the U.S. State Department from his office in the Illinois Senate.
Pong says
That tactics about false links has been frequently used by Nahum Chomsky in his lectures, interviews and debates. Most people don’t check the links and those who do are very few.
I must admit that until his debate with prof. Dershovic, when he claimed that the maps were not available, I didn’t doubt his word, but that statement surprised me as being too strange. Camp David meeting about peace and no maps!? I looked it up and they were available on the net. I wander how many people did the same. Not many, I am sure.
Hugh Fitzgerald says
Thank you for the correction. I was fixated, wrongly, on Obama, and did not check my dates..
Benedict says
Anyway: how are all these supposed cultural and scientific achievements of Muslims in the past related to the backwardness of Muslim countries today?
Someone ought to write a book about the closing of the Muslim mind — in addition to the Koran i.e.
Januk36 says
The “inventors” show poor understanding of their inventions.
David Hayden says
Benedict, Read The Closing of the Muslim Mind by Robert R. Reilly, 2010. subtitle: Hoe Intellectual Suicide created the Modern Islamist Crisis.
David Hayden says
That’s How not Hoe. my bad.
Voytek Gagalka says
History of those distortions of history clearly shows only the general pattern how myths of Islam were created and propagated throughout past centuries to the point that we today are not even sure if Mohammed existed. And even if he did exist, all his well documented (in Koran and Sunnah) evil doings (mass slaughters et al.) were “converted” to mean as the most revered good deeds with permanent suffix “be peace upon him” added to any mention of his name.
Chanah says
Just want to say that in regard to Luis de Torres, his name was Jewish. Many Jewish Sephardic or Spanish names end in “s” rather than a “z”. Also, the article states that many of the Jews involved were conversos. But many writers have stated that not only was Columbus a secret Jew, but many of the others on the voyage were also Jews. They were not conversos, but Marranos. They only pretended to convert, to save their lives, but remained Jews. After all, if they truly converted and were indeed “devout Catholics”, why make the perilous voyage to look for a new world?
Alarmed Pig Farmer says
… and hoped he could get away with it…
Isn’t this always the case with Moslems advocating Islam? And when bullsheet doesn’t work, weapons will.
Wellington says
“These are all fables,” writes Hugh Fitzgerald. Yes they are and how fitting since Islam itself is one gigantic fable.
gravenimage says
Moreover, it is an incredibly dark fable…
Januk36 says
I heard about the claims and never took it seriously. Many thanks to the writer for doing the research.
Rene O'Riordan says
Queen Isabel explicitly ordered that no muslims be allowed go to the New World because they were too troublesome – I definitely read that somewhere but for the life of me cannot find it – Rene
gravenimage says
And here is part of a letter Christopher Columbus wrote to Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand:
“Your Highnesses, as Catholic Christians and Princes who love the holy Christian faith, and the propagation of it, and who are enemies to the sect of Mahoma [Islam–GI] and to all idolatries and heresies, resolved to send me, Cristóbal Colon, to the said parts of India to see the said princes … with a view that they might be converted to our holy faith ….”
That *hardly* sounds like someone who had slews of Muslims on his crew…
SAM says
What a stupid cult Islam is. It has nothing to offer to humanity but lies and hate.
Alice says
Thank you. I love these exposes.
gravenimage says
+1
Ren says
No surprise! More muslims lies and lies and lies…
Chris LA says
No only are these fables showing up on the Internet, but they are actually being disseminated in Public School textbooks. An organization called Truth in Textbooks has ferretted out hundreds of factual errors in social studies history books. In the past, these errors were passed along by reviewers who didn’t take the time to “fact-check” the textbooks. Hopefully, that outrage will come to a halt.
Jon MC says
“… social studies history books.”
Enough said I think.
gravenimage says
Fine piece, Mr. Fitzgerald.
The *only* links Columbus had to Islam were–as you note–his trying to find a route around the savager Muslim conquerors, and also that this took place the very year–1492–that Spain was able to expel the last of the Muslim conquerors from their shores.
The fact that Spain and Portugal *blossomed* with world-changing discoveries and inventions when they were finally free of Islam is no accident.
Pong says
1492 was the year of jewish expulsion. Last moslems were expelled some years later after moslems attempted “reconquista”.
gravenimage says
Pong, here are the facts:
The kingdom of Granada falls to the Christian forces of King Ferdinand V and Queen Isabella I, and the Moors lose their last foothold in Spain. This battle was fought January 2, 1492.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/reconquest-of-spain
No part of Spain was under Muslim rule after 1492.
az says
Exactly. Muslims controlled the silk road, way before Marco Polo’s time.
This meant Europeans wanted to find alternate routes to india/china free from heavy Muslim taxation.
They forgot the east, and turned their minds to the west and the south.
Pong says
Some years ago I was admitted into one of the most prestigious university in the world.
At that time we didn’t know about PC, so admissions were only on merit. I can’t remember even one moslem student in any year. There was another place where moslems could be admitted. That place required much lower marks.
Darth says
Most of that has to do with lowering is with incest and inbreeding. Saudi Arabia instituted blood compatibility tests for marriage licenses because of the massive epidemic of genetic diseases being born and what they found was that they denied more than 50 percent of the marriage licenses due to genetic disease caused from inbreeding. I am pulling all of this from memory so please forgive me if it is a little off as I am too lazy to look up the exact numbers for the severity of it.
Arabs practice of marrying first cousins and even half sisters from the same harem (though admittedly less often) was seen as keeping the blood pure. The same as royalty in Europe … the Egyptian totals who practiced full incest … the genetic diseases like taizacks(sp?) In the Jewish lineage where Jewish genetic disease was from a closed society with distant common relatives over a long period … first cousin marriages in Islamic practices has a very fast affect with common effects of lightening skin … lowering IQ… as well as shortening lifespan which spread with the spread of islam itself.
The broken genetics of Muslims is a very documented fact as a result of this inbreeding to keep the bloodline pure. Pakistan is another country where genetic diseases are rampant due to the first cousin marriages.
The average IQ of Muslims… especially with a long Islamic history is also a very well documented fact as a direct result of first cousin marriages.
Anyone who points out these facts is deemed a racist and supremists for stating the truth and medical facts related to race. Medical journals do describe these racial differences but in a very politically correct way where they describe the high incidence of the genetic disease risks and genetic health concerns without ever linking these racial diseases, genetic birth defect causes, and the basic common knowledge fact that inbreeding both lightens skin colour as well as lower overall intelligence.
Proof of inbreeding practices are a simple Google search of forced marriage by Muslims to thier cousins … and in the West they do it to bring over another branch of thier clan by marrying a western Muslim girl to her cousin from the middle East which allows that branch of the clan to move over under family reunification.
Muslims are instinctually driven low intelligence by genetics from sick and twisted marriage rules under Islam in the middle East. This is also why Islamic jihadist screws up so much as they lack the intelligence in most cases to research and follow basic instructions.
b.a. freeman says
within the past couple of years, i read an article by a former u.s. military man who had taken a job as a trainer for an arms manufacturer after he retired from the military. he spent a lot of time in the middle east, where governments want u.s. armament. one of the things he noted was that the muslim soldiers he trained tended to distrust one another, and tended to not cooperate. one officer responsible for equipment maintenance even collected all the training manuals and other materials the trainer distributed so that only he would have the information.
this also happens in the muslim family. the males *own* the wives and children, and are free to kill wives, children, and grandchildren if they fear loss of “family honor.” this “family honor” is actually the standing of the male in muslim society; if he is seen as weak, his fellow muslims can and will push him around. thus, it is dangerous to be seen as weak, and “family honor” is really the gang standing of the male.
both of these make perfect sense. muslim society is a gansta world. the criminal gang bangers need macho standing in the gang, the better to increase their wealth and power; cooperation and negotiation are seen as weakness in any gang, and confrontation as a virtue.
unfortunately, i have been unable to find the article by the trainer; most likely, i’m not using the right terms in my search.
Larry says
One of the reasons muslims try and pull these sorts of scams is to justify jihad.
If a place has ever been ruled by muslims that makes it forever part of dar al islam and all good muslims must partake of defensive jihad to recover it from dar al harb.
But if a place has been vermin free it needs offensive jihad to attack it, and for that to happen the jihad must be sanctioned by both the caliph and an emir. As there are no caliphs after Ataturk got rid of the last one nearly 100 years ago no offensive jihad can be declared.
To get around that false claims are made about islams prior arrival in the Americas, and in Australia, so that good little barbarians can “legitimately” carry out acts of jihad.
politicalqrm says
It’s the job of present-day Muslims to re-write history and make islam the hero throughout the ages. There are even websites out there that insist muslims fought in the American Revolution and figured highly in our fight for our independence. Bunch of crap… The only source for that is on a muslim site, written by a muslim… And if you go around New England where I live, you see many old churches from the 1700’s… and not one mosque from that time..
This is all part of their taqiyya to advance islam.. change history of a society. If they were so advanced, why are they acting as if they’re still in the 8th century?
Aardvark says
Zheng Ho may have visited both North and South America, (search for Gavin Menzies) but if so he didn’t stay, and the Chinese did not found any lasting colony. Most historians dismiss Menzies claims as fiction, anyway, although I have to say that his book ‘1421: The Year China Discovered the World’ is an interesting and absorbing read.
Regardless of whether Zheng Ho reached America or not, though, he was almost certainly NOT mohammedan!
gravenimage says
Zheng Ho actually was born into a Muslim family–but there is no compelling indication that he ever visited the Americas, and there was no Chinese presence here prior to Chinese immigration to California during the Gold Rush.
Aardvark says
As usual, Graven, you are right. I should have looked him up on Wikipaedia before I commented.
But he couldn’t have been a very good mohammedan, because he also apparently worshipped the sea goddess Mazu.
Don Fredrick says
I recommend the sarcastically-titled “The Muslim Discovery of America,” by Frederick William Dame. (I wrote the Commendatory Preface; Pamela Geller wrote the Foreword.) Mr. Dame brilliantly exposes all the false claims of Muslim history and influence in the United States. Many of the claims are laughable, but what is not laughable is that fear of being called an Islamophobe has led to many Americans believing the claptrap and Muslim propaganda.
gravenimage says
Fine recommendation.
Benny S says
Here is an interesting link to a speech given(in the 1800’s) by Ernest Renan about Islamic Science
https://www.mcgill.ca/islamicstudies/files/islamicstudies/renan_islamism_cversion.pdf
gravenimage says
From Renan’s speech:
“Anyone with even the slightest education in matters of our time sees clearly the
current inferiority of Muslim countries, the decadence of states governed by Islam, the
intellectual sterility of races that derive their culture and education from that religion
alone. All who have been to the Orient or to Africa are struck by what is the inevitably
narrow-mindedness of a true believer, of that kind of iron ring around his head, making it absolutely closed to science, incapable of learning anything or of opening itself up to any new idea…”
Spot on.
Mike says
Yes. And Adam was the first muslim, too. And Noah, and Abraham and Moses and Jesus . Maybe even Jesus Campos .
az says
In the 1480s, Columbus already had a strong reputation among Portuguese and Spanish Royals, as an seasoned navigator.
He didn’t need sailing lessons from anyone, much less from a unknown Muslim navigator.
Ignorant cultural jihadists nowadays don’t want to acknowledge that in the years leading up to New world discovery, both the Portuguese and Spanish made significant discoveries along the African coast, at their own expenses, because they were constantly at wars with Moroccans, and wanted no business whatsoever with Muslims.
az says
TURDeau will probably support this narrative of his muslim masters, and say that Norse Leif Ericson, discover of newfoundland by the year 1000 (he called it Vinland), went in a hurry to the Caliphate, thousands of miles from Norway, to fetch a bunch of muslim sailors, before departing in the search of Canada.
Troy Laarman says
I invented the question mark after considering why chestnuts are lazy.
David Hayden says
Thanks, Hugh. Lazy and/or dishonest “historians” have a difficult time dealing with your thorough scholarship.