There are the outlandish claims, too, that Chinese Muslims arrived in what is present-day California in the 9th century, for which the only source is the vaguest of references by the Muslim historian and geographer Al-Masudi (871-957 CE). In his work, Meadows of Gold, Al-Masudi tells of the expedition of a Muslim navigator (Khashkhash Ibn Saeed Ibn Aswad) from Córdoba, who sailed from Delba (Palos) in 889 CE, crossed the Atlantic, reached an “unknown territory,” and returned to Córdoba with fabulous treasures. That “unknown territory” remains entirely undescribed. Nothing about its topography, size, vegetation, or fauna. Nor is there any mention of the indigenous people from whom, presumably, the “treasures” would have been seized. And why does Al-Masudi offer no description of those “fabulous treasures”themselves?
Another individual mentioned in these museum exhibits as a possible Muslim discoverer of America is, once again, the Chinese Admiral Zheng He (1371-1433). Zheng He, remember, was born into a Muslim family, but later became more eclectic in his religious beliefs. Muslims leave that part out. Zheng He made many sea journeys in the early 15th century. He sailed to eastern India, then to Ceylon (where he left a stele), then along the coast of western India, to Arabia, and all the way to the Horn of Africa. While Zheng He was careful to record all of his travels, he makes no mention of a sea journey across the Pacific. A writer named Gavin Menzies, a retired banker and amateur historian, wrote a book ostensibly proving that Zheng He discovered America in the early 15th century.
His “research” was not well-received.
A group of scholars and navigators — Su Ming Yang of the United States, Jin Guo-Ping and Malhão Pereira of Portugal, Philip Rivers of Malaysia, Geoff Wade of Singapore — questioned Menzies’ methods and findings in a joint message:
His book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, is a work of sheer fiction presented as revisionist history. Not a single document or artifact has been found to support his new claims on the supposed Ming naval expeditions beyond Africa…Menzies’ numerous claims and the hundreds of pieces of “evidence” he has assembled have been thoroughly and entirely discredited by historians, maritime experts and oceanographers from China, the U.S., Europe and elsewhere.
Menzies relied heavily on a map that had been bought for $500 in a Shanghai shop by a Chinese lawyer and collector, which Menzies dated to 1417, and which appears to show, in remarkable detail — including mountain ranges and inland rivers — both North and South America. Unfortunately for Menzies, who has acquired quite a reputation for making preposterous claims for Zheng He, a real historian in Singapore, Geoff Wade, made the following points about the map:
It is a dual-hemisphere map, a cartographic tradition exclusively European. California is represented as an island, copied straight from European maps of the 17th century. China is placed at the centre of the map as it was in early Jesuit maps of the world produced in China. It is based on a rough copy of a Jesuit map of the world.
The eunuch Zheng He is referred to as Ma San-bao. No one would have dared to use his original name given that the emperor had assigned him the surname Zheng.
The amount of non-coastal detail (including riverine systems extending thousands of miles from the coast) indicate that these maps could not have been produced by maritime voyagers. The information in the maps was obviously amassed over time by cultures who had travelled widely. It fits perfectly within the history of European cartography, but is a complete anomaly in Chinese cartography.
The Himalayas are marked as the highest mountains in the world. This fact was only discovered in the 19th century.
It seems clear that this map was a fake, carefully aged, but dating, at the earliest, after the 19th century discovery of the height of the Himalayas.
The existing evidence fails to support the large claims made for the “Muslim discovery of America,” either by Chinese Muslims, whether in the 9th or in the 15th century, or through Muslim participation in Columbus’s voyages. The evidence suggests a handful of Muslims — perhaps as many as a hundred — were among the millions of slaves brought to America, but fewer than a dozen of these are known by name. The claims made that “from one-third to one-fourth” of the slaves were Muslims, which would have meant at least two million people, are fantastical, given that no slave-trader and no slaveowner ever seemed to have noticed these Muslim hordes, or their phantasmagoric mosques, that no one can ever find, or those Qur’ans that have disappeared without a trace, if in fact they ever existed.
To sum up: No evidence exists for Muslims taking part in the discovery of America, whether by Chinese Muslims in the 9th or 15th centuries, or by crew-members (Luis de Torres) or ship-captains (the Pinzón brothers) who took part in Columbus’s voyages but were baselessly claimed (by Muslims) to have been Muslims. There has been no discernible influence of Islam on the art, literature, philosophy, or political thought of the United States. A few people, such as Sylviane Diouf, claim there is a connection between the muezzin’s call to prayer and the birth of the American blues. I know so little about music that I cannot possibly comment. There is evidence that dozens, possibly hundreds, of Muslim slaves were brought to America from Africa, but not tens or hundreds of thousands. There is no evidence of any mosques being built in America in the 17th,18th, or 19th centuries. The first mosque built in the United State for which we have convincing evidence is that one-room affair constructed in 1929 in Ross, North Dakota. The Muslim attempt at backdating their presence in America will continue, no matter how flimsy the evidence. That’s to make sure that Islam is perceived not as an alien creed, but as always having been “‘part of America’s story,” as Barack Obama repeatedly insisted. And if you dare to differ, those off-the-rack epithets — “racist” and “islamophobe” — are all you should expect.
JT says
Um… Chinese Muslim sailed across the ATLANTIC to California? Surely that’s supposed to be the Pacific!
Robert Spencer says
No, he was coming, according to the account, from Córdoba in Spain.
mortimer says
Speculation and far-fetched guesses stated as COCKSURE FACT. More hot, steaming piles of farm-fresh taqiyya. This is the same methodology that produced the Koran, Sira and hadiths … speculations stated as cocksure facts.
Islam never changes it’s still ‘a load of bull’ and the bull gets bigger all the time.
mortimer says
Muslims discovered nothing of value. They couldn’t even figure out how to make sanitary toilets. Islam discourages innovation. Islam is an extinguisher of the flame of learning and science, since everything Muslims value is in the moronic book, the Koran. If you think the Koran is profound, you are moron. It is one of the most tedious and shallow diatribes ever.
jude newman says
I’m really enjoying this series. Thank you.
Left Coast says
” Muslim navigator (Khashkhash Ibn Saeed Ibn Aswad) from Córdoba, who sailed from Delba (Palos) in 889 CE, crossed the Atlantic, reached an “unknown territory,” and returned to Córdoba with fabulous treasures.”?
More fiction from the masters of fiction & lies . . . next they will be attempting to tell you that alla was the God of Abraham . . . and not a Babalonian idol.
Thomas Hennigan says
When the Spaniards arrived in America, no one there actually knew that it was a huge continent. If they Vikings are said to have discovered it, they actually did not because they never found out what it really is. Only Spain did that. They discovered the Pacific and explored America from Alaska to the Straits of Majellan. They also discovered what is now New Guinea and also Australia, at a time when the Brits were no more than a bunch of pirates.