Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently said that Muslim voyagers discovered the Americas more than three centuries before Christopher Columbus landed on its shore. He made this claim while addressing a conference of Latin American Muslim business leaders in Istanbul last week. Erdogan pointed to a diary entry made by Columbus, in which he mentions seeing a mosque on a hilltop in Cuba.
“Muslim sailors arrived in America in 1178. … Contacts between Latin America and Islam date back to the 12th Century,” he said, while promising he would like to build a mosque at the site identified by Columbus. However, he had no other evidence to back his claim.
Columbus is commonly believed to have discovered the Americas by mistake in 1492, while trying to find a new route to reach India. However, a controversial article published by historian Youssef Mroueh in 1996 points to a theory suggesting Columbus had made a diary entry, noting his observation of a mosque in Cuba. This apparent claim made Mroueh speculate that Muslim voyagers had reached the Americas before Columbus did. He also alleged that the religion was widespread at that time.
However, other historians and scholars believe that Columbus had written metaphorically about a part of a mountain that resembled a mosque. Their belief is backed by the fact that no Islamic structures have been found in America that date back to a time before Columbus discovered the two continents. The first people to reach the Americas are believed to be Asians, who reportedly crossed the Bering Strait and reached the new continent 15,000 years ago, while the first European visitors to land in America are commonly believed to be Norse explorers, who reached the shores 500 years before Columbus.
Erdogen believes a mosque would look perfect on top of that hill mentioned by Columbus and said he would discuss building one with Cuba. Erdogan’s political party, Justice and Development, believes in running a conservative democracy and it has acquired much of its governing tenets from Islam.
Photo Credits: Wikimedia
