The Oxford Handbook of American Islam

The discovery of America by Christopher Columbus has long been in dispute and there are claims that the continent was discovered much earlier. The latest assertion was made by the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. While speaking in November 2014 at a gathering of Muslim leaders from Latin America, he said that contact between Islam and Latin America dated back to the 12th century. He claimed that Muslim sailors reached the American continent 314 years before Columbus, in 1178 CE. This claim was well researched by Abdullah Hakim Quick and his book, Deeper Roots: Muslims in the Americas and the Caribbean from before Columbus to the Present [London: Ta-Ha Publishers. 2nd Revised edition, 1996] which provides documentary evidence about the presence of Muslims as far back as the 9th century. This is based on a book by Abu al-Hasan al-Mas[udi (896–956 CE)—a historian, geographer, philosopher, and natural scientist—who wrote about a young man of Cordoba named Khashkhash ibn Sa[id ibn Aswad who crossed the Atlantic Ocean, made contact with people on the other side, and returned in the year 889 CE. However, this scholarly handbook about American Islam omits to discuss this but mentions the presence of Muslim merchant ships in the pre-Columbus period from North Africa (p.31). Thus, the Muslim migration to the United States has a very long history. However, the vast majority of Muslims were involuntary migrants who were brought forcefully as slaves from West Africa in appalling conditions in the 17th and 18th century to work on cotton farms in the southern American states. They were denied their humanity and stripped of their culture, heritage and religion (p.33).