157. For the racial implications for Ibrahima and Omar of their Arabic literacy, see Jill Lepore, A Is for American: Letters and Other Characters in the Newly United States (New York: Knopf, 2002), 111–35.
158. For the best linguistic and historical analysis of Omar’s Arabic, see John Hunwick, “ ‘I Wish to Be Seen in Our Land Called Afrika’: Umar B. Sayyid’s Appeal to Be Released from Slavery (1819),” Journal of Arabic Studies 5 (2003–2004): 62–77; see also John Hunwick, “West Africa and the Arabic Language,” Sudanic Africa 15 (2004): 133–44.
159. Austin, African Muslims, 80; Austin, Sourcebook, 224; Gomez, Black Crescent, 169.
160. Austin, African Muslims, 70.
161. Quoted ibid., 81.
162. Ibid., 69.
163. Ibid., 70.
164. Ibid.
165. Quoted ibid., 71.
166. Ibid., 71–72.
167. Austin, Sourcebook, 127, says that the meeting took place around 1807.
168. Ibid., 128.
169. Austin, African Muslims, 72.
170. Quoted in Alford, Prince, 78.
171. Ibid., 98.
172. Quoted in Gomez, Black Crescent, 181–82.
173. Alford, Prince, 99–101.
174. Ibid., 101.
175. Quoted ibid., 102.
176. Austin, Sourcebook, 128.
177. Quoted in Alford, Prince, 103.
178. Ibid., 104.
179. Austin, African Muslims, 73.
180. Quoted ibid., 66.
181. Ibid.
182. Quoted in Alford, Prince, 119–20.
183. Ibid., 120.
184. Quoted ibid.
185. Ibid., 120, 129.
186. Gomez, Black Crescent, 172; Austin, African Muslims, 74–75, figures 11 and 12. The comment about the Fatiha is found in Muhammad M. Pickthall, trans., The Meaning of the Glorious Qur’an: Text and Explanatory Translation (New York: Muslim World League, 1977), 1.
187. Austin, African Muslims, 76.
188. Ibid., 65.
189. Alford, Prince, 183.
190. Ibid., 185.
191. Austin, African Muslims, 77.
192. Alford, Prince, 185–87.
193. Austin, African Muslims, 129.
194. Alryyes, Life, 62–63, his translation; Austin, Sourcebook, 465, has a slightly different translation.
195. Austin, African Muslims, 133–34.
196. Alryyes, Life, 48–79.
197. Jameson, “Autobiography of Omar ibn Said,” 790.
198. Alryyes, Life, xii.
199. Ibid., 66–67. On page 66 of the Arabic original, at the end of the first line, beginning of the second, Omar writes, for “America,” mrk, for which vowels would render the word “Amrika.” He addressed the “people of America” not as “all of you” but as “all of them.”
200. Austin, African Muslims, 135.
201. Austin, Sourcebook, 450.
202. Jameson, “Autobiography of Omar ibn Said,” 790.
203. Alryyes, Life, 50–51.
204. Austin, African Muslims, 73.
205. This is the interpretation quoted in Alryyes, Life, 22–27; for the Qur’anic verses, 51–57.
206. Qur’an 67:1, 3, 9; Alryyes, Life, 22–27.
207. Pickthall, trans., Qur’an, 640.
208. Alryyes, Life, 23. For the idea that Omar’s church attendance signaled his eventual conversion to Christianity, see Jameson, “Autobiography of Omar ibn Said,” 790.
209. Alryyes, Life, 25–26; Gomez, Black Crescent, 176–77; Austin, Sourcebook, 452.
210. Alryyes, Life, 66 (Arabic), 67 (English). Alryyes translates “my religion was/is the religion of Mohammed.” But the Arabic is unequivocally in the present tense: “dini din Muhammad.” Elsewhere, Omar chose to use the verb kana, which would indicate the past tense, on 74, line 2.
211. Ibid., 66–67.
212. Alryyes, Life, 72–73, transfers the third-person masculine singular to the first person and does not translate the first line al-awwal, meaning “first” or “before.”
213. Omar’s use of the third-person masculine singular in place of the first person was first noted in his autobiography and his earlier 1819 plea for freedom by Hunwick, “I Wish to Be Seen in Our Land Called Afrika,” 67 n. 10.
214. Alryyes, Life, 60–61. Omar frequently wrote an “f” (fa’) in Arabic for a “q” (qaf), the visual difference between the former and the latter being one rather than two dots, respectively. My thanks to Margaret Larkin for sharing her insightful observations about what Omar’s errors in Arabic might mean in the telling of his life story.
215. Ibid., 72–73.
216. Ibid., 74–75.
217. Ibid. This sentence could be read as, “First, Muhammad, he prays, he said: ‘Praise be …’ ” Again, Omar is not using the first person but the verb in the third-person masculine singular.
218. Austin, African Muslims, 135–36.
219. Austin, Sourcebook, 476–77. The Arabic translation given by Austin from Professor R. D. Wilson of Princeton Theological Seminary omits the “our Lord” from “our Lord Muhammad,” 476.
220. Constitution, Article I, section 2, third paragraph, struck down by the Fourteenth Amendment, section 2, which was ratified on July 9, 1868. For discussion of this passage of the Constitution in North Carolina on July 30, 1788, see Elliot, Debates, 4:205.
221. Mine is a variation of Gomez’s original title, “Founding Mothers and Fathers of a Different Sort,” Black Crescent, 143–84.
6. JEFFERSON WAGES WAR AGAINST AN ISLAMIC POWER; ENTERTAINS THE FIRST MUSLIM AMBASSADOR; DECIDES WHERE TO PLACE THE QUR’AN IN HIS LIBRARY; AND AFFIRMS HIS SUPPORT FOR MUSLIM RIGHTS, 1790–1823
1. Thomas Jefferson, “Report of the Secretary of State to the Congress of the United States: Mediterranean Trade,” December 28, 1790, in Naval Documents Related to the United States Wars with the Barbary Powers: Naval Operations Including Diplomatic Background from 1785 through 1801, 3 vols. (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1939), 1:23. Hereafter cited as “Mediterranean Trade, 1790.”
2. Gary Edward Wilson, “American Prisoners in the Barbary Nations, 1784–1816” (PhD diss., North Texas State University, 1979), 320.
3. Richard B. Parker, Uncle Sam in Barbary: A Diplomatic History (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004), xxiv.
4. Jefferson, “Mediterranean Trade, 1790,” 1:22; Ray W. Irwin, The Diplomatic Relations of the United States with the Barbary Powers, 1776–1816 (New York: Russell and Russell, 1931), 17–18.
5. Jefferson, “Mediterranean Trade, 1790,” 1:22; Michael L. S. Kitzen, Tripoli and the United States at War: A History of American Relations with the Barbary States (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 1993), 10.
6. Jefferson, “Mediterranean Trade, 1790,” 1:22–23.
7. Kitzen, Tripoli, 14.
8. Thomas Jefferson, “Report of the Secretary of State on the subject of citizens of the United States in captivity in Algiers …,” December 30, 1790, in Naval Documents, 1:21–22. Hereafter cited as Jefferson, “Report, citizens … in Algiers.”
9. Timothy Marr, The Cultural Roots of American Islamicism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 67; Robert J. Allison, The Crescent Obscured: The United States and the Muslim World, 1776–1815 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 33.
10. Jefferson, “Report, citizens … in Algiers,” in Naval Documents, 1:22.
11. Jefferson, “Mediterranean Trade, 1790,” ibid., 1:23–24.
12. Ibid., 1:26.
13. “Thomas Jefferson to Jonathan B. Smith,” April 26, 1791, in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd et al., 40 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950–), 20:290. Hereafter cited as Papers of Thomas Jefferson. Allison, Crescent Obscured, 40.
14. “Thomas Jefferson to George Washington,” May 8, 1791, in Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 20:291; John Ferling, Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012),
50–51. My thanks to Neil Kamil for this reference.
15. “Thomas Jefferson to James Madison,” May 9, 1791, in Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 20:293.
16. “James Madison to Thomas Jefferson,” May 12, 1791, ibid., 20:284; Kevin J. Hayes, The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 400–401.
17. “Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr.,” July 3, 1791, in Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 20:296.
18. John Quincy Adams, Writings of John Quincy Adams, ed. Worthington Ford, 7 vols. (Boston: Macmillan, 1913), 1:65. This fractious incident has been covered by Julian P. Boyd, Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 20:277–90; Merrill D. Peterson, Adams and Jefferson: A Revolutionary Dialogue (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1976), 55–61; Allison, Crescent Obscured, 39–40.
19. Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 20:283.
20. John Quincy Adams, Writings, 1:67–68.
21. Ibid.
22. Craig Nelson, Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations (New York: Penguin, 2007), 261–62; Humberto Garcia, Islam and the English Enlightenment, 1670–1840 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), 152–53.
23. John Quincy Adams, Writings, 1:68.
24. Lester J. Cappon, The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams, 2 vols. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 1:246. Hereafter cited as Adams-Jefferson Letters.
25. Ibid., 1:246.
26. Ibid., 1:247.
27. Ibid., 1:248.
28. Ibid., 1:250.
29. Ibid., 1:248.
30. Ibid., 1:251.
31. Kevin J. Hayes, “How Thomas Jefferson Read the Qur’an,” Early American Literature 39, no. 2 (2004): 259.
32. Ferling, Adams vs. Jefferson, 51, declares that the friendship “perished that spring.”
33. Allison, Crescent Obscured, 39–40; Thomas S. Kidd, American Christians and Islam: Evangelical Culture and Muslims from the Colonial Period to the Age of Terrorism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 6–10.
34. Allison, Crescent Obscured, 43–45.
35. Ibid., 47, 52–53, 56.
36. John Adams, “Thoughts on Government, 1776,” in American Political Writing During the Founding Era, 1750–1805, ed. Charles S. Hyneman and Donald S. Lutz, 2 vols. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1983), 1:402.
37. John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 10 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1850–56), 6:275.
38. Adams-Jefferson Letters, 2:434–35.
39. Although disputed, this unsigned essay, which expresses anti-Islamic sentiments similar to those directed earlier against Thomas Jefferson, is attributed to Adams as part of his bibliography by Lynn H. Parsons, John Quincy Adams: A Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993), 41.
40. The American Annual Register; for the Years 1827–8–9 (New York: E. & G. W. Blunt, 1830), 274.
41. Quoted in Morton Borden, Jews, Turks, and Infidels (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), 25. See also George A. Lipsky, John Quincy Adams: His Theory and Ideas (New York: Crowell, 1950), 122.
42. Thomas Paine, Thomas Paine: “Rights of Man,” “Common Sense” and Other Political Writings, ed. Mark Philip (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 16; Kidd, American Christians and Islam, 19.
43. Paine, Rights of Man, 137.
44. Ibid.
45. Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason: Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology, Part I (1794) (Cutchogue, NY: Buccaneer Books, 1976), 5–7; Kerry Walters, Revolutionary Deists: Early America’s Rational Infidels (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2011), 121–22; Nelson, Thomas Paine, 262.
46. The Debates and Proceedings of the Congress of the United States with an Appendix, containing Important State Papers and Public Documents, and All the Laws of a Public Nature, with a Copious Index; Fifth Congress, Comprising the Period from May 15, 1797, to March 3, 1799, inclusive (Washington, DC: Gales and Seaton, 1851), 3:3094–95. For the treaty with the Arabic version, see “Tripoli: November 4, 1796, and January 3, 1797,” in Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States of America, ed. Hunter Miller, 8 vols. (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1931), 2:365 (English), 2:360 (presumed Arabic equivalent). Variations in capitalization and punctuation exist between the two sources, with the quotation from the treaty taken from Miller, Treaties, 2:365.
47. “Journal of the executive proceedings of the Senate of the United States of America, 1789–1805: Wednesday, June 7, 1797,” http://memory.loc.gov/ll/llej/001/0200/02510244.gif.
48. Newspapers that published the treaty with Tripoli include: Philadelphia Gazette, June, 17, 1797; American Mercury (Hartford, CT), June 26, 1797; Boston Gazette, June 26, 1797; Boston Price-Current and Marine Intelligencer, June 26, 1797; Hudson Gazette (Hudson, NY), June 27, 1797; Newport Mercury (Newport, RI), June 27, 1797; Impartial Herald (Newburyport, MA), June 27, 1797; Connecticut Gazette (New London, CT), June 28, 1797; Courier of New Hampshire (Concord, NH), July 25, 1797.
49. Adams’s promulgation appeared on the front page of the Boston-Price Current and Marine Intelligencer, Monday, June 26, 1797. See also Jon Meacham, American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation (New York: Random House, 2006), 262, where Article 11 is reprinted with the assertion that it “was widely discussed and published.”
50. William Cobbett, Porcupine Gazette, June 23, 1797.
51. For the first to note Cobbett’s criticism, see Frank Lambert, The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 238–41.
52. For the idea of Barlow as the author of Article 11, see Borden, Jews, Turks, and Infidels, 77–78.
53. Quoted ibid., 77.
54. Although some have attempted to attribute Article 11 to George Washington because negotiations for it occurred during his presidency, this connection has no basis in fact; see Paul F. Boller, George Washington and Religion (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1963), 87–88.
55. “Appointment of Joel Barlow, as U.S. Agent, Algiers,” February 10, 1796, in Naval Documents, 1:133.
56. Arthur L. Ford, Joel Barlow (New York: Twayne, 1971), 18–19, 27.
57. Sam Haselby, “The Enigma of America’s Secular Roots: Joel Barlow’s Disavowal of Christianity as the Basis for US Government in the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli Is a Mystery,” Guardian, January 3, 2011. Haselby refers to Barlow’s Advice to Privileged Orders. My thanks to Bernard Bailyn for this reference. See also Robert Boston, “Joel Barlow and the Treaty with Tripoli,” http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/archive/boston_tripoli.html.
58. Joel Barlow, Advice to the Privileged Orders in the Several States of Europe, resulting from the Necessity and propriety of a general revolution in the principles of government, Part I (London: Childs and Swaine, 1792), 39.
59. Ibid., 53; Marr, Cultural Roots, 58.
60. Barlow, Advice, 53.
61. Lambert, Founding Fathers, 240.
62. “To Tobias Lear, appointed U.S. Consul General, Algiers, from Secretary of State, [James Madison],” July 14, 1803, in Naval Documents, 2:485; Frank Lambert, The Barbary Wars: American Independence in the Atlantic World (New York: Hill and Wang, 2005), 118.
63. James Madison, A Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments, in The Sacred Rights of Conscience: Selected Readings on Religious Liberty and Church-State Relations in the American Founding, ed. Daniel L. Dreisbach and Mark David Hall (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2009), 311.
64. Ibid., 312.
65. Robert A. Rutland, ed., The Papers of George Mason, 3 vols. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1970), 2:832; also cited in Thomas E. Buckley, Church and State in Revolutionary Virginia, 1776–1787 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1977), 136.
66. Papers of James Mason, 2:832; Buckley, Church and Sta
te, 136.
67. “Chesterfield Assembly Petition (Virginia), November 14, 1785,” Religious Petitions Virginia, Library of Congress, http://memory.loc.gov/ndlpcoop/relpet.215. I would like to thank James Hutson for this reference; see also James H. Hutson, “The Founding Fathers and Islam,” The Library of Congress Information Bulletin 61, no. 5 (2002): 1, http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0205/tolerance.html.
68. “Chesterfield Assembly, 1785”; for the importance of Virginia’s dissenters in this movement to end an establishment of the Christian religion, see John A. Ragosta, Wellspring of Liberty: How Virginia’s Religious Dissenters Helped Win the American Revolution and Secured Religious Liberty (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 12, 144–45.
69. American diplomats relied upon the consul from Spain, Gerardo de Souza, to verify the Arabic seals; see “Tripoli: November 4, 1796, and January 3, 1797,” in Miller, Treaties, 2:378–79.
70. Even James Cathcart, a prisoner in Algiers eleven years before taking up his post as consul at Tripoli, “did not read Arabic, although he seems to have been familiar with Turkish and Italian”; see ibid., quote on 2:382.
71. See “The Annotated Translation of 1930,” by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, of Leiden, in Miller, Treaties, 2:368–79.
Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders Page 48
