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Before Columbus Sailed The Ocean Blue

'Muslims in pre-Columbian America' controversy

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20040416-120208-4455r.htm

An Indian tribe has forced distributors of an Arab studies guide for U.S. teachers to remove an inaccurate passage that says Muslim explorers preceded Christopher Columbus to North America and became Algonquin chiefs.
Peter DiGangi, director of Canada's Algonquin Nation Secretariat in Quebec, called claims in the book, the "Arab World Studies Notebook," "preposterous" and "outlandish," saying nothing in the tribe's written or oral history support them.

The 540-page book says the Muslim explorers married into the Algonquin tribe, resulting in 17th-century tribal chiefs named Abdul-Rahim and Abdallah Ibn Malik.

Mr. DiGangi said the guide's author and editor, Audrey Shabbas, and the Middle East Policy Council (MEPC), a Washington advocacy group that promoted the curriculum to school districts in 155 U.S. cities, have been unresponsive to his concerns since November.

But Ms. Shabbas said this week the passage was removed immediately from subsequent copies, and that she was "giving careful and thoughtful attention" on how to notify the 1,200 teachers who have been given copies of the book in the past five years.
"As the editor of the 'Notebook,' when I heard from Mr. DiGangi that a citation in the work was not borne out by either Native American written records or by oral traditions, I was grateful that the statement could so easily be removed," she said.
She did not explain how the false information got into the curriculum.

"There was no [scholarly] peer review," said Mr. DiGangi, who says he was never contacted after lodging his complaint. "It was so outlandish. It never should have gone to press."
Jon Roth, MEPC's program manager, yesterday said the group has decided to remove the two-page chapter called "Early Muslim Exploration Worldwide: Evidence of Muslims in the New World Before Columbus."
"It is not, nor has it ever been, our intention to spread lies or untruths," Mr. Roth said.

Meanwhile, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation this week issued a report that is critical of "Arab World Studies Notebook."
The study, titled "The Stealth Curriculum: Manipulating America's History Teachers," reviewed many curriculum supplements and "professional development" programs aimed at schoolteachers.
"It appeared that the creation and dissemination of these materials, often through professional development institutes and [teacher] in-service programs, had fallen into the eager hands of interest groups and ideologues yearning to use America's public school classrooms to shape the minds of tomorrow's citizens by manipulating what today's teachers are introducing into the lessons of today's children," the Fordham study concluded.

Mr. Roth said the "Arab World Studies Notebook" is the primary reference text used in the council's program of teacher workshops conducted by Ms. Shabbas, which have numbered more than 268 in 155 cities since 1987.
The book, offered at a markdown of $15 from $49.95, has 90 readings and lesson plans covering the history and culture of the Arab world, the broader Middle East and Islam worldwide. "A lot of teachers use it," Mr. Roth said.
Chester E. Finn Jr., Fordham Foundation president, said the new "cottage industry" of "predigested supplemental materials" and professional development for history and social studies teachers was intended to help teachers who had little or no background in certain areas, and because textbooks are often insufficient.
"How could we expect them to handle complicated and emotionally charged subjects like the Holocaust and figure out what lessons to learn about it? To escort youngsters safely through the thicket of political correctness and ethnic politics that now surrounds such benign holidays as Columbus Day and Thanksgiving?" he asks in the preface of the foundation's report.

The void in teachers' knowledge and instructional materials has been filled by publishers, universities, research groups and think tanks, advocacy groups, cable networks, film producers and itinerant teacher trainers, Mr. Finn said.
"We know staggeringly little about how good these materials and workshops are — how accurate they are, whether the information they present is balanced and accurate. We know even less about the efficacy, value or intellectual integrity of innumerable workshops, institutes and training programs in which teachers participate," he said.

The report, written by Sandra Stotsky, former senior associate commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Education, described the "Arab World Studies Notebook" as "propaganda."
The chapter written by Ms. Shabbas and Abdallah Hakim Quick claims that Muslims from Europe were the first to sail across the Atlantic and land in the New World, starting in 889, the report says.

"The idea that English explorers met native Indian chiefs with Muslim names in the middle of the Northeast woodlands sounds almost like something a Hollywood film writer dreamed up for a spoof," the report says.
The current 1998 edition of the "Notebook" has "no evidence or documentation to support key historical 'facts' that serve to advance their political views or religious beliefs," the report says.
"One can only wonder if this has ever been questioned by the teachers who use its materials, or if they feel they must agree to any claim made by Muslims as an 'alternative perspective' or risk being labeled insensitive, Eurocentric, or racist."
 
The name Algonquin sounds a bit Arabic, althought it could just be the intial "al"...

Wasn't there an article in an FT (i'm guessing around 1999 or 2000) about the (IIRC) Turkish and Portuguese ancestry of the Melungeons (sp?), who were (are?) a dark-skinned but "European" looking "tribe" in the Southern US who spoke an unusual dialect and whose ethnic origin was a mystery? I seem to remember that article mentioning a possible origin of the name Alabama as Arabic meaning something like "Allah's graveyard", suggesting contact between Muslim people and the Alabama "Indians".
 
Alabama -> Alibamu tribe -> Choctaw alba ayamule, "I clear the thicket"...

Improbable migration stories have a long and esteemed history. The Scotochronicon claimed that the Scots were named after Scota, the daughter of an Egyptian pharoh.
 
I assume that it's just another example of a "faux ami", i.e. a word in another language that sounds similar to one that we already know. Sound-a-likes have been a linguistic hazard for a long time, and many companies now expend a significant amount of effort, when looking for a new name, to make sure that it doesn't mean anything rude in one of their potential markets.

Check out
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/elc/articles1.html
for some bizarre examples of this, including the Nova car being marketed to Latin America, where its name translates as "won't go." :)
 
It sounds a bit like the legend that the Trinovantes, who lived near the site of London before the Roman city was founded, came from Troy - Trinovantes sounds like "Troy Inovantium" or New Troy. The latest thinking sems to be that the English have generally been here for a long time, most of them didn't come from Denmark and Germany in the dark ages, but were here already and just adopted the invaders culture.
 
the Arabs circumnavigated Africa, and sailed to the East Indies and China frequently, the entire East Coast of Africa was a influenced by them, so its not like sea faring wasn't a historical part of their culture. Not saying that the evidence presented is proof of this because I'm certainly not convinced, but it isn't beyond probability that they could've reached the new world before Columbus.
 
I'm not quite sure how a Muslim population would become a Native American tribe. The Vikings in North America kept their culture, as did the post Columbian Europeans. Why would Muslims, or Jewish tribes as imagined by the Mormons, loose all the recognisable parts of their culture?
 
Why would Muslims, or Jewish tribes as imagined by the Mormons, loose all the recognisable parts of their culture?

Excellent point, Austen. Especially since Muslims and Jews have managed to preserve their religions over thousands of years in very changeable and religiously diverse places. This makes it seems doubly silly to me, to think that either group would come over to the Americas and prompty "assimilate".
 
A very valid point.

But the Arabs certainly were aware of a big continent to the west...Perhaps they had read the sagas or confounded it with atlantis??

What this all boils down to is that we infidels are sadly very ignorant of Arabic writings in general...theres so much that would be of great interest to us that we are unaware of.

(I wont make any petty commentary on the notion of a poorly literate societies version of history being put before a very literate ones...)
 
Homo Aves said:
A very valid point.

But the Arabs certainly were aware of a big continent to the west...Perhaps they had read the sagas or confounded it with atlantis??

What this all boils down to is that we infidels are sadly very ignorant of Arabic writings in general...theres so much that would be of great interest to us that we are unaware of.

(I wont make any petty commentary on the notion of a poorly literate societies version of history being put before a very literate ones...)

The ancient Greeks, whose writings the Muslims preserved and expanded upon, hypothesised a fourth continent. They knew the world was spherical and had an idea how Europe, Asia and Africa were distributed across the globe. They believed an extra continent was necessary to fill in the "gap" on the other side of the world to keep it balanced.
 
Re: 'Muslims in pre-Columbian America' controversy

naitaka said:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20040416-120208-4455r.htm

The report, written by Sandra Stotsky, former senior associate commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Education, described the "Arab World Studies Notebook" as "propaganda."

As opposed toall those *unbiased* US history textbooks that I read in school? This may be an especially egregious example, but it's all propaganda. This is just an easily disprovable and unpopular one right now. :hmph:
 
The ancient Greeks, whose writings the Muslims preserved and expanded upon, hypothesised a fourth continent. They knew the world was spherical and had an idea how Europe, Asia and Africa were distributed across the globe. They believed an extra continent was necessary to fill in the "gap" on the other side of the world to keep it balanced.

Why do you think Australia has a classical name, huh?
 
Red Gaels

This is not really related, but it is probably interesting as a comparison; there were two Chiefs of the Creek 'Indians' in the late eighteenth/early nineteenth century who were Scottish - Alexander McGilivray was the son of a Scottish trader and a Creek mother, who became chief of the tribe, and he was succeeded by another Jocko-Creek Amerindian, by the name of MacIntosh. the two merged their Scottish with the native culture, and were famous for negotiating fairly canny treaties with the American government - although of course, later on, these treaties were simply torn up as these peaceful, co-operative tribes were sent on the 'Trail of Tears'

This of course, does not for one moment do anything to substantiate the idea of Muslims forming the Algonquins or any such thing - but its interesting to note how the history of Americadoes feature these interesting fraternisations..
 
Re: Red Gaels

Cruithne said:
This is not really related, but it is probably interesting as a comparison; there were two Chiefs of the Creek 'Indians' in the late eighteenth/early nineteenth century who were Scottish - Alexander McGilivray was the son of a Scottish trader and a Creek mother, who became chief of the tribe, and he was succeeded by another Jocko-Creek Amerindian, by the name of MacIntosh. the two merged their Scottish with the native culture, and were famous for negotiating fairly canny treaties with the American government - although of course, later on, these treaties were simply torn up as these peaceful, co-operative tribes were sent on the 'Trail of Tears'

This of course, does not for one moment do anything to substantiate the idea of Muslims forming the Algonquins or any such thing - but its interesting to note how the history of Americadoes feature these interesting fraternisations..

Which also brings to mind Princess Ka'iulani, crown princess of the Kingdom of Hawai'i. Niece of the last monarch of the islands, Lili'iuokalani and daugther of Scotsman Archibald Cleghorn, she would have ascended to the throne if American businessmen not overthrown the government and eventually had the country annexed by the US.

A poem to her, by her friend, Robert Louis Stevenson:

To Princess Kaiulani
From Songs of Travel

[Written in April to Kaiulani in the April of her age; and at Waikiki, within easy walk of Kaiulani's banyan! When she comes to my land and her father's, and the rain beats upon the window (as I fear it will), let her look at this page; it will be like a weed gathered and pressed at home; and she will remember her own islands, and the shadow of the mighty tree; and she will hear the peacocks screaming in the dusk and the wind blowing in the palms; and she will think of her father sitting there alone. - R. L. S.]


Forth from her land to mine she goes,
The island maid, the island rose,
Light of heart and bright of face:
The daughter of a double race.

Her islands here, in Southern sun,
Shall mourn their Kaiulani gone,
And I, in her dear banyan shade,
Look vainly for my little maid.

But our Scots islands far away
Shall glitter with unwonted day,
And cast for once their tempests by
To smile in Kaiulani's eye.


Honolulu.
 
The Voyage of Saint Brendan the Abbot

Or Navigati Sancti Brendaii Abbatis

I have recently been digging through a stack of old National Geographics and re-read a feature on the voyage of Timothy Severin, crossing the Atlantic in 1976 to '77 aboard a curragh or leather boat.

I did have a search but nothing came up on the MB on St. Brendan and his link to the Americas, honest!

St. Brendan:

The New World: Who, from the Old, first touched its shore? Historians held for centuries that it was Christopher Columbus. By current consensus, it was Norse voyagers of a thousand years ago. But perhaps it was a group of shadowy, yet very real, Irish seafaring monks who predated even the Vikings by more than four centuries.

[...]With 17 fellow monks, it relates, Brendan sailed to Terra Repromissionis Sanctorum, the Land Promised to the Saints, somewhere beyond the far reaches of the western Atlantic.

Was the Promised Land North America? Did St. Brendan actually reach it in the sixth century? Neither history of archaeology offers proof. Yet early mapmakers and explorers gave credence to the legend. Place names from the Navigatio appear on later charts, and early navigators sought vainly for "St. Brendan's Isle." Fact or fantasy, the Navigatio had incalculable impact on the great European voyages of discovery- including that of Columbus.

[...]The voyage lasted seven years and introduced the monks to such wonders as demons who hurled fire at them, a floating crystal column, and a sea creature as great as an island. Scholars wonder today: Might they have been volcanic eruptions...an iceberg...a whale?

Finally, Brendan and his shipmates reached the Promised Land, a huge lush island divided by a mighty river. Soon afterward they sailed home to Ireland, where Brendan died.

National Geographic [Vol. 152, No 6, December 1977, p 769]


In a courageous attempt to silence the opponents of this theory Tim Severin built himself a curragh and sailed to Newfoundland in 1976 and 1977.
During this trip they saw similarities between the legend and the actual local situation. Near the Faeroe Islands Severin encountered flocks of seabird near what could have been Brendan's "Paradise of Birds", they saw playful whales which could have been the "black sea monsters" in the legend. The volcanoes of Iceland could have been responsible for the "pelting with flaming, foul smelling rocks" and the icebergs are indeed "towering cristals".
Severin also found a plausible reason for the long time Saint Brendan needed for his roundtrip: on the way there he could take advantage of the domination winds and favourable currents, but it was almost impossible to sail against the currents and winds with the curragh.
The curragh of Tim Severin, with the very suitable name Brendan, is now on display in the Craggaunowen Project (a heritage park near Quin, County Clare).


Taken from this site:

http://www.vincentpeters.nl/triskelle/history/saintbrendan.php?index=060.040.025


and more on St. Brendan from the Catholic Encyclopaedia:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02758c.htm
 
There were a couple of threads a good while back about the 'discovery' of America and I'm sure Brendan was mentioned in them.
 
That's cool. I did search for 'Saint Brendan' and 'St. Brendan discovered America' and all I got back was the 'Quote of the Day' thread.

I went through this forum's page listings to see if a thread was already in existence.

Yeah, I fear the merge and purge walk of shame.
 
Didn't brendan say he found a land where an old man dressed in feathers lived?

Anyone for north american plains indian with head dress?
 
Didn't Fortean Times review a book a while ago by a guy who talked about some evidence in the form of Celtic standing stones, dotted about the East coast of America? FT's complaint being that the book didn't give any indication as to where they actually were any better than the "East coast of America somewhere, woo mysterious" variety so nobody could actually go and have a look for themselves.

I've thought it perfectly likely they did (although whether or not they installed some standing stones is another matter), it seems everyone and their dog visited before Columbus, and at present I believe they did (and have done for some time).
 
Well we are now programmed to think of people sailing West from the Spain region, which is the widest part of the Atlantic. This is because we know Columbus did. ( But there is some sort of urban legend in Ireland that Columbus actually went to America via Galway). However if you sailed West from Ireland or Scotland, as Brendan and the Vikings may have done, you would be pushed up North by currents and could island hop, taking in Iceland and Greenland, and finally land on the Northern part of the American continent (possibly in modern Canada). Might not be a very pleasant or indeed warm journey but less intimidating than that whole sweep of ocean.
 
There is however no watertight archaeological evidence whatsoever found that support the idea of European, let alone Irish, presence in Newfoundland or Florida prior to the arrival of the Norsemen around 800. The earliest evidence of Irish presence in America, West-Virginia to be precise, are inscriptions using the Ogram alphabet and Christian symbols which are dated somewhere between 500 and 1,000. The unique grammar and vocabulary of these inscriptions provoke both interest as suspicion.

Source: vincentpeters.nl/triskelle/history/saintbrendan



Taken from the second link in my first post. I have disabled it but if you want to check it out, scroll up
 
I can recommend

Donald S. Johnson "phantom Islands of the Atlantic" Souvenir Press, 1997 for some more on st brendan and many other alleged Atlantic travellers and the fanciful lands they discovered.

as for the earliest europeans i remember seeing summat on TV about basques rowing across during the ice ages going from one ice floe to another. the basque connection was a genetic correspondence that the prog was trying to explain.) (sorry if that's a bit vague!)

richard
 
Tim Severin's book "The Brendan Voyage" is absolutely fantastic and I would recommend it to anyone. It covers quite a few of the accounts given in Brendan's story and in several cases what seemed like outrageous medieval exaggeration turned out to describe events and phenomenae they experienced on the journey.
 
I've heard that Saint Brendan discovered an now 'lost' island in the Canaries which was called San Borondón in his honour, too.
 
Ive got Tim Severins books too...very interesting.

Quite as good as Thor Heyerdahl methinks.
 
Atch said:
I've heard that Saint Brendan discovered an now 'lost' island in the Canaries which was called San Borondón in his honour, too.

Nice one, hadn't heard of that myth, here's a bit more info on it;

The Ghost Island: San Borondon (Saint Brendan)
When the Canaries were conquered throughout the 15th century, stories were insistently told about an eigth island which sometimes was seen to the West of La Palma, El Hierro and La Gomera. When sailors tried to reach it and approached to its shores, mountains and valleys, the island was covered by mist and vanished. The island was obviously identified as mythical Saint Brendan's whale-island, and was called "San Borondón" in the Canary Islands. People believed firmly in its existence, and there were even detailed accounts from an odd sailor or two who swore that they had landed on the island and explored it before the land had sunk again into the Ocean. In some international treaties signed by the Kingdom of Castille it was stated, concerning the Canary Islands, the Castilian sovereignty over "the islands of Canaria, already discovered or to be discovered ...". The island was called "Aprositus", the Inaccesible, and in other versions of the legend is named "Antilia" or "Island of the Seven Cities", cities which were supposed to have been founded by seven legendary bishops. The archives of the 18th century inform about official inquiries by the authorities of El Hierro, where tens of witnesses declared having seen the bewitched island from the summits of El Hierro's mountains. An expedition in search of the island sailed from Santa Cruz de Tenerife as a result of this inquiry. The persistence of this legend in the islands' folklore is amazing. San Borondón is still alive in the islands' people imagination. There is probably no one islander of Tenerife, La Palma, La Gomera or El Hierro who has not looked at least one time from the mountains into the sea, searching the lost island of San Borondón in the western horizon where the sun sinks in the cobalt-blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

from here:

Legends of the Canary Islands
 
Zheng He discovered America?

More on that in a PBS documentary:

1421: The Year China Discovered America?


1421: THE YEAR CHINA DISCOVERED AMERICA?, airing on PBS Wednesday, July 21, investigates a theory that could turn the conventional view of world history on its head: the startling possibility that a daring Chinese admiral, commanding the largest wooden armada ever built, reached America 71 years before Columbus.

The documentary examines the mystery surrounding China's legendary Zheng He and the spectacular Ming fleet of treasure junks he commanded in the early 15th century. The special provides a history of the known journeys of Zheng He's fleet and an account of new information uncovered by Gavin Menzies, a former British submarine commander who has spent nine years trying to prove that Zheng He reached America decades before Columbus. Menzies, author of the best-selling book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, has assembled evidence that he believes substantiates his theory.

The first part of the documentary presents 15th-century China as an emerging super-nation with an armada of treasure junks that dominated the Indian Ocean. At the behest of Chinese emperor Zhu Di, Zheng He sailed this fleet to far-flung outposts throughout the eastern hemisphere, established major ports and extended the commercial reach of "the Middle Kingdom" far beyond its previous bounds. The first segment recounts this story through re-enactments, extensive location filming and innovative computer graphics imaging models of the fleet itself.

1421: THE YEAR CHINA DISCOVERED AMERICA? then investigates the major historical mystery that arises from Menzies' theory: Could this incredible and intrepid fleet have shown the European explorers the way to the west - reaching America's shores decades before Columbus? Menzies seeks to prove his extraordinary theory by retracing the steps he believes the Chinese took from Africa to Europe to the Caribbean and along the eastern coast of the United States. The program examines the evidence behind his theory, then puts it to the test, drawing together historical accounts, archaeology and information from consultations with contemporary historians, archaeologists and scientists. The results are often dramatic and - like Menzies' theory itself - highly controversial.

http://www.pbs.org/previews/1421/
 
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