Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders (65 page)

119.
Redhouse Yeni Türkçe-Ingilizce Sözlük
, 573.

120.
S. A. Skilliter, “Khurrem,”
Encyclopaedia of Islam
, 5:66–67. See also Leslie P. Peirce,
The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 58–65, especially 59 n. 3.

121.
Sale, “Preliminary Discourse,”
Koran (1734)
, 134.

122.
Jefferson,
Commonplace Book
, 10.

123.
Voltaire,
Essai
, 1:255–76.

124.
The French, as recorded by Jefferson and Voltaire, is included for interested readers in the notes below.

125.
Voltaire,
Essai
, 1:255–61.

126.
Ibid., 1:255. Voltaire’s note on Sale was signaled with an asterisk.

127.
Jefferson took note: “Whilst Omar, the second of the successors of Mohamed was extending his conquests over Syria, Phoenicia, Palestine, etc., his lieutenants s’avançaient en Perse.… Alors tomba cette ancienne religion des mages.” See Jefferson,
Commonplace Book
, 334.

128.
Jefferson’s notes on Voltaire’s view of Zoroastrians continue: “Ils ne purent abandonner une religion consacrée par tant de siècles.—La plupart se retirèrent aux extrémités de la Perse, et de l’Inde …” Jefferson noted Voltaire’s comparison of Zoroastrians to Jews: “mais ignorans, méprisés, et, à leur pauvreté près, semblables aux Juifs si longtems [
sic
] dispersés sans s’allier aux autres nations.” Ibid., 334–35.

129.
“Tandis qu’un lieutenant d’Omar subjugue la Perse, un autre enlève l’Egypte entière aux Romains, et une grande partie de la Lybie. C’est dans cette conquête qu’est brûlée la fameuse bibliothèque d’Alexandrie, monument des connoissances et des erreurs des hommes, commencée par Ptolemée.” Ibid., 335.

130.
The myth of the Islamic destruction of the ancient library at Alexandria persists in the work of the classicist
Luciano Canfora, whose
The Vanished Library
(London: Hutchinson Radius, 1989) attempts to refute several sound arguments made by the
classicist and Arabist Alfred Joshua Butler in
The Arab Conquest of Egypt and the Last Thirty Years of the Roman Dominion
, ed. P. M. Fraser (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 407–26. My thanks to Richard Bulliet for this reference. The best, final refutation of the myth of the Muslim destruction of the library may be found in the analysis of both the classical and Arabic sources by Mostafa El-Abbadi,
Life and Fate of the Ancient Library of Alexandria
(Paris: UNESCO, 1990), 167–79. El-Abbadi explains that the problematic five-century-long silence of Arabic sources about Umar’s command to destroy the Alexandria library may actually reflect the era of the Crusades, during which Christian plunderers sought out Islamic libraries in the Middle East to take back to Europe. During this period, the Sunni warrior Salah al-Din (Saladin), in taking control of Egypt from the Shi‘i Fatimid dynasty, seized their famed library in Cairo and sold their books. Saladin also used books to pay his followers, as he did in dismantling a million books in a Syrian library. Saladin’s treatment of these great libraries, according to El-Abbadi, created within the Islamic world “the widespread feeling of resentment and discontent at the loss of such a priceless legacy of learning”; see El-Abbadi,
Life and Fate
, 179. El-Abbadi concludes that the reason the anecdote about Umar’s destruction of the Alexandrian library in the seventh century emerged only in the twelfth century in Arabic accounts is explained by the author Ibn al-Qifti’s debt to his employer, Saladin. He argues that this was his attempt to ameliorate Saladin’s real destruction of libraries by comparison to Umar’s invented, earlier conflagration. Much about the details of the anecdote in the Arabic versions extant seems absurd.

131.
Butler,
Arab Conquest
, 401–2.

132.
Jefferson recorded from Voltaire the falsehood that Muslims wanted no science. He copied, “Alors les Sarrazins ne vouloient de science que l’Alcoran; mais ils faisaient déjà à voir que leur génie pouvait s’étendre à tout.” Jefferson,
Commonplace Book
, 335.

133.
Voltaire admits more Islamic precedents in medicine and algebra; see Voltaire,
Essai
, 1:268. For more on Western borrowing, see Richard W. Bulliet,
The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 31. On the diffusion of new Islamic hybrids to Europe in the medieval era, see Andrew M. Watson,
Agricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic World: The Diffusion of Crops and Farming Techniques, 700–1100
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 42–51 (citrus); 20–24 (sugar); 24–31 (cotton); 15–20 (rice).

134.
Voltaire says, “La chimie et la médecine étaient cultivées par les Arabes. La chimie, perfectionée aujourd’hui par nous, ne nous fut connue que par eux.” Here he admits Islamic scientific advances, but these were not recorded by Jefferson. See Voltaire,
Essai
, 1:267–68.

135.
“Letter to Rev. Madison,” Paris, July 19, 1788, in Thomas Jefferson,
Thomas Jefferson: Writings
, ed. Merrill D. Peterson (New York: Library of America, 1984), 926.

136.
Jefferson,
Commonplace Book
, 341.

137.
“Letter to John Page,” August 20, 1785, in
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 8:418.

138.
Jefferson,
Commonplace Book
, 335; Voltaire,
Essai
, 1:263.

139.
For an explanation of the slow stages of conversion to Islam in the Middle East, see Richard W. Bulliet,
Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period: An Essay in Quantitative History
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979).

140.
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 1:530, 532, 535–36.

141.
Gaustad,
Sworn on the Altar of God
, 13–16.

142.
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 1:526.

143.
Ibid., 1:527.

144.
“Memorial of the Presbytery of Hanover (October 24, 1776),” 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), 269.

145.
Jefferson, “Autobiography,” in
Life and Selected Writings
, 40.

146.
“Memorial of the Presbytery of Hanover,” 269.

147.
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), 142–44.

148.
Differences in the spelling of “Muhammad” and “Qur’an” abound in these sources. “Mahomed” and “Alchoran” are used in
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 1:526. Instead, “Mahommed” and “Al-Coran” appear in “Memorial of the Presbytery of Hanover,” 269.

149.
The meaning of this document is read quite differently by Thomas S. Kidd,
God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution
(New York: Basic Books, 2010), 182–83.

150.
Virginia Gazette Daybooks
, Segment 2, fol. 18; Gilreath,
Thomas Jefferson’s Library
, 54. See also “Alcoran,” in
Oxford English Dictionary
, 13 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 1:210.

151.
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 1:530–39.

152.
Jefferson, “Autobiography,” in
Life and Selected Writings
, 24.

153.
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 1:547.

154.
Jefferson, “Autobiography,” in
Life and Selected Writings
, 40.

155.
S. Gerald Sandler, “Lockean Ideas in Thomas Jefferson’s
Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom
,”
Journal of the History of Ideas
21 (1960): 113.

156.
J. G. A. Pocock, “Religious Freedom and the Desacralization of Politics: From the English Civil Wars to the Virginia Statute,” in
The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom: Its Evolution and Consequences in American History
, ed. Merrill D. Peterson and Robert C. Vaughan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 61.

157.
Gaustad,
Sworn on the Altar of God
, 13–16.

158.
Champion,
Pillars
, 111–32; P. M. Holt, “The Treatment of Arab History by Prideaux, Ockley, and Sale,” in
Historians of the Middle East
, ed. Bernard Lewis and P. M. Holt (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), 292; Kidd, “Is It Worse to Follow Mahomet Than the Devil?,” 767.

159.
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 1:529. The phrase is Boyd’s.

160.
Ibid., 1:539.

161.
Ibid., 1:535.

162.
“Jefferson’s Outline of Argument in Support of His Resolutions,” in
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 1:535–39.

163.
Thomas E. Buckley, S.J., “The Political Theology of Thomas Jefferson,” in
Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom
, 89.

164.
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 1:536. The second line inside brackets is the author’s translation.

165.
Jefferson,
Notes on Virginia
, in
Life and Selected Writings
, 255.

166.
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 1:536. The second line in brackets is author’s translation.

167.
Ibid., 1:537.

168.
Ibid., 1:538.

169.
Ibid. Jefferson made reference to the pivotal impact of the Reformation: “Had not free inquiry been indulged at the era of the Reformation, the corruptions of Christianity could not have been purged away.” Clearly, Jefferson believed that Islam had had no such turning point in its religious history. See Jefferson,
Notes on Virginia
, in
Life and Selected Writings
, 255.

170.
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 1:538.

171.
Alberto A. Martínez,
Science Secrets: The Truth About Darwin’s Finches, Einstein’s Wife, and Other Myths
(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011), 36–37, 39–41, 43–45; Jefferson,
Notes on Virginia
, in
Life and Selected Writings
, 255.

172.
Al-Hibri, “Islamic and American Constitutional Law,” 501 n. 50.

173.
This assumption was first made by Hayes, but not regarding Jefferson’s legislation;
Hayes, “How Thomas Jefferson Read the Qur’an,” 250; Sowerby,
Catalogue
, 3:133, catalog #2738. Jefferson also owned
Gordon’s Independent Whig
, subtitled
or a defense of primitive Christianity, and of our ecclesiastical establishment, against the exorbitant claims and encroachments of fanatical and disaffected clergymen
, Sowerby,
Catalogue
, 3:133, catalog #2739.

174.
Bernard Bailyn,
The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
, enlarged ed. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University; repr. 1992); 35–36, 44–52; Allison,
Crescent Obscured
, 47, 52–53.

175.
Hayes, “How Thomas Jefferson Read the Qur’an,” 250.

176.
Bailyn,
Ideological Origins
, 63–64 n. 8; Allison,
Crescent Obscured
, 47.

177.
John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, “Cato’s Letters: Letter 66, Arbitrary Government proved incompatible with true Religion, whether Natural or Revealed,” in
Sacred Rights
, 59.

178.
Allison,
Crescent Obscured
, 47, 52–53, 56.

179.
For the idea that Jefferson surpassed Locke, but without regard to Muslims, see John Marshall,
John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture: Religious Intolerance and Arguments for Religious Toleration in Early Modern and “Early Enlightenment” Europe
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 697.

180.
Dumas Malone,
Jefferson the Virginian
, vol. 1 of
Jefferson and His Time
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1948), 274–84.

181.
Nabil Matar, “John Locke and the ‘Turbanned Nations,’ ”
Journal of Islamic Studies
2, no. 1 (1991): 72.

182.
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 1:544; Thomas Jefferson,
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson
, ed. Paul Leicester Ford (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1893), 2:92 n. 1, says that this phrase about the date is inscribed in Jefferson’s own hand, but
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 1:528, contradicts this.

183.
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 1:548.

184.
James Hutson first made this connection between Jefferson and Locke in “The Founding Fathers and Islam,”
Library of Congress Information Bulletin
61, no. 5 (2002): 1,
http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0205/tolerance.html
.