Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders (27 page)

The lack of a common language would be even more troublesome in the eventual process of drafting treaties in both English and Arabic or Ottoman Turkish, the latter being languages only a few U.S. diplomats could speak but not read, let alone write. Treaties with Morocco and Tripoli would be drafted in English and Arabic, sometimes with an Italian version. Those with Algiers and Tunis were drafted in Ottoman Turkish and English. The necessity of relying on foreign diplomats, whether Muslim or Christian, to certify the Arabic or Turkish version as faithful to the English perilously limited what confidence the Americans had in the accuracy of the bilingual treaties they signed.

Adams admitted to Jefferson that he was no linguist, but as he reported to Jefferson, he and the Tripolitan managed “with a pittance of Italian and a few French words.”
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To Secretary Jay, Adams allowed that the meeting was “carried on with much difficulty, but with civility enough on both sides, in a strange mixture of Italian, Lingua Franca, broken French and worse English.”
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For his part Jefferson, who was a linguist, had shown an interest in Arabic (and Persian and Hebrew) as early as 1778. In that year, he first attempted to buy an eight-volume collection of Arabic and Persian poetry by the British scholar Sir William Jones (d. 1794) from a former philosophy professor at William and Mary, who had left Virginia for
England during the Revolutionary War.
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But those books would not yet have arrived when he wrote from Paris in March 1785, a year before his negotiations with the ambassador from Tripoli.
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Still, the volumes were eventually added to Jefferson’s library collection on his return from Europe in 1789 and his acquisition of books to further his study of Arabic would continue, his curiosity whetted by access to European book markets—and the continuing problem of piracy.

The North African emissary opened his first meeting with Adams by venturing some pleasantries about the comparative merits of American and Tripolitan
tobacco. He explained to his American guest that his native tobacco was “too strong,” but diplomatically conceded, “Your American tobacco is better.”
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On this cue, one of the servants “brought two pipes ready filled and lighted.” Adams was given the longer, which he “placed with bowl upon the carpet, for the stem was fit for a walking cane” of “more than two yards in length.”
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By his own admission, “it was long” since he’d smoked a pipe, but Adams matched his host “whiff for whiff” rather than do the “unpardonable” and be thought “wanting in politeness in so ceremonious an interview.”
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They continued smoking until
coffee was brought in. Adams wrote Jefferson that he “alternately sipped at his coffee and whiffed at his tobacco.”
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One of the two standing secretaries, reported the American, “appeared in raptures,” over Adams’s behavior until “the superior of them who speaks a few words of French cryed out in extacy, ‘Monsieur votes etes un
Turk,’ ” or “Mr., you are a Turk!”
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This was meant as the highest form of praise for the American, but one wonders whether Adams appreciated the attendant irony of what was a common pejorative in early American political rhetoric being turned on its head in his honor. With the serving of tobacco and coffee, products from the New World and the Old, “the necessary civilities” had concluded.
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It was time to negotiate.

Politely, the ambassador from Tripoli “asked many questions about America: the soil climate heat and cold, etc., and said it was a very great country.” He then added, “But Tripoli is at war with it.” Adams replied, “Sorry to hear that.” He averred that he “had not heard of any war with Tripoli” and
“America had done no injury to Tripoli, committed no hostility; nor had Tripoli done America any injury or committed any hostility against her, that I had heard of.” Abd al-Rahman responded, “True,” but continued to press his point:

These assertions, in brief, summed up the view from Tripoli: The Mediterranean was their lake; to sail it freely required a diplomatic agreement and a financial arrangement such as North African powers had demanded for centuries from European countries. It was simply business as usual. The declaration of war was not merely an invitation to sue for peace, but implicitly to pay for it as well. And there was a specific hierarchy of treaty-making to be concluded: Tripoli first (of course), then the Ottoman Turks, to whom nominal suzerainty was still owed by Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers.
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Presenting the American with a French translation of his authorization to make treaties with all European powers, the ambassador, Adams understood, “was ready to treat and make Peace.” Adams reported being asked to return “tomorrow or the next day, or any other day and bring an interpreter. He would hear and propose terms, and write to Tripoli and I might write to America, and each party might accept or refuse them as they should think fit.”
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The matter was urgent to both sides. “How long would it be before one could write to Congress and have an answer,” the ambassador was keen to know. Adams replied that it might take three months, which the ambassador pronounced “too long.” From this impatience, Adams concluded that “his Excellency was more ready and eager to treat than I was as he probably expected to gain more by the treaty.” At the invitation to return straight away, the American demurred, promising to “think of it.” He was convinced that Abd al-Rahman’s demands, when known, would be “higher I fear, than we can venture.”
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And these anxieties would prove well founded.

“How can we preserve our dignity in negotiating with such
nations?” Adams wrote in his concluding lines to Jefferson,
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though a few lines earlier he had allowed that the Muslim ambassador was “a sensible man.”
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Writing that same day to Secretary Jay, Adams likewise summed up his host: “The minister appears to be a man of good sense and temper.”
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Unfazed by the hospitality, then, Adams saw an immediate opportunity to accomplish a major national objective. He also saw an experienced, serious diplomat, one he could do business with.

Adams held two more meetings with the ambassador, the details of which he sent only to John Jay. On February 20, Abd al-Rahman sent his interpreter to initiate a noon meeting, whom Adams describes as “a Dr. Benamor, an English Jew most probably, who has formerly resided in Barbary and speaks the Arabic language, as well as the Italian and Lingua Franca.”
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By the second meeting, on the twenty-second, Adams was prepared to call the interpreter “a decent man, and very ready in the English as well as Arabic and Italian.” He had since learned that “it is the custom of all the ambassadors from Barbary to be much connected with the Jews, to whom they are commonly recommended.”
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Jews were a significant group in North Africa, especially after their expulsion from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1496.
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Estimates suggest that almost two hundred thousand settled in Ottoman territories, encouraged by Muslim sultans. In contrast to their medieval and early modern persecution throughout most of Catholic and Protestant Europe, Jews in Islamic lands were defined
as
People of the Book according to the Qur’an, and allowed to practice their faith, often rising to positions of influence at Muslim courts, whether in medicine, commerce, or diplomacy. In North Africa, the Jewish banking house of Bacri and Busnah proved essential to brokering financial terms for the United States in treaty negotiations in Algiers and Tunis.
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But John Adams may not have been favorably impressed, to judge by his opinion of the Jewish financiers of Europe:

As Abd al-Rahman revealed at the first meeting, he had chosen the Jew Benamor over “the interpreter assigned him by the Court.” He had refused the suggestion of the British “because he was sorry to see
that this nation was not so steady in its friendship to America as the French,” a quite accurate diplomatic summation.
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Adams nevertheless remained wary of the “interested motives” of “the Jews,” noting that “their interference cannot be avoided,” and concluding that “Benamor soon betrayed proofs enough that he had no aversion to the ambassador’s obtaining large terms.”
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Why Adams would have expected a Jew would do less than accurately present the intentions of the Muslim employing him is unclear, but Adams was clearly wary of both.

The ambassador presented his wish for a peace treaty as altruism, suggesting that “the whole pleasure of his life” was “to do good; and he was zealous to embrace an opportunity … of doing a great deal.” But still, he warned that “time was critical,” and if the enterprise were delayed “another year, it would after that, be difficult to make.” There were also other Islamic powers and the horrors of slavery for captured Americans to consider:

This specter of present and future American captives held in North Africa must surely have filled Adams with dread, as intended.

Abd al-Rahman went on to offer practical advice about how to negotiate with
Algiers, the most powerful of the pirate states. He warned that they had the most and the largest ships. They would likely refuse a treaty at first. But they could be won over by first establishing terms with Tripoli, because once “a treaty was made by Tripoli, or any one of the Barbary states, they would follow the example.” In just this way, the ambassador allowed, a treaty had been concluded with Spain. Then, calling “God to witness,” Abd al-Rahman “swore by his beard, which is a sacred oath to them,” insisting “that his motive to this earnestness for peace although it might be of some benefit to himself, was the desire of doing good.” In reality, his humanitarianism assured the most profitable outcome for Tripoli. When the North African
ambassador learned that America had also sent an agent to negotiate with Morocco, “he rejoiced to hear it.”
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Adams reported that “no harm could be done by dealing frankly” with the ambassador. Abd al-Rahman “rejoiced” to see the envoy’s congressional commission to make treaties with Tripoli as well as Morocco, Algiers, and Tunis, saying he would undertake to negotiate terms for both Tunis and Tripoli. He would “also write in favor of any person who might be sent or go with him in person, to assist in the completion of peace with all the States of Barbary,” which Adams added “was more than he had ever before said to any ambassador or minister in Europe.”
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When Adams asked Abd al-Rahman specifically about “the terms,” he was told to come see the ambassador at his house the next evening. Before leaving Adams took the opportunity to remind his visitor that although “America was an extensive country, the inhabitants were few in comparison with France, Spain, and England” and that they “were just emerged from the calamities of war” and had few potential ships that the corsairs could seize as prizes.
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Abd al-Rahman took the point immediately. “God forbid,” he said, “that I should consider America upon a footing at present, in point of wealth, with these nations.” He then said that he would rather depart than “stipulate anything precisely.”
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Adams, impressed but wary, observed of Abd al-Rahman, “This man is either a consummate politician in art and address, or he is a benevolent and wise man. Time will discover whether he disguises an interested character, or is indeed the philosopher he pretends to be. If the latter, Providence seems to have opened to us an opportunity of conducting this thorny business to a happy conclusion.”
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Despite this guarded optimism, Adams reported that money would be the problem: “If the sum limited by congress should be insufficient, we shall be embarrassed; and indeed, a larger sum could not be commanded, unless a new loan should be opened in Holland.”
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Of the second meeting, on the twenty-first, Adams reported the next day, “The ambassador, who is known to many of the foreign ministers here, is universally well spoken of.”
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Yet shortly thereafter his worst fears about the price of a peace were confirmed. Terms, Abd al-Rahman explained, differed “according to the duration.” There were two types, a “perpetual treaty” being more expensive than one of fixed term. The ambassador recommended the pricier option, counseling
that once lapsed, a treaty “might be difficult and expensive to revive.” Adams was aghast at the sums he called “vastly beyond expectation,” to which the ambassador answered that “they never made a treaty for less.” This sum, he explained, had to offset what the ruler of Tripoli and his officers were entitled to by law as their share of spoils of all ships seized.
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In piracy as in peace, profit was foremost in this diplomat’s mind.