Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders (68 page)

60.
Ibid., 8:418.

61.
Ibid., 8:419.

62.
Thomas Jefferson, “Autobiography,” in
The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson
, ed. Adrienne Koch and William Peden (New York: Modern Library, 1998), 59; Merrill D. Peterson,
Jefferson and the New Nation
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 292.

63.
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 8:347–48.

64.
Ibid., 8:348, 353.

65.
Claimed sightings of North African vessels were recorded for the West Indies in the
Massachusetts Centinel
, April 29, 1786, and the presence of malevolent Algerians in the United States was featured in the
Pennsylvania Gazette
, April 5, 1786; the
Connecticut Gazette
, April 7, 1786; and the
Maryland Gazette
, April 13, 1786; see Wilson, “American Prisoners,” 72.

66.
Allison,
Crescent Obscured
, 3–7.

67.
“Moor,”
Oxford English Dictionary
, 13 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 6:645.

68.
Kitzen,
Tripoli
, 1; Baepler, introduction to
White Slaves, African Masters
, 2–3.

69.
Hans Wehr, ed.,
A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic
, trans. Milton Cowan (Urbana, IL: Spoken Language Services, 1994), 62.

70.
“Barbary,”
Oxford English Dictionary
, 1:665.

71.
Thomas Jefferson, “Fourth Annual Message,” November 8, 1804, in
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 1801–1806
, ed. Paul Leicester Ford, 10 vols. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1897), 8:328.

72.
Jefferson described the Greek and Ottoman Turkish conflict this way: “This is only to substitute one set of Barbarians for another.”
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 8:418.

73.
Ibid., 8:352.

74.
“Treaty with Morocco, 1786,”
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 10:425.

75.
“Adams to Jefferson,” February 21, 1786,
Adams-Jefferson Letters
, 1:123.

76.
“Adams to Jefferson,” June 6, 1786, Adams,
Works
, 8:400.

77.
“Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe,” November 11, 1784, Paris,
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 7:512; Bernard Bailyn,
To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders
(New York: Knopf, 2003), 40.

78.
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 7:511.

79.
Ibid., 7:511–12.

80.
Ibid., 2:437–40.

81.
“Adams to Jefferson,” February 17, 1786, London,
Adams-Jefferson Letters
, 1:121.

82.
“Adams to John Jay,” February 17, 1786, Adams,
Works
, 8:372.

83.
“Adams to Jefferson,”
Adams-Jefferson Letters
, 1:122.

84.
Ibid., 1:121.

85.
Jefferson, “Autobiography,” in
Life and Selected Writings
, 62.

86.
“Adams to Jefferson,”
Adams-Jefferson Letters
, 1:121.

87.
Ibid.

88.
John Foss, “A Journal of the Captivity and Sufferings of John Foss,” in Baepler,
White Slaves, African Masters
, 89.

89.
“Adams to Jefferson,”
Adams-Jefferson Letters
, 1:121.

90.
Ibid.; Adams,
Works
, 8:373.

91.
“To Samuel Henley with a List of Books,” March 3, 1785,
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 8:14 n. 1; Kevin J. Hayes, “How Thomas Jefferson Read the Qur’an,”
Early American Literature
39, no. 2 (2004): 258; E. Millicent Sowerby, ed.,
Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson
, 5 vols. (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1952–53), 5:44.

92.
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 8:11–13; Sowerby,
Catalogue
, 5:44.

93.
“Adams to Jefferson,”
Adams-Jefferson Letters
, 1:121; Irwin,
Diplomatic Relations
, 17.

94.
“Adams to Jefferson,”
Adams-Jefferson Letters
, 1:121.

95.
Ibid. The interview is also detailed in Hayes, “How Thomas Jefferson Read the Qur’an,” 257; Kevin J. Hayes,
The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 309.

96.
“Adams to Jefferson,”
Adams-Jefferson Letters
, 1:121.

97.
Ibid.; Hayes,
Road to Monticello
, 309–17.

98.
“Adams to Jefferson,”
Adams-Jefferson Letters
, 1:121.

99.
Ibid., 1:121–22.

100.
Adams,
Works
, 8:373. While Tunis was omitted in Adams’s letter to Jefferson, it was present in his other communication to the secretary of state, along with Morocco.

101.
“Adams to Jefferson,”
Adams-Jefferson Letters
, 1:122.

102.
Ibid.

103.
Ibid., 1:123.

104.
Ibid., 1:122.

105.
Adams,
Works
, 8:373. For a darker version of the first meeting with the ambassador from Tripoli, mistakenly dated 1785 instead of 1786, which presumes that Adams “was outraged by the impertinence that ‘Abd al-Rahman, the agent of a powerful but primitive kingdom, displayed toward the enlightened United States” despite Adams’s
multiple positive observations to the contrary about the ambassador’s credentials and personality, see Oren,
Power, Faith, and Fantasy
, 26.

106.
“John Adams to Secretary Jay,” February 20, 1786,
Works
, 8:374.

107.
Ibid., 8:377.

108.
For more on the presence of Jews in Tripoli, see Harvey E. Goldberg,
Jewish Life in Muslim Libya
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).

109.
Wright and Macleod,
First Americans
, 32, 42–43.

110.
“Adams to Jefferson,” June 6, 1786, London,
Adams-Jefferson Letters
, 1:134.

111.
Adams,
Works
, 8:374.

112.
Ibid., 8:377.

113.
Ibid., 8:374.

114.
Ibid., 8:375.

115.
Ibid.

116.
Ibid.

117.
Ibid., 8:376.

118.
Ibid.

119.
Ibid.

120.
Ibid., 8:377.

121.
Ibid., 8:378.

122.
Ibid., 8:379.

123.
“Thomas Jefferson to John Jay,” March 12, 1786, in
The Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States of America
(Washington, DC: Blair and Rives, 1837), 3:4–5.

124.
Parker,
Uncle Sam
, 41–42; Irwin,
Diplomatic Relations
, 40–42.

125.
“American Commissioners to John Jay,” March 28, 1786, London,
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 9:357.

126.
Ibid., 9:358.

127.
Ibid.; Malone,
Jefferson and the Rights of Man
, 27–32, 51–52.

128.
The exchange rates then and now are provided by Parker,
Uncle Sam
, 42.

129.
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 9:358.

130.
Ibid.

131.
This interaction is interpreted differently by Hayes, “How Thomas Jefferson Read the Qur’an,” 256–57; Hayes,
Road to Monticello
, 315–16.

132.
Majid Khadduri,
War and Peace in the Law of Islam
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1955), 100–101.

133.
Ella Landau-Tasseroin, “Jihad,”
Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an
, 3:41.

134.
Ibid., 3:36.

135.
Patricia Crone, “War,”
Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an
, 5:456. Other verses about being wronged include Qur’an 22:39 and punishing wrongdoers, Qur’an 9:13–14. All translations are from Muhammad M. Pickthall, trans.,
The Meaning of the Glorious Qur’an: Text and Explanatory Translation
(New York: Muslim World League, 1977), 526.

136.
“Richard O’Brien to Thomas Jefferson,” June 8, 1786, 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), 1:3.

137.
Pickthall, trans.,
Qur’an
, 29.

138.
Ibid., 33.

139.
Ibid., 29.

140.
Ibid., 176. Earl Waugh,
Peace as Seen in the Qur’an
(Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1986), 12, 42.

141.
Pickthall, trans.,
Qur’an
, 87.

142.
Ibid., 272.

143.
Khadduri,
War and Peace
, 217–18.

144.
Crone, “War,”
Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an
, 5:455.

145.
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 9:359.

146.
Naval Documents
, 1:3; Lambert,
Barbary Wars
, 118; Kitzen,
Tripoli
, 13.

147.
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 9:358.

148.
Khadduri,
War and Peace
, 119.

149.
Andrew Rippin, “Devil,”
Encyclopedia of the Qur’an
, 1:526.

150.
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 9:358.

151.
Ibid., 9:359.

152.
For the assumption that Jefferson viewed North Africa as “the repository of despotism, depravity, and backwardness,” which the Founder never articulated this way, see Oren,
Power, Faith, and Fantasy
, 26–27, 32.

153.
Quoted in Lambert,
Barbary Wars
, 118.

154.
Parker,
Uncle Sam
, 42.

155.
“Jefferson to Adams,” July 11, 1785,
Adams-Jefferson Letters
, 1:142.

156.
Ibid.

157.
Ibid., 1:143.

158.
Ibid.

159.
Irwin,
Diplomatic Relations
, 48.

160.
“Jefferson’s Proposed Concert of Powers against the Barbary States: Editorial Note,”
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 10:560–61.

161.
Ibid., 10:562–63.

162.
Ibid., 10:564.

163.
Jefferson, “Proposed Convention against the Barbary States,” before July 4, 1786,
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 10:567.

164.
Jefferson, “Autobiography,” in
Life and Selected Writings
, 63–67.

165.
Kitzen,
Tripoli
, 11.

166.
Wilson, “American Prisoners,” 320.

167.
Irwin,
Diplomatic Relations
, 27–28.

168.
Ibid., 38 n. 2.

169.
Ibid., 11.

170.
Ibid., 45.

171.
Quoted ibid., 45 n. 41.

172.
Ibid., 44; Kitzen,
Tripoli
, 13.

173.
Bubonic and pneumonic plague outbreaks were common in eighteenth-century North Africa; see H. G. Barnby,
The Prisoners of Algiers: An Account of the Forgotten American-Algerian War, 1785–1787
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), 86.

174.
Some contemporary writers insist that Jefferson bought his Qur’an in response to the issue of North African piracy. This seems unlikely given that this diplomatic problem for Jefferson dates from eleven years
after
his 1765 purchase of the book, not his 1786 interview with the ambassador from Tripoli. For an example of this assumption, see Samuel Blumenfeld, “Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an,”
New American
, September 1, 2010, and Christopher Hitchens, “Jefferson’s Qur’an,”
Slate
, January 9, 2007.

175.
George Sale, trans.,
The Koran, commonly called the Alcoran of Mohammed, Translated into English from the Original Arabic; with Explanatory Notes, taken from the Most Approved Commentators, to which is prefixed a Preliminary Discourse
, 2 vols. (London: L. Hawes, W. Clarke, R. Collins, and T. Wilcox, 1764), Rare Books and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress, 1:113; Hayes,
Road to Monticello
, 6–7.