Did Muslims Discover America Before Columbus? Turkish President Erdogan Thinks So

When addressing a summit of Muslim leaders from Latin America, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed that Muslims had discovered the Americas three centuries before Christopher Columbus. Though Erdogan is known for making provocative statements, many people think it is an interesting concept to explore further.

The Washington Post reports that Erdogan believes that Muslims discovered America in 1178, hundreds of years before Columbus arrived in the Americas.

“Contacts between Latin America and Islam date back to the 12th century. Muslims discovered America in 1178, not Christopher Columbus,. Muslim sailors arrived in America from 1178. Columbus mentioned the existence of a mosque on a hill on the Cuban coast.”

The information that Erdogan is citing is from a disputed 1996 paper by Youssef Mroueh. The report takes note to the fact that Columbus references a mosque in his journals.

“Columbus admitted in his papers that on Monday, October 21, 1492 CE while his ship was sailing near Gibara on the north-east coast of Cuba, he saw a mosque on top of a beautiful mountain.”

However, many researchers believe that Columbus was not referring to a literal mosque, but rather using metaphor to describe a land feature in the area. The reason researchers feel so strongly that Columbus is referring to the natural land feature is that there have been no archaeological discoveries of Islamic structures pre-dating Columbus’s arrival in the New World.

Mroueh isn’t the only person who feels that muslims may have pre-dated Columbus. Others cite the work of a noted geographer in Muslim Spain, who produced a map in the 10th century that may show the outline of South America, and referenced the journey of an Arab sailor who traveled westward through an “ocean of darkness and fog.”

Though some may question whether muslims made it to America before Columbus, many researchers conclude that Columbus was not the first to make it to the Americas. In fact, new evidence suggests that Polynesians from Easter Island rowed across the Pacific to the Americas long before Columbus. BBC News also points out that the first people to reach the Americas came from Asia. They are believed to have crossed the Bering Strait about 15,000 years ago. The first European visitors to North America are widely thought to have been Norse explorers, about 500 years before Columbus.

Regardless of who made it to the Americas first, Erdogan thinks that a Muslim mosque would look fantastic on the hill described by Columbus. Erdogan is in talks with Cuba to build that mosque now.

What do you think? Is there enough evidence to support the idea that Muslims arrived in America before Christopher Columbus?