A devout Muslim himself, Tayyip Erdogan (The Turkish leader) has contributed his thesis on the discovery of Americas. He declared that Muslims (Moors) had discovered the Americas before Christopher Columbus.
‘It is alleged that the American continent was discovered by Columbus in 1492,’ he said. ‘In fact, Muslim sailors reached the American continent 314 years before Columbus, in 1178.’
‘In his memoirs, Christopher Columbus mentions the existence of a mosque atop a hill on the coast of Cuba,’ Erdogan said, adding that he’d like to see a mosque built on the hilltop today.
Scholars have disputed the claim in Columbus’ writings, saying there is no archaeological evidence of Muslims having lived in the Americas before Columbus, an Italian, made his expedition in 1492 on behalf of the Spanish crown.
It is the kind of arrogance and ignorance emblematic of the so called modern scholars, that they are willing to dispute the eye witness account of Christopher Columbus, himself, whom they belabour with the discovery of America.
The memoirs of Columbus have been discovered and they have spoken. The Moors were in Americas way before he ever got there.
It all began on the December of 932, when a Muslim preacher called Abdul Muhammad al-Yufayyur ended up shipwrecked on an island near Maghreb. West of Maghreb. He was supposed to sail from Southern Spain back to the proto-city that would be known as Marrakesh a century later on.
However, he got into a storm, and drifted southwards, then south-westwards. He was lucky he – and all of the ship’s crew – could escape with their lives.
Much of the crew were Berbers, with only a few Arabs, including Abdul Muhammad. However, Abdul Muhammad spoke Berber almost like a native language, due to the long time he spent in Maghreb.
The friendly natives who greeted Abdul Muhammad
Most surprisingly, the natives were friendly. They had white skin, black or brown hair, eyes of brown, green and blue colour, and spoke a language very similar to Berber. Abdul Muhammad claimed that it sounded like a distorted version of Berber.
After acquiring the means to build a new ship, Abdul Muhammad decided to stay, and begin his mission to spread Islam. Word was sent into Maghreb, that an island was discovered where Pagan Berbers lived, and needed to be converted to Islam. The islands were collectively called “Gando”.
Soon, several Muslim missionaries arrived, to help Abdul Muhammad do his job.
However, not so much later, Abdul Muhammad and all his Muslim missionaries got chased out of the islands.
The enraged Abdul Muhammad spread word about a heretical land that rejected Islam and killed Alims and Imams. He also falsified his own records on the local people, calling them man-eating cannibals, spreading propaganda to convince any Muslim leader to wage a Jihad against them.
The Barghawata Confederacy answered, and called for Jihad. Soon, the islands were overwhelmed by Maghrebi Berber warriors, who converted the local Guanches to Islam at the point of the sword.
The new name for that archipelago was “al-Qand”. Much to the shock of the conquerors, the locals spoke a language very similar to Berber, almost the same.
Al-Qand
It took less than 12 years to accidentally find yet another archipelago north of al-Qand, West of Portugal. This time, it was uninhabited. The first settlers decided to call it al-Lazur. At first, the Berbers did not find it interesting at all, but once they realized that it can be used as a station to reach Iceland and Britain, settlement began in earnest.
Al-Lazur
Bushes were chopped down and rocks were removed to make place for grain and sugarcanes. Houses built, animals – like sheep, horses and cattle – were released in the islands.
The actual Berber settlement was limited on the islands. It was “designed” to be self-sustaining. The primary function of the archipelago was to act as a station for ships when it came to direct trade with Iceland and Britain.
The islands however, were relatively poor in timber, so trees had to be planted. This was one of history’s first cases of planting artificial forests. Mainly for the ship-building industry.
Despite the foundation of grain farms, and settlement of sheep-herders and cattle-herders, the population’s main source of nutrition would be from fish, obviously.
The Muslims of North Africa already had contact with Vikings before. Norse raids did not stop at England or Northern France, the fury of the Norse occasionally reached all the way to the Iberian Peninsula and North-West Africa (Maghreb). In Eastern Europe, contact between Norsemen and Muslim Arabs was mostly much more friendly, such as the case of Ahmad ibn Fadlan, who travelled all the way to the heart of modern-day Ukraine/Russia, and got to know Norse culture closely.
However, during the late 10th century, Viking raids have largely gotten themselves limited to the British Isles and the Baltics. This allowed for a more friendly approach between the Norse and the Moors. However, the Vikings were already Christianizing. In fact, Iceland got Christianized in 1000 AD.
Off course, that did not necessarily obstruct trade.
Via Iceland, the Moors indirectly traded with Greenland too.
Rumours of an Icelandic explorer discovering a new land in the Far West – Iceland – was considered superstitious nonsense by the Moors at the time, as they did not believe that any continent existed in the Far West.
Trade.
Nevertheless, the inclusion of al-Qand (Canary Islands) and al-Lazur (Azores) into the Barghawata Confederacy did boost up Islamic economics a bit.
It also connected Scandinavia with Africa, in a certain way.
Most goods that were traded with the Muslims by the Icelanders weren’t actually made in Iceland, but in Norway or Denmark – so the Moors indirectly bought stuff from Norway and Denmark. There were some exceptions, like sulphur. Another “trade good” was Viking mercenaries.
The Moors in exchange gave them African gold, African slaves, ivory, clothes, salt and sugar. Sugarcane did not grow in much of Europe, so Moorish sugar was an important bargaining chip when it came to dealing with Norsemen.
It was very plausible that a Viking sword could end up first in al-Lazur, then in al-Qand, and then in Ghana. However, for an African slave to arrive in Iceland and have children was unlikely.
During the Arab slave trade, captured slaves had a 90% mortality rate, meaning that 9 out of 10 captured slaves would die before even reaching the slave markets, let alone being sold. Off course, there were cases of African slaves being sold to Iceland, which can be deduced from the small amount of Sub-Saharan African mtDNA (maternal DNA-marker) samples discovered among Icelanders. They are miniscule, and since ~1000 years have passed since the trade, their descendants not only look completely white now, but indistinguishable from the rest of the Icelandic population – blond hair, blue eyes, etc. No Sub-Saharan African Y-DNA (paternal DNA-marker) samples were found in Iceland, indicating that male slaves were castrated before being sold to Iceland, or were simply not given a chance to breed, because of work, or the lack of females allowed near them.
A lot of these African slaves were further sold to Norway or Denmark.
Records also tell us about Norsemen serving in Barghawata armies as mercenaries. Many of these Viking Warriors were rumoured to have taken their wives with them to settle in Maghreb, and converted to Islam.
For example, the later Almoravid dynasty’s founder, Abdallah ibn Yasin had a Norsemen as a bodyguard.
Viking Mercenaries
The Barghawata Confederacy’s end was in 1040, when Abdallah ibn Yasin, the Sunni Muslim theologian started a rebellion against the Barghawata Confederacy which he deemed heretical. The confederacy’s members practised a syncretic religion, which was a mix between Khariji Islam and the indigenous pagan Berber beliefs. Abdallah on the other hand was preaching a purer version of Sunni Islam, free from intolerable traits, such as local pagan influences or Khariji heresies.
Abdallah’s friend, the Lamtuna Berber chieftain Abu Bakr ibn Umar launched military campaigns against the Barghawata Confederacy, and by 1044, the Almoravid Caliphate was founded. By 1047, al-Lazur and al-Qand were under Almoravid rule too.
In 1051, a captain whose name wasn’t even recorded sailed too far when he wanted to get slaves from Ghana, and ended up in an unknown jungle land. He tried to sail back immediately (after getting enough food, that is), sailing almost straight north-east, ending up on the coast of Maghreb not so far from Marrakesh. Very few believed him and his crew when he told them stories of a jungle land, filled with red-skinned half-naked people and ember-coloured trees.
At the time, ship-building technology wasn’t in its prime, and it was a lucky coincidence – even a miracle – that the ship used by his captain and his crew survived the voyage. Such a small ship was unfit for such a large voyage. However, this nameless captain was also credited with the start of the practice of bringing lemons on ship voyages, to fight off scurvy.
Several sailors attempted to sail to the same location by sailing south-west, and all of them made it to that land (Brazil). Another person sailed from Granada, and made it to an archipelago also filled with half-naked people, who seemed to smoke some pipes.
In 1060, Abu Bakr ibn Umar took over after Abdallah ibn Yasin got assassinated while preparing to wage a war on the Sudanese black pagans.
His reign between 1060 and 1087 saw the Moorish colonization of al-Qarib (Caribbean) and al-Khashab (Brazil).
The two went in different ways though.
In al-Qarib, the natives were friendly, and didn’t seem to mind all those Berber and Arab settlers and soldiers moving in, until…
…they started to die from the diseases spread by the Muslims + the Muslims started spreading Islam forcefully, converting them at the point of the sword.
But by that time, it was too late. By 1087, the Caribbean was in the hand of the Moors, and during that 25~ years, it was firmly settled by Berbers and Arabs.
In al-Kashab, the would-be-conquered land was divided in stripes, each given to a certain Berber tribe. It was basically the Caliph’s way of saying “Here, that land is yours. Now go and colonize it.”
Caribbean Natives
By 1075, the Almoravids have conquered Ghana too, and expanded into Western Algeria, conquering Oran.
Abu Bakr’s future successor, Yusuf ibn Tashfin was asked by the Taifas of Southern Iberia to defend them against the Christian aggression. Yusuf agreed, and by 1090, the Almoravids were in charge in Al-Andalus too.
Meanwhile, Abu Bakr died in 1087, leaving Yusuf ibn Tashfin to rule over the rest of the Almoravid Empire.
Yusuf died in 1106. His 19-year reign saw Almoravid expansion into all directions. He expanded in the East, and went as far as Libya, annexing the Zirid Emirate into the Almoravid Caliphate. In the North, he took Valencia and retook Toledo from the Christians. In the West, his reign oversaw the swift conquest of Mexico, which meant the crushing of the Nahua tribes and the subjugation of the Mayan city-states. The gold flowing from Mexico made the Almoravid Caliphate one of the richest states of Earth.
The capital of al-Mashik (Moorish Mexico) would be Jadid al-Qurtubyah (New Cordoba).
Yusuf’s successor, Ali ibn Yusuf ruled from 1106 to 1143. His first act was the vassalization and Islamization of the various Inca states in Peru. He even directly conquered some of them, but not all.
Ali then blew the gold his predecessor “earned” to Jihads, which meant the unification of the Iberian peninsula under Moorish rule. Yes, the Moors won, but at a harsh cost. A lot of good soldiers died, by the the time the war was over, the Almoravid treasury was empty.
The Almoravid caliphate during it’s height in 1120.
After Ali ibn Yusuf died in 1143, everything went wrong in the Almoravid Empire.
But let’s leave that for a later episode.
For now, let’s conclude what are the overall consequences of all of these…
The Old World got potatoes, maize/corn, zucchini/courgette, vanilla, chocolate, chili pepper / capiscum, sunflower, tobacco, rubber, llamas, alpaca, turkey.
Vanilla and chocolate got cultivated heavily in Sub-Saharan Africa by the Almoravids, and it became the most loved luxury food among the Moorish elite, also sold in small amount to European royalty. Corn got cultivated in Al-Andalus (Iberia) and Western Maghreb (Morocco). Potatoes were hardy plants, and triggered a population boom in North Africa, since they tolerated North Africa’s arid climate much better than wheat or barley ever did. Potatoes spread almost like a wildfire in the Islamic world. Tomatoes while growing in Morocco too, they grew better in Iberia. Tobacco also became a big thing in the Almoravid dynasty. People ignited tightly-rolled bundle of dried and fermented tobacco leaves, and drew the smoke into the mouth. The fact that nicotine was addicting was realized quickly, and there was a debate whether it was right to allow faithful Muslims to smoke tobacco or not.
In the end, tobacco was allowed. Turkey meat became a big favourite meal of the Caliph’s court.
To the New World the Moors introduced honeybees, horses, cattle, sheep, goats, chicken, ducks, rabbits, silkworms, wheat, barley, orange, lemon, sugarcanes, figs, peach, apples, Islam, metallurgy, and several Old World diseases that decimated the Native American population.
Muslim sailors also realized that they could say from Mexico to China during Ali ibn Yusuf’s reign. A sailor – whose name was not recorded – sailed from Granada to Mexico, then from Mexico to India, from India to Yemen, from Yemen to Egypt, from Egypt back to Granada.
Islam had all the access to trade with the Far East. They could trade with China and India through Persia, and also through the Americas and the Pacific Ocean. Moorish merchants started breeding Chinese silkworm in the New World, making the Almoravid Empire a big supplier of silk to Europe and the rest of the Islamic world.
But not for long. As I said, after Ali ibn Yusuf died in 1143, everything went wrong in the Almoravid Empire.
But that is for a later episode.
Episode 4 here.
__________________
My stories: Islam for the West, Christ for the East | A Surviving Vinland | Alternate Hungarian writing systems
My threads need more attention.
Last edited by Josen; 07-15-2014 at 05:44 AM.
This is interesting stuff can you substantiate any of it?
What happened after 1143a.d. to the Almoravid?
UR Presentation Is Highly: “Informative & Educational,” Thanking “U” 4UR: “Exceptional Post.”
This is deep. So much history was purposely left out oh so-called history books.
What about the St Clairs voyages from Scotland to, with Templars, leaving a verbal story with MIC MAC Indians, and carving on a rock of Templar, on the east coast of New England via Iceland Greenland and New England now USA
Moorish history has been hidden very well , why I say that is because any darkskin person is a Moor , every time people mention Moors they think of the Moors in spain which is a shame but now the truth is coming out that america is of ancient place and not just Africa and that the Europeans have been lying about history to make themselves feel like all history was theres which was not at all just made up bull….. Lol