Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders

by Denise A. Spellberg

  72. Charles O. Lerche Jr., “Jefferson and the Election of 1800: A Case Study in the Political Smear,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 5, no. 4 (October 1948): 467–91; Azizah Y. al-Hibri, “Islamic and American Constitutional Law: Borrowing Possibilities or a History of Borrowing?” University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law 1, no. 3 (1999): 501. For a chapter dedicated to Jefferson as “The Pious Infidel,” without any connection to Islam, see Steven Waldman, Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America (New York: Random House, 2008), 72-84.

  73. Lerche, “Jefferson and the Election of 1800,” 470, 472, 473; Ferling, Adams vs. Jefferson, 154; Thomas S. Kidd, God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 2010), 234–43.

  74. “Infidel,” Oxford English Dictionary, 13 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 5:260; al-Hibri, “Islamic and American Constitutional Law,” 501, who cites this term as a politically viable one, albeit without specific reference to the presidential campaign of 1800.

  75. Quoted in Lambert, Founding Fathers, 276–77; Lerche, “Jefferson and the Election of 1800,” 473; Ferling, Adams vs. Jefferson, 154.

  76. Lambert, Founding Fathers, 266.

  77. Ibid., 265–68, 276–77.

  78. Quoted ibid., 265.

  79. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, in The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Adrienne Koch and William Peden (New York: Modern Library, 1998), 254.

  80. Quoted in Lambert, Founding Fathers, 278. This assertion was earlier made by Lerche, “Jefferson and the Election of 1800,” 273.

  81. Jefferson, “A Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress Assembled,” a part of “Autobiography,” in Life and Selected Writings, 26.

  82. Jefferson, “Autobiography,” in Life and Selected Writings, 23.

  83. “Jefferson to Joseph Priestley,” March 21, 1801, in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Barbara Oberg (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 33:393.

  84. Irwin, Diplomatic Relations, 103, gives the date of the meeting as May 10; Kitzen, Tripoli, 46, gives May 10; Irving Brant, James Madison: Secretary of State, 1800–1809, 6 vols. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1953), 4:60, where the date for the vote is May 15.

  85. Irwin, Diplomatic Relations, 106.

  86. For disagreement about the exact number of ships and American captives, compare Allison, Crescent Obscured, 230 n. 37, with Wilson, “American Prisoners,” 320–21.

  87. Kola Folayan, Tripoli During the Reign of Yusuf Pasha Qaramanli (Ife, Nigeria: University of Ife Press, 1979), 31.

  88. Ibid., 27.

  89. Ibid., 28.

  90. For disagreement on the success of these measures, see Allison, Crescent Obscured, 27; Folayan, Tripoli, 35.

  91. Irwin, Diplomatic Relations, 122–23, 110. The captured Tripolitan ship was allowed to return to her port, with her armaments thrown overboard; Allison, Crescent Obscured, 26–27.

  92. Allison, Crescent Obscured, 27.

  93. Irwin, Diplomatic Relations, 130.

  94. Folayan, Tripoli, 36; Allison, Crescent Obscured, 28, says “300 sailors.”

  95. Irwin, Diplomatic Relations, 134; Jonathan Cowdery, “American Captives in Tripoli,” in Paul Baepler, ed., White Slaves, African Masters: An Anthology of American Barbary Captivity Narratives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 167, 171, 180.

  96. Irwin, Diplomatic Relations, 135; Allison, Crescent Obscured, 190–95.

  97. Irwin, Diplomatic Relations, 143.

  98. Lambert, Barbary Wars, 151; the ten Americans included “eight marines and two navy midshipmen.”

  99. Parker, Uncle Sam, xxvii; Irwin, Diplomatic Relations, 147–48, offers a slightly different date.

  100. Parker, Uncle Sam, xxvii; Irwin, Diplomatic Relations, 135.

  101. Dumas Malone, Jefferson the President: First Term, 1801–1805, vol. 4 of Jefferson and His Time (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), 97–99; Allison, Crescent Obscured, 25–33; Parker, Uncle Sam, xxviii.

  102. “Over four hundred and fifty citizens” are estimated by Irwin, Diplomatic Relations, 204. Presumably Irwin includes the three hundred souls of the frigate Philadelphia. See, in contrast, for a total count of seven hundred American prisoners, Wilson, “American Prisoners,” 321.

  103. “A large number of British deserters” on the captured U.S. vessel Philadelphia were encouraged to petition for their freedom as British naval officers, which 140 did; see Wilson, “American Prisoners,” 197. By contrast, it is estimated that only twenty of that crew were considered native-born Americans by their captain; see Parker, Uncle Sam, 62.

  104. For the most thorough list of American captives from 1784 to 1816, see Wilson, “American Prisoners,” 321; Irwin, Diplomatic Relations, 204

  105. “Tripoli: November 4, 1796, and January 3, 1797,” in Miller, Treaties, 2:365.

  106. “Tripoli: June 4, 1805,” ibid., 2:532.

  107. Irwin, Diplomatic Relations, 154; “Tripoli: June 4, 1805,” in Miller, Treaties, 2:529.

  108. “Tripoli: 1805,” in Miller, Treaties, 2:541 (Arabic). The Arabic version uses madhab, meaning school of law for laws, and also shar‘, for the revelation of the Qur’an and its laws, as well as din for religion.

  109. “Tripoli: November 4, 1796, and January 3, 1797,” ibid., 2:365.

  110. “Tripoli: 1805,” ibid., 2:532.

  111. “Tripoli: November 4, 1796, and January 3, 1797,” ibid., 2:365; “Tripoli: 1805,” ibid., 2:532. The variations are slight, with new capitals in the 1806 version and the addition of “contracting” to parties and the substitution in the last of “nations” instead of the original “countries.”

  112. “Tripoli: 1805,” ibid., 2:532.

  113. “Algiers: June 30 and July 3, 1815,” ibid., 2:588–89; “Algiers: December 22 and 23, 1816,” ibid., 2:620.

  114. “Algiers, June 30 and July 3, 1815,” ibid., 2:589.

  115. “Algiers: December 22 and 23, 1816,” ibid., 2:632, 2:639.

  116. Marr, Cultural Roots, 65–66; Allison, Crescent Obscured, 183–84. For the impact on early national identity, see Robert Battistini, “Glimpses of the Other before Orientalism: The Muslim World in Early American Periodicals, 1785–1800,” Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 8, no. 2 (Spring 2010): 469; Jennifer Costello Brezina, “A Nation in Chains: Barbary Captives and American Identity,” in Captivating Subjects: Writing, Confinement, Citizenship and Nationhood in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Jason Haslam and Julia M. Wright (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005): 202–5. See also Jacob Rama Berman, “The Barbarous Voice of Democracy: American Captivity in Barbary and the Multicultural Specter,” American Literature 79 (March 2007): 1–27; James Lewis, “Savages of the Seas: Barbary Captivity Tales and Images of Muslims in the Early Republic,” Journal of American Culture 13 (Summer 1990): 75–84.

  117. Irwin, Diplomatic Relations, 164–66, refers to him as Mellimelni; Marr, Cultural Roots, 66–67; Allison, Crescent Obscured, 183–84; L. B. Wright and J. H. Macleod, “Mellimelli,” Virginia Quarterly Review 20 (1944): 556–65; a uniquely detailed account of the incident that sparked the visit—and Jefferson’s involvement—is recounted by Parker, Uncle Sam, 151–55.

  118. Irwin, Diplomatic Relations, 161.

  119. Parker, Uncle Sam, 152–53.

  120. Wright and Macleod, “Mellimelli,” 556.

  121. “From Hammuda Bey to Jefferson,” April 15, 1801, in Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 33:591.

  122. William Plumer, William Plumer’s Memorandum of Proceedings in the United States Senate, 1803–1807, ed. Everett Somerville Brown (New York: Macmillan, 1923), 334.

  123. Ibid., 335.

  124. Hampshire Federalist, May 29, 1806.

  125. Plumer, Memorandum, 333–34. Accounts may also be found in James Morton Smith, ed., The Republic of Letters: The Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, 1776–1826, 3 vols. (New Yor
k: W. W. Norton, 1995), 3:1411, where Morton refers to the visit as “an Arabian Nights’ tale”; Dumas Malone, Jefferson the President: Second Term, 1805–1809, vol. 5 of Jefferson and His Time (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), 43–44; Brant, James Madison, 4:305–10; Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997), 231–32.

  126. Plumer, Memorandum, 334.

  127. Ibid., 359.

  128. Quoted in Brant, James Madison, 4:306; Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, 232.

  129. Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, 232.

  130. Brant, James Madison, 4:305.

  131. Plumer, Memorandum, 333.

  132. Ibid., 358.

  133. Ibid., 344.

  134. Ibid., 359.

  135. Wright and Macleod, “Mellimelli,” 557.

  136. Plumer, Memorandum, 358.

  137. Ibid., 343.

  138. Ibid., 344.

  139. Ibid., 359.

  140. Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill received an invitation from Jefferson for the December 9 dinner, which he noted as received on December 6, listing the dinnertime as “precisely at sunset.” Although it has not been published, Anna Berkes, research librarian at Monticello, kindly provided me with the transcript of the invitation in a personal communication from the editors of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson at Princeton University Press on September 1, 2010.

  141. Gaye Wilson, “Dealing with Mellimelli, Colorful Envoy from Tunis,” Monticello Newsletter 14, no. 2 (Winter 2003): 3. This event was first documented by Richard Schrodermier, “An Invitation to Dinner with Thomas Jefferson,” Manuscripts 51, no. 4 (1999): 313–16.

  142. John Quincy Adams, Memoirs, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 12 vols. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1874), 1:378.

  143. Ibid.

  144. Plumer, Memorandum, 349.

  145. Ibid.

  146. Brant, James Madison, 4:307.

  147. Plumer, Memorandum, 366.

  148. Allison, Crescent Obscured, 183–84.

  149. “Jefferson to Madison,” May 19, 1806, in Smith, Republic of Letters, 3:1421.

  150. “Madison to Jefferson,” June 14, 1805, ibid., 3:1426 n. 21; Irwin, Diplomatic Relations, 164–66.

  151. “Madison to Jefferson,” June 14, 1805, in Smith, Republic of Letters, 3:1426–27; Brant, James Madison, 4:308.

  152. Parker, Uncle Sam, 155.

  153. The letter and a draft in Jefferson’s hand exist in the Library of Congress: “Thomas Jefferson to Bey of Tunis,” June 28, 1806, in The Thomas Jefferson Papers Series 1. General Correspondence. 1651–1827, Library of Congress, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/mtj.mtjbib016251. Images 302–3 are the final draft, while images 304–5 are the first draft. The final version exists in the National Archives of Tunisia in a scribe’s hand, signed by both Thomas Jefferson and, for the first time, James Madison as secretary of state. The Tunisian version is reproduced in Parker, Uncle Sam, appendix 13, 239–41. References to Thomas Jefferson’s original hereafter “Thomas Jefferson to Bey of Tunis” and image number, with additional references to the final version as “Thomas Jefferson to Bey of Tunis,” Tunisian Archives, 1–3. I am deeply grateful to my colleague Anver Emon, who kindly contacted one of his colleagues, Laryssa Chomiak, in Tunis. She generously sent me a scanned copy of the Jefferson letter from the Tunisian National Archives. Personal e-mail, February 14, 2012.

  154. “Thomas Jefferson to Bey of Tunis,” Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress, 302.

  155. “To the Bey of Tunis from President John Adams,” January 15, 1800, in Naval Documents, 1:344.

  156. “From Hammuda Bey to Jefferson,” April 15, 1801, Barbara Oberg, ed., Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 33:591.

  157. “Thomas Jefferson to Hammuda Bey,” September 9, 1801, Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 35:241.

  158. “To President Thomas Jefferson from the Bey of Tunis,” September 8, 1802, Naval Documents, 2:269.

  159. “Thomas Jefferson to Bashaw of Tripoli,” May 21, 1801, ibid., 1:470.

  160. “Thomas Jefferson to Bey of Tunis, April 14, 1803,” in The Thomas Jefferson Papers Series 1. General Correspondence. 1651–1827, Library of Congress, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/mtj.mtjbib012313, image 131; “Thomas Jefferson to Bey of Tunis, January 24, 1804,” ibid., Library of Congress, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/mtj.mtjbib013116, images 967–68.

  161. “Thomas Jefferson to Bey of Tunis,” June 28, 1806, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress, 302.

  162. Ibid.

  163. Ibid.

  164. Ibid.; Miller, “Tripoli: 1805,” Treaties, 2:532.

  165. “Thomas Jefferson to Bey of Tunis,” June 28, 1806, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress, 303.

  166. Ibid.

  167. Ibid.

  168. Ibid.

  169. “Thomas Jefferson to Bey of Tunis, June 28, 1806,” Thomas Jefferson Papers Series 1. General Correspondence, 1651–1827, Library of Congress, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/mtj.mtjbib016251, image 303 (final), image 305 (draft).

  170. Parker, Uncle Sam, 239–41.

  171. Quoted in Edwin Gaustad, Sworn on the Altar of God: A Religious Biography of Thomas Jefferson (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1996), 207.

  172. “Thomas Jefferson to Bey of Tunis,” June 28, 1806, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress, 302.

  173. Miller, “Tripoli: 1805,” Treaties, 2:532.

  174. William Salkeld, Reports of Cases Adjudg’d in the Court of King’s Bench (London: E. Nutt and R. Gosling, 1717), 1:46. The precedent dates from the mid-seventeenth century.

  175. Muhammad M. Pickthall, trans., The Meaning of the Glorious Qur’an: Text and Explanatory Translation (New York: Muslim World League, 1977), 419. The line is similarly translated by Yusuf Ali, trans., The Qur’an Translation (Elmhurst, NY: Tahrike Tarsile Qur’an, 2005), 262, as “our God (Allah) and your God (Allah) is One.”

  176. Gaustad, Sworn on the Altar of God, 112. For a broader discussion of Priestley’s Unitarian beliefs, his anti-Islamic views, and attacks against him as a Muslim, see Garcia, Islam and the English Enlightenment, 165–68.

  177. Gaustad, Sworn on the Altar of God, 112–13.

  178. Alexander Pirie, An attempt to expose the weakness, fallacy and absurdity of the Unitarian or Socinian arguments against the divinity of the Son of God (Perth: R. Morrison Junior, 1792), 32; Garcia, Islam and the English Enlightenment, 168.

  179. John Quincy Adams, Writings, 1:67–68.

  180. Joseph Priestley, Letters to the Rev. Edward Burn, of St. Mary’s Chapel Birmingham (Birmingham: J. Thompson, 1790), v–vi; Garcia, Islam and the English Enlightenment, 168.

  181. Priestley, Letters, v–vi, where he states that he had met in London with “an eminent popish priest,” while he recalled, “I have since enriched my acquaintance with that of some very intelligent Jews.”

  182. Robert E. Schofield, “Priestley, Joseph (1733–1804),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 58 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 45:351–59.

  183. Gaustad, Sworn on the Altar of God, 112.

  184. “Thomas Jefferson to James Smith,” December 8, 1822, in Life and Selected Writings, 642.

  185. Gaustad, Sworn on the Altar of God, 205–7.

  186. “Thomas Jefferson to Jared Sparks,” November 4, 1820, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/mtj.mtjbib023929, image 346.

  187. Gaustad, Sworn on the Altar of God, 51.

  188. “Thomas Jefferson to James Smith,” December 8, 1822, in Life and Selected Writings, 642.

  189. J. A. I. Champion, The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken: The Church of England and Its Enemies, 1660–1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 101; Gaustad, Sworn on the Altar of God, 24–25; Walters, Revolutionary Deists, 30–33.

  190. “Thomas Jefferson to Jared Sparks,” Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress.

  191. “Thomas Jefferson to James Smith,�
� December 8, 1822, in Life and Selected Writings, 642–43.

  192. James R. Jacob, Henry Stubbe: Radical Protestantism and the Early Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 155; Champion, Pillars, 110–11; 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), 391–92.

  193. Quoted in Champion, Pillars, 108.

  194. “Thomas Jefferson to James Fishback,” September 27, 1809, in Jefferson’s Extracts from the Gospels: “The Philosophy of Jesus” and “The Life and Morals of Jesus,” ed. Dickinson W. Adams (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 344 n. 1.

  195. The earliest, somewhat different reading of this reference may be found in Hayes, “How Thomas Jefferson Read the Qur’an,” 255–56; Hayes, Road to Monticello, 315–16.

  196. “Thomas Jefferson to John Tyler,” May 26, 1810, in Thomas Jefferson: Writings, ed. Merrill D. Peterson (New York: Library of America, 1984), 1227.

  197. George Sale, trans., The Koran (1734) (New York: Garland, 1984), 156.

  198. Hayes, “How Thomas Jefferson Read the Qur’an,” 256; Azizah al-Hibri, “Islamic and American Constitutional Law,” 505–6.

  199. “Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr,” August 10, 1787, in Life and Selected Writ- ings, 399.

  200. Ibid.; al-Hibri, “Islamic and American Constitutional Law,” 501.

  201. “Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr,” in Life and Selected Writings, 400.

  202. Jefferson, “Autobiography,” in Life and Selected Writings, 92.

  203. Ibid., 91.

  204. “Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Waterhouse,” June 26, 1822, in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Saul K. Padover (Lunenburg, VT: Stinehour Press, 1967), 359.

  205. Ibid., 359–60.

  206. Thomas S. Kidd, “ ‘Is It Worse to Follow Mahomet Than the Devil?’ Early American Uses of Islam,” Church History 72, no. 4 (December 2003): 767, 774.

  207. Quoted in James Gilreath and Douglas L. Wilson, eds., Thomas Jefferson’s Library: A Catalog with the Entries in His Own Order (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1989), 3 n. 3; Dumas Malone, The Sage of Monticello, vol. 6 of Jefferson and His Time (Boston: Little, Brown, 1981), 167–99.