KEVIN J. HAYES University of Central Oklahoma
`
`How Thomas Jefferson Read the Qur'an
`
`Located on the north side of the Duke of Gloucester Street, the
`printing office of the Virginia Gazette had lured Thomas Jefferson within
`its doors countless times since he first came to Williamsburg to study at
`the College of William and Mary. Back in Williamsburg for the fall session
`of the General Court in 1765, Jefferson was busy reading law and helping
`George Wythe prepare cases for trial. His own formal legal training was
`coming to a close. The surviving Virginia Gazette daybooks hint that he
`was studying for his bar examination in early autumn, when he purchased
`a copy of Grounds and Rudiments of Law and Equity, a general survey that
`would have made an ideal study guide (Dewey 1l9). On another visit to the
`Gazette office this autumn, Jefferson purchased a copy of the Qur'an, spe-
`cifically, George Sale's English translation, The Koran, Commonly Called
`the Alcoran of Mohammed, recently republished in a handy two-volume
`edition (Virginia, fol. 202).
`Jefferson's purchase ofthe Qur'an at this time may have been inspired by
`his legal studies, too. The interest in natural law he developed as a student
`encouraged him to pursue his readings in this area as widely as possible.
`The standard work in the field, Frieherr von Pufendorf's Of the Law and
`Nature and Nations, gave readers an almost endless number of possible
`references to track down and thus offered Jefferson an excellent guide to
`further reading. Pufendorf 's treatise is rife with citations to diverse sources
`extending well beyond legal and political tracts and including works from
`many different times, places, and cultures.
`Though Pufendorf's work reflects a prejudice against Islam character-
`istic of the time in which it was written, he nonetheless cited precedent
`from the Qur'an in several instances. Discussing the issue of murder and
`revenge, for example, Pufendorf referred to a passage from the Qur'an and,
`furthering his argument, linked the passage to similar ones from the works
`of Homer and Tacitus in order to emphasize ideas they shared (324). In
`addition, Pufendorf found the Qur'an pertinent to a number of other im-
`
`1247
`
`Petitioners Great West Casualty Co., BITCO Gen. Ins. Corp., and BITCO Nat'l Ins. Co.
`Ex. 1041, p. 247
`
`

`
`2481 EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE: VOLUME 39, NUMBER 2
`
`portant issues: adultery, laws of succession, marriage, the prohibition of
`gambling, the prohibition of wine, and the validity of warfare.
`Regarding this last issue, Pufendorf could not help but admit that the
`Qur'an contained advice pertinent to readers of all nations: 'And Chris-
`tians should all the more zealously undertake to compose the quarrels of
`others, because even the Koran ... teaches that if two Moslem nations and
`countries engage one another in war, the rest shall make peace between
`them, and compel him who committed the injury to offer satisfaction;
`and when this is done, bring them by fair and good means to friendship"
`(831). To be sure, the call for peace and cooperation Pufendorf found in the
`Qur'an deserves the attention he gives it. Jefferson's surviving legal papers
`show that he came to know Pufendorf's Of the Law of Nature and Nations
`thoroughly. No other work does he cite more frequently in his legal writ-
`ings (Dewey 65). Pufendorf's work revealed the relevance of the Qur'an to
`the interpretation of the law.
`Jefferson acquired his Qur'an not long after the injustice of the Stamp
`Act had forced him to question seriously the heritage of English consti-
`tutional law and to seek ultimate answers in the ideas of natural law and
`natural rights. Given the fact that he was devoting most of his time to the
`study of law, Jefferson could justify studying the Qur'an simultaneously
`because it, too, was a lawbook. Being, as Muslims believe, the revealed word
`of God, the Qur'an not only constitutes the sacred scripture of the Islamic
`faith, it also forms the supreme source of Islamic law. Wanting to broaden
`his legal studies as much as possible, Jefferson found the Qur'an well worth
`his attention.
`Reading the Qur'an also let him continue studying the history of reli-
`gion. Entries he made in his literary commonplace book about the same
`time he purchased Sale's Koran show that he was seeking to reconcile con-
`tradictions between history and scripture thatwere becoming increasingly
`apparent to him. His curiosity about Islam is consistent with the interest
`the commonplace book reflects regarding how traditional religious cus-
`toms and beliefs are transmitted from one culture to another. Passages
`from Herodotus Jefferson copied into his book in late 1765, for instance,
`show him attempting to reconcile how the practice of circumcision -a
`Jewish custom that, according to the Old Testament, was mandated by God
`as a token of his covenant with the Jewish people-could be found in an-
`cient times from Egypt to Syria (Wilson 23).
`
`Petitioners Great West Casualty Co., BITCO Gen. Ins. Corp., and BITCO Nat'l Ins. Co.
`Ex. 1041, p. 248
`
`

`
`Thomas Jefferson { 249
`
`By no means was Jefferson the only or earliest colonial Virginian to
`express an interest in Islam. Some African slaves, after all, were origi-
`nally Muslims, though their conversion to Christianity came as a matter of
`course. Among members of Virginia's Anglican hegemony, others learned
`about Islam sometimes by reading the Qur'an or biographies of Muham-
`mad, but more often by reading histories and travel narratives of the Near
`East. To take another colonial Virginia bookman for example, William
`Byrd II of Westover developed a curiosity about Islam, which began at least
`as early as 1701, the year he traveled around England with Sir John Percival.
`Upon meeting English Orientalist Humphrey Prideaux on their travels,
`Byrd characterized him as someone who valued himself particularly for
`his expertise in Arabic, "by virtue of which he has convers'd more with
`the Alcoran and the comments upon it, than some other doctors have with
`the Bible" (211). Prideaux's example encouraged Byrd to learn more about
`Islam. He acquired a copy of the Qur'an, specifically, the imperfect En-
`glish translation derived from Andre Du Ryer's imperfect French version
`(Hayes, no. 1915). This edition made no attempt to mask its skepticism
`toward Islam. Its title page announced that the translation was submitted
`to the English-reading public "for the satisfaction of all that desire to look
`into the Turkish vanities." It even contained an address to those who won-
`dered if reading the Qur'an could be hazardous to their Christian faith.
`Though Byrd complimented Prideaux for his knowledge of the Qur'an,
`Prideaux was actually responsible for disseminating much misinformation
`regarding Islam and its prophet. His fullest treatment of the subject, The
`True Nature of Imposture Fully Displayed in the Life ofMahomet, was written
`mainly as a polemic against Deism. Prideaux had intended to use his in-
`depth knowledge of Islam to write a history of Constantinople's fall to the
`Muslims, but the religious indifference he witnessed in late seventeenth-
`century England prompted him to write a kind of cautionary tale instead.
`He sought to show Anglican readers that if they ignored their devotions,
`they ran the risk of being overcome by a religious zealot with the capacity
`to subjugate all nations to his will (Allison 37). As Prideaux retold the life
`of the prophet, Muhammad was both an impostor and a tyrant. From this
`point ofview, the rapid spread of Islam offered an object lesson in the dan-
`gers of religious apathy.
`Taken for what it purported to be, a biography of Muhammad, Pri-
`deaux's Life ofMahomet prejudiced manyAnglo-American readers against
`
`Petitioners Great West Casualty Co., BITCO Gen. Ins. Corp., and BITCO Nat'l Ins. Co.
`Ex. 1041, p. 249
`
`

`
`250 } EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE: VOLUME 39, NUMBER 2
`
`Islam. His message was read sympathetically by devout Protestants of the
`late seventeenth century, and the book was reprinted multiple times dur-
`ing the eighteenth. Thomas Bray, the indefatigable Anglican minister who
`arranged for numerous collections of theological works to be disseminated
`among Anglican clergymen and parishioners in North America, included
`copies of Prideaux's Life of Mahomet among the shipments of books he
`sent to the American colonies (Wolf 14). Recommending Prideaux, Bray
`cast fear into his readers' hearts: if they were not sincere in their Chris-
`tian devotions, they ran the risk of being overrun by false religions and
`overcome by tyranny.
`The writings of John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon gave the kind of
`inflammatory ideas Prideaux's Life of Mahomet propagated even greater
`currency throughout colonial America. Their collaborative works, The In-
`dependent Vhig and Cato's Letters, are best known for their profound in-
`fluence on the development of early American attitudes toward liberty and
`representative government. To make their arguments for free speech and
`freely elected leaders, Trenchard and Gordon specifically used Turkey and,
`more generally, the Muslim state as negative examples. Islam, they argued,
`spread from one geographical region to another through violent conquest:
`it spread by the sword, not the word. Oppression, they argued, was charac-
`teristic of Islamic nations. In Turkey, for instance, the tyrannical Muslim
`leaders oppressed their people by forbidding them to question the govern-
`ment or to express their opinions at all. Trenchard and Gordon asserted
`that printing was forbidden there, inquiry dangerous, and free speech a
`capital crime because all were inconsistent with Islam (Jacobson 35).
`Jefferson's early writings contain no references to either the Qur'an or
`Islam. In his youth, he likely held much the same opinion toward the Mus-
`lim state that Prideaux, Trenchard, and Gordon perpetuated. Jefferson was
`not a person to let such uninformed assumptions last for long, however. He
`always tried to learn as much as he could about any subject before passing
`judgment on it-unlike such hypocrites as those Henry Fielding spoofs
`through the character of the Reverend Mr. Barnabas in Joseph Andrews.
`In one conversation in this novel, the Reverend Mr. Adams suggests to
`the hypocritical Barnabas that he would prefer the company of "a virtuous
`good Turk" over that of "a vicious and wicked Christian." Aghast, Barnabas
`is anxious to end the conversation before Adams starts commending the
`Qu'ran. Adams, on the other hand, is curious to learn why Barnabas ob-
`
`Petitioners Great West Casualty Co., BITCO Gen. Ins. Corp., and BITCO Nat'l Ins. Co.
`Ex. 1041, p. 250
`
`

`
`Thomas Jefferson { 251
`
`jects so strongly to the Qu'ran and asks him why. "I never read a syllable
`in any such,wicked book," Barnabas responds. "I never saw it in my life, I
`assure you" (81). Quite unlike the Reverend Mr. Barnabas, Jefferson would
`read the Qu'ran for himself before he dared to raise objections to it.
`Acquiring his own copy, Jefferson revealed his open-minded desire to
`learn more about Islam. Reading George Sale's translation, he had the op-
`portunity to receive a fair view of the religion. Originally published in 1734,
`Sale's was the first English version to be translated directly from the Arabic.
`Not only was his translation more reliable than Andre Du Ryer's, Sale also
`wrote "A Preliminary Discourse," a thoroughly researched and well docu-
`mented overview of Islam that ran to nearly two hundred pages in the first
`edition and filled the entire first volume of the second. Sale's Koran was a
`landmark of scholarship, and his translation would remain the standard
`English version into the twentieth century.
`Publishing his edition of the Qur'an in a Protestant European nation
`during the eighteenth century, Sale, of course, could not present a fully ob-
`jective view of Islam. Though he does refer to Muhammad as both an infidel
`and an impostor, his overall treatment of Islam is remarkably evenhanded.
`"A Preliminary Discourse" elaborates the life of Muhammad and empha-
`sizes his personal virtues. Sale also supplied detailed discussions of Islamic
`history, theology, and law. His scholarship and dedication to his subject al-
`lowed him to refute many of the common prejudices against Islam current
`in Western culture. For example, he challenged the vulgar error that Islam
`was spread by the sword. Muhammad, as Sale told his story, propagated
`Islam not by military force but by dint of eloquence.
`His introductory materials to the translation prompted readers to ap-
`proach the Qur'an as a lawbook. Sale, after all, was a member of the Inner
`Temple and a practicing solicitor. The dedication refers to Muhammad as
`"the legislator of the Arabs" who "gave his Arabs the best religion he could,
`as well as the best laws, preferable, at least, to those of the ancient pagan
`lawgivers" (sig. Ai). Addressing his English readers, Sale suggested that "if
`the religious and civil Institutions of foreign nations are worth our knowl-
`edge, those of Mohammed, the lawgiver of the Arabians, and founder of an
`empire which in less than a century spread itself over a greater part of the
`world than the Romans were ever masters of, must needs be so" (iii). Since
`students of law study legal precedent from ancient Rome, they should also
`study precedent from a society with an even greater reach than Rome.
`
`Petitioners Great West Casualty Co., BITCO Gen. Ins. Corp., and BITCO Nat'l Ins. Co.
`Ex. 1041, p. 251
`
`

`
`2521 EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE: VOLUME 39, NUMBER 2
`
`The sixth section of Sale's "Preliminary Discourse" contained much in-
`formation pertinent to Jefferson's ongoing study of civil law. Entitled "Of
`the Institutions of the Koran in Civil Affairs," this section begins with a
`comparison between Islamic law and Jewish law: "The Mohammedan civil
`law is founded on the precepts and determinations of the Koran, as the civil
`laws of the Jews were on those of the Pentateuch" (132). The section dis-
`cusses Islamic laws of marriage and divorce, inheritance, private contracts,
`murder, manslaughter, and theft.
`Regarding punishment for theft under Islamic law, for example, Sale
`wrote: "Theft is ordered to be punished by cutting off the offending part,
`the hand; which, at first sight, seems just enough: but the law of Justinian,
`forbidding a thief to be maimed, is more reasonable; because stealing being
`generally the effect of indigence, to cut off that limb would be to deprive
`him of the means of getting his livelihood in an honest manner" (140). Re-
`vising the laws of Virginia some years later, Jefferson revealed that he had
`thought long.and hard about the suitability of punishment to crime. As
`he explained the ideas underlying his well-known "Bill for Proportioning
`Crimes and Punishments" to his friend and mentor George Wythe when
`he sent him a copy of it, "An eye for an eye, and a hand for a hand will
`exhibit spectacles in execution whose moral effect would be questionable"
`(Papers 2: 230).
`Sale's "Preliminary Discourse" gave Jefferson the kind of detailed infor-
`mation he most appreciated. Sale cited precedent from Roman civil law
`and supplied footnotes to other pertinent works-including Pufendorf's
`Of the Law of Nature and Nations. Through Sale's annotations, the Qur'an
`brought Jefferson back to the work that may have led him to it in the first
`place.
`The references to the Qur'an in Jefferson's papers, though few, reveal
`how he understood the book in terms of religion, law, and culture. His
`placement of the Qur'an in the manuscript library catalogue he prepared in
`1783 indicates howhe understood Islam in relation to other religions. Over-
`all, Jefferson grouped titles together into several broad subject areas, which
`he called chapters within the catalogue. He listed Sale's Koran in chapter 17,
`"Religion" (Gilreath and Wilson 58). The titles within each chapter are pre-
`cisely organized, too,' but Jefferson's organizational schemes differ from
`one chapter to the next. Though he carefully organized the titles in each
`chapter, he never recorded the principles he used to determine individual
`
`Petitioners Great West Casualty Co., BITCO Gen. Ins. Corp., and BITCO Nat'l Ins. Co.
`Ex. 1041, p. 252
`
`

`
`Thomas Jefferson { 253
`
`chapter organization. What his correspondence makes clear, however, is
`that he devoted enough time and thought to arranging the contents of the
`individual chapters to become irritated when others ignored his organiza-
`tion.
`After Jefferson sold his personal library to the United States govern-
`ment to form the basis of the Library of Congress, the librarian there pub-
`lished a catalogue of the books that retained Jefferson's chapter divisions
`yet rearranged the contents of each chapter into alphabetical order. Cri-
`tiquing those responsible for preparing the catalogue, Jefferson wrote a
`correspondent: "The form of the catalogue has been much injured in the
`publication; for although they have preserved my division into chapters,
`they have reduced the books in each chapter to alphabetical order, instead
`of the chronological or analytical arrangements I had given them" (Writ-
`ings 1378). The phrase, "chronological or analytical arrangements" is the
`only indication Jefferson provided regarding the organization of books
`within the individual chapters. Basically, what he was saying was that he
`had either organized the books chronologically, or he had devised some
`other logical pattern to arrange them. Some patterns are easier to discern
`than others.
`Jefferson's organizational scheme for the religious books that consti-
`tute chapter 17 is not readily apparent. Sale's Koran comes fourth in the
`list. Preceding it are three works explaining religious beliefs from ancient
`Greek and Roman times: Sibyllina Oracula, a collection of Greek oracles
`edited by the French Calvinist Sebastien Chateillon; William King's His-
`torical Account of the Heathen Gods and Heroes, the most popular classical
`handbook of the time; and New Pantheon: Or, Fabulous History of the Hea-
`then Gods, Goddesses, Heroes, &c, an encyclopedic work compiled by Grub
`Street writer Samuel Boyse. Following the Qur'an in the list are multiple
`copies of the Old Testament, editions of the Bible incorporating both Old
`and New Testaments, and several copies of the New Testament in a number
`of different scholarly editions.
`At first glance, the organization generally seems chronological. The list
`starts with an edition of pagan oracles that had extraordinary influence
`in shaping the religious views of ancient times. What follows are two ref-
`erence works useful for understanding.the numerous gods and goddesses
`that constitute Greek and Roman mythology. From these beginnings, the
`catalogue eventually proceeds through Judaism to Christianity. The place-
`
`Petitioners Great West Casualty Co., BITCO Gen. Ins. Corp., and BITCO Nat'l Ins. Co.
`Ex. 1041, p. 253
`
`

`
`2541 EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE: VOLUME 39, NUMBER 2
`
`ment of the Qur'an, which, of course, was much more recent than the
`sacred scriptures of Judaism and Christianity, disrupts the chronology,
`however. Its text was purportedly revealed to Muhammad.during the first
`third of the seventh century, memorized by his followers, and collected
`in book form after Muhammad's death. In terms of historical chronology,
`the Qur'an belonged after Jefferson's collection of New Testaments. The
`Qur'an made use of some of the same exemplary figures as the Hebrew
`Bible-Abraham, most important- and its text even contains specific ref-
`erences to Christians and Christianity. Alternatively, the Qur'an itself made
`its removal from historical chronology justifiable. The text of the Qur'an
`supposedly transcends matters of chronology. As the word of God, it exists
`outside of time.
`Jefferson did not remove the Qur'an from its historical place because
`of its timelessness, however. Rather, his religious books, as organized in
`the manuscript catalogue, follow an analytical scheme that closely mirrors
`a chronological one. The idea of progress underlies Jefferson's organiza-
`tion of his religious books, and the list suggests a general progression from
`pagan to Christian. In Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson would dis-
`play a nonchalant indifference to monotheism and atheism, stating that
`it little mattered to him were his neighbor "to say there are twenty gods,
`or no god" (Writings 285). The library catalogue, on the other hand, sug-
`gests that Islam, as a monotheistic religion, represented an advance over
`the pantheism of ancient times. The organization of the library catalogue
`implies that the Islamic belief system was an improvement over the pagan
`religions yet fell short of the belief system Christianity represented.
`A comment Jefferson inscribed in his copy of Edward Gibbon's History
`of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire confirms the attitude toward
`Islam implicit within the manuscript library catalogue. Jefferson placed his
`marginal inscription to correspond to a late passage in the History, where
`Gibbon told the story of Mahomet II's arrival in St. Sophia during the fif-
`teenth century. Relating how Mahomet II commanded that the Christian
`cathedral be transformed into a mosque, Gibbon wrote:
`
`By his command, the metropolis of the Eastern church was transformed
`into a mosch: the rich and portable instruments of superstition had
`been removed; the crosses were thrown down; and the walls, which were
`covered with images and mosaics, were washed and purified, and re-
`
`Petitioners Great West Casualty Co., BITCO Gen. Ins. Corp., and BITCO Nat'l Ins. Co.
`Ex. 1041, p. 254
`
`

`
`Thomas Jefferson { 255
`
`stored to a state of naked simplicity. On the same day, or on the en-
`suing Friday, the muezin or crier ascended the most lofty turret, and
`proclaimed the ezan, or public invitation in the name of God and his
`prophet, the imam preached; and Mahomet the second performed the
`namez of prayer and thanksgiving on the great altar, where the Christian
`mysteries had so lately been celebrated before the last of the Caesars.
`
`(52)
`
`Upon reading this passage, Jefferson recalled lines from "Carthon," one
`of Ossian's poems, and inscribed the following at the bottom of the page:
`"I have seen the walls of Balclutha, but they were desolate. The stream of
`Clutha was removed from it's place bythe fall of the walls. The thistle shook
`there it's lonely head. The moss whistled to the wind. The fox looked out
`from the windows: the rank grass of the wall waved round his head." Read-
`ing about this Muslim takeover of a Christian cathedral, Jefferson com-
`pared it to watching an ancient edifice being returned to a state of nature.
`For Jefferson, Mahomet II and his followers are like the fox and thistle in
`Ossian, symbols of the decay, not progress.
`A reference to the Qur'an Jefferson made in his correspondence helps
`elaborate his attitude toward it as both a religious work and a lawbook. In a
`letter to a sympathetic friend, he specifically associated the Qur'an with the
`study of law: "I have long lamented with you the depreciation of law sci-
`ence. The opinion seems to be that Blackstone is to us what the Alcoran is to
`the Mahometans, that everything which is necessary is in him, and what is
`not in him is not necessary" (Writings 1226). Though Jefferson invokes the
`Qur'an largely as a means of critiquing William Blackstone's Commentaries
`on the Law of England, the comparison he makes between the two reveals
`that he associated the Qur'an with the reading of law and suggests how
`he understood the Qur'an. Furthermore, the comparison makes Jefferson's
`other critiques of Blackstone useful for understanding his attitude toward
`the Qur'an.
`Blackstone's Commentaries, needless to say, was a landmark legal text.
`Blackstone began publishing his great work in 1765, that is, just as Jefferson
`was finishing his formal legal studies. After passing the bar himself, Jeffer-
`son began overseeing the legal education of many other young men. He
`initially embraced Blackstone and recommended the work to those study-
`ing the law. The more he thought about it, however, the more dangerous
`
`Petitioners Great West Casualty Co., BITCO Gen. Ins. Corp., and BITCO Nat'l Ins. Co.
`Ex. 1041, p. 255
`
`

`
`2561 EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE: VOLUME 39, NUMBER 2
`
`it seemed. Blackstone's Commentaries made such a pretense toward com-
`prehensiveness that it gave law students tacit permission to neglect other
`pertinent books and avoid interpreting the law from alternate perspectives.
`In his strongest condemnation of the work and its author, Jefferson stated
`that Blackstone's Commentaries "has been perverted more than all others
`to the degeneracy of legal science. A student finds there a smattering of
`everything, and his indolence easily persuades him that if he understands
`that book, he is master of the whole body of the law" (qtd. in Sowerby,
`no. 1806). Given Jefferson's analogy between the two works, his charac-
`terization of Blackstone's Commentaries can be paraphrased to apply to
`the Qur'an: Muslims find there a smattering of everything and persuade
`themselves that if they understand that book, they have mastered Islam.
`Authorities on Islamic law observe that while the Qur'an is the supreme
`source of law for Muslims there are extra-Qur'anic sources of Islamic juris-
`prudence: the example and words of the prophet Muhammad, the general
`consensus of Muslims, and ijtihad or jurisprudence, by which virtually any
`Muslim may contribute to the religious interpretation of the Qur'an (al-
`Hibri 505-6). There is no indication that Jefferson recognized these alter-
`nate sources of Islamic jurisprudence. The opinion of the Qur'an he voiced
`as he compared it with Blackstone suggests that Jefferson recognized a basic
`problem with Islam: its followers accepted the words of the Qur'an without
`question and without consulting supplementary texts useful for interpret-
`ing sacred text.
`What may be the most chilling reference to the Qur'an in Jefferson's
`writings occurs in a 1786 report he and John Adams submitted to John
`Jay, then secretary of foreign affairs. The two had been commissioned by
`the United States government to meet and possibly arrange a treaty with
`Abdrahaman, envoy of the sultan of Tripoli. Algiers, Morocco, Tunis, and
`Tripoli constituted the Barbary Coast, a land whose pirates had been ter-
`rorizing American merchant vessels and taking American merchant sailors
`prisoner and holding them for ransom. The Muslim states of the Barbary
`Coast endorsed the practice of piracy-provided it was carried out against
`infidels in the name of Islam (Kitzen i). In colonial times, American vessels
`were protected from the Islamic corsairs because Great Britain paid the
`Barbary States tribute-protection money to guard against piracy. With
`American independence, the Barbary pirates were free to attack the new
`nation's merchant vessels because the American government refused to
`
`Petitioners Great West Casualty Co., BITCO Gen. Ins. Corp., and BITCO Nat'l Ins. Co.
`Ex. 1041, p. 256
`
`

`
`Thomas Jefferson
`
`1257
`
`pay tribute to the nations of the Barbary Coast. Sanctioned by their gov-
`ernment, the attacks of the Barbary pirates on American merchant vessels
`represent an early example of state-sponsored terrorism directed toward
`civilian American targets.
`At their meeting, Adams and Jefferson asked the Tripoline ambassador
`on what grounds his nation made war upon other nations that had done
`their people no harm. They let him know that as representatives of the
`United States they considered friends everyone who had done them no
`wrong nor had given them any provocation.
`The ambassador explained that the conduct of the Barbary Coast pirates
`"was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their
`Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority
`were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wher-
`ever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Pris-
`oners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to
`go to Paradise" (Papers 9: 358). Even today, especially today, the ambassa-
`dor's words have a chilling effect.
`The encounter with the Tripoline ambassador gave Jefferson an object
`lesson regarding the profound danger that could come from relying on a
`single text without recourse to supplementary texts and alternative inter-
`pretations. Surely, if a religious text seemed to sanction war, its readers
`ought to research how others interpreted the text as a means of achiev-
`ing some clarity before rushing into battle. Abdrahaman and the Muslim
`pirates whose behavior he sanctioned saw no need to consult other texts to
`justify their behavior. Everything they needed to know was in the Qur'an,
`and what was not in the Qur'an they did not feel a need to know.
`As for himself, Jefferson recognized that he needed to know more, a
`great deal more, and he began reading deeply on the subject. After meeting
`with the ambassador, he acquired several books pertinent to the study of
`Islam including Yazdi Sharaf al-Din 'Ali's Histoire de Timur-Bec (Sowerby,
`no. 310); Sauveur Lusignan's History of the Revolt ofAli Bey (no. 314), which
`contained detailed information regarding Egyptian politics and govern-
`ment; and Paul Rycaut's History of the Present State of the Ottoman Empire
`(no. 324), a work whose stylistic excellence and scrupulous objectivity in
`describing Turkish politics prompted Rycaut to be "hailed as the new Taci-
`tus" (Anderson 240).
`Gradually, Jefferson developed an interest in learning Arabic. In the
`
`Petitioners Great West Casualty Co., BITCO Gen. Ins. Corp., and BITCO Nat'l Ins. Co.
`Ex. 1041, p. 257
`
`

`
`258 } EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE: VOLUME 39, NUMBER 2
`
`early 1770S, the friendship he developed with Samuel Henley, professor of
`moral philosophy at William and Mary, offered him a good opportunity to
`further his interests. Best known as editor and annotator of William Beck-
`ford's Vathek, Henley was an expert Orientalist, and his copious notes to
`Vathek indicate that he was not only familiar with Sale's translation but
`that he also knew the Qur'an in its original. In the late 1770S Jefferson ex-
`pressed his interest in the languages of the Near East by acquiring a book
`entitled Poeseos Asiaticae Commentariorum, a Latin work by Sir William
`Jones containing a historical and critical survey of Arabic, Persian, and
`Turkish poetry (Papers 8: 13).
`Before long, Jefferson began teaching himself to read Arabic. He ac-
`quired sonme basic Arabic grammars including Rudimenta Linguae Arabi-
`cae, by Thomas Erpensius, and Simplification des Langues Orientales, the
`Arabic grammar prepared by his friend and correspondent, C.-F. Volney.
`He also obtained a copy of Heinrich Sike's edition of the infancy gospel
`with the text in Arabic and Latin on opposite pages. In addition, he added
`a copy of Euclid's Geometry in Arabic to his library (Sowerby, nos. 4744-
`4747). Taken together, these works show that Jefferson's systematic attempt
`to learn Arabic closely paralleled the procedure he had established for
`learning other languages during.his student days. He familiarized himself
`with basic grammar, read a text in the new language with a parallel text in
`a familiar language adjacent, and then read a familiar text in the new lan-
`guage. Not only did Jefferson recognize the importance of learning Arabic
`himself, he also recognized that other Americans should have the oppor-
`tunity to learn the language. Revising the laws of Virginia in the late 1770S,
`he drafted a bill that proposed expanding the curriculum of William and
`Mary to include Oriental languages (Papers 2:,540).
`In the preamble to a more famous piece of legislation he drafted around
`the same time, the "Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom," Jefferson
`wrote that all attempts to influence the mind "by temporal punishments,
`or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypoc-
`risy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author
`of our religion" (Papers 2: 545). Retelling the story of the legislative debate
`over this bill in his autobiography, he wrote:
`
`Where the preamble declares thai coercion is a departure from the plan
`of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by in-
`
`Petitioners Great West Casualty Co., BITCO Gen. Ins. Corp., and BITCO Nat'l Ins. Co.
`Ex. 1041, p. 258
`
`

`
`Thomas Jefferson { 259
`
`serting the word "Jesus Christ," so that it should read, "a departure from
`the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion." The insertion
`was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to compre-
`hend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the
`Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomina-
`tion. (Writings 40)
`
`