Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in 2014 that the Americas were discovered by Muslims in the 12th century, nearly three centuries before Christopher Columbus set foot there.
“Contacts between Latin America and Islam date back to the 12th century. Muslims discovered America in 1178, not Christopher Columbus,” the conservative president said in a televised speech during an Istanbul summit of Muslim leaders from Latin America. “Muslim sailors arrived in America from 1178. Columbus mentioned the existence of a mosque on a hill on the Cuban coast,” Erdogan said.
The claim makes sense since the Muslim world obviously had the technology and Columbus own mission was done with navigators and converso sailors from the now conquered would of Andalus. There is even a claim that the first Muslim explorers to find America were Chinese! Erdogan’s clim, however is based on research by a small of Muslims scholars including Youssef Mroueh, an academic affiliated with the As-Sunnah Foundation of America. Mroueh bases his claims that “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,” Most scholars insist this was just an allusions to a striking land feature.
Whatever the case, it is hard tom imagine that an educated, highly literate Andalusian or North African Muslims would not have left a written record. and there have been no archaeological discoveries of Islamic structures pre-dating Columbus’s arrival in the New World.
Nonetheless Erdogan said that Ankara was prepared to build a mosque at the site mentioned by the Genoese explorer. “I would like to talk about it to my Cuban brothers. A mosque would go perfectly on the hill today,” the Turkish leader said.