Turkeys President Erdogan said yesterday that Muslims founded the Americas before Columbus. According to the BBC report, he pointed to a diary entry in which Columbus mentioned a mosque on a hill in Cuba. However many scholars believe the reference is metaphorical, describing an aspect of the mountain that resembled part of a mosque. Erdogan could be partly right. It may have been a Chinese-Muslim. Another controversial school of thought believes that it was the Chinese Admiral Zheng-He who first landed seven decades before Columbus. The widely refuted evidence by Gavin Menzies, is based on a map of the continents allegedly charted by Zheng He. Born to a Muslim family in Yunnan, Ma He (his original Muslim family name) became a court eunuch but was promoted to command several mammoth expeditions. The voyages typically consisted of a fleet with some 27,000 men, 60 treasure ships and supported by 200 smaller vessels. His many expeditions saw him setting foot in Malacca, around 600 years ago, where our history books recorded him under the (Hokkien) name of Cheng Ho. The temples built in his name are known as Sam Poh Kong. Some still stand in several South East Asian countries including a famous one in Semarang, Indonesia. One of the most fascinating television documentaries I saw featured a poor, present day African family who keeps an ancestral altar bearing the Zheng He name in their hut. He is fondly remembered as a diplomat and ambassador bearing gifts, and not as a ravaging conqueror. Whether it was he who first discovered the Americas or not, he is still to me; the greatest adventurer the world has ever known.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Nov 2014 07:48:53 +0000
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