Julian P. Boyd, Editor
Princeton, NJ
Princeton University Press, 1954.
Assuming that this edition would have completely different pagination and possibly different organization of headings, etc., I went straight for the index. Unfortunately, it had no general index for all volumes, but divided the indices up into 4-volume pamphlets. I had forgotten in what year the Jefferson report I was looking for had been written, so it took me some time hunting down what to look up in the indices. Also, at the time, I did not know the proper Muslim name for the ambassador, and there was no
“Adja
”—the name bandied about in the Blogosphere (including formally by Hugh Fitzgerald) in any of the indices. Looking up the entries for
“Barbary
” proved to be rather frustrating, since they referred the reader to innumerable pages apparently having little to do with my concern.
Finally, on a serendipitous fluke, when I looked up
“Tripoli
” in one of the indices, it referred the reader to
“see Abdrahaman
”—which I dutifully did. Finally, I found something that looked like a meeting between Jefferson and Adams and this Abdrahaman character.
Strangely enough, the volume and pagination were exactly the same as that which had been referenced by Melvin E. Lee / Frank Lambert to the
wrong multi-volume edition
—i.e., to the Paul L. Ford edition, not this one, the Julian P. Boyd edition!
At any rate, I flipped through to page 358 in volume 9 of the Boyd edition, and lo and behold: there it was. I had hit paydirt!
Spanning pages 357-9 in volume 9 of the Boyd edition, the entry was titled:
“American Commissioners to John Jay”
March 28th. 1786Here then is my transcription of the relevant passage:
We took the liberty to make some inquiries concerning the Grounds of their pretentions to make war upon Nations who had done them no Injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation.The Ambassador answered us that it 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 wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.Some observations are in order here to complete the process of unravelling all the niggling complexities and inaccuracies surrounding the use of this quote in the Blogosphere (and in the
“real world
” of actual books) by various members of the still inchoate anti-Islam movement:
1. The various wordings.
a) As I recounted in my last essay, there exist at least three versions of this quote, bandied about on the Blogosphere and finding their way into books as well. We can now see that the partial citation of the quote by presented by Ibrahim / Melvin E. Lee / Frank Lambert / Paul L. Ford is incorrect:
“right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to enslave as many as they could take as prisoners.”Where and how the incorrect wording crept in, who knows. One assumes that Paul L. Ford is not to blame, and that therefore the corruption began with Frank Lambert, or with Melvin E. Lee. In the chain of transmission here, Ibrahim is merely copy-pasting a previous error.
b) Somewhat good news: other than the Ibrahim / Melvin E. Lee corruption, the quote most commonly bandied about the Blogosphere is, with the exception of one letter (for some reason, they capitalize the word “Battle”), the same as the quote from the Boyd edition. This is all well and good, but until the actual primary source was located, we had no way of knowing it was accurate, and this in turn cast doubt on whether it was a real quote at all, or what its real wording was.
2. The name of the Muslim ambassador:
Hugh Fitzgerald, for example, writes:
They had a meeting with the representative of Tripolitania (present-day Libya) then in the Great Britain, Sidi Haji Rahmand Adja.
I’m not sure where he gets this name from. At any rate, the name cited in Boyd’s edition of the Thomas Jefferson papers, and the name used by Jefferson and others in there, is “Abdrahaman” or “Abdurrahman”. This name, “Adja”, has been bandied about the Blogosphere, and apparently it has simply been copied from blogger to blogger, without anyone bothering to check on the more accurate name.
3. “Musselman”:
Interestingly enough, the apparent misspelling of “Mussulman” as “Musselman” is in the original written by Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Either they did not know how to spell the word, or “Musselman” is indeed a correct variant, though I have been unable to find it in old dictionaries.
Conclusion:
To all those who have seen fit to make use of this quote, without adequately verifiable documentation thereof—such as Hugh Fitzgerald, Raymond Ibrahim, Robert Spencer, Andrew Bostom, Daniel Pipes, Pamela Geller, Michelle Malkin, Baron Bodissey, Fjordman—I hereby say, with sarcastic tongue in cheek, “you’re welcome”.