I Struck Gold! Second Addendum to Primary Sources 101

Preface (and Spoiler):

The punch line (the "gold") of this lengthy expatiation is the accurate citation for the famous quote of the Muslim ambassador concerning Islamic piracy which Thomas Jefferson recorded in 1786:

The Papers of Thomas Jefferson 

in 34 volumes (and still incomplete)

Julian P. Boyd, Editor

Princeton, NJ

Princeton University Press, 1954

pages 357-9 in volume 9.

Now kick your feet up, take a sip of gin or hot chocolate, and read the full back story.

Discussion:

As I expected in my last article, Addendum to Primary Sources 101, I received notice by email that the college library near me indeed has the edition of Thomas Jefferson writings footnoted by Melvin E. Lee, whom Raymond Ibrahim cited in his own Jihad Watch article about the current rash of Somalian piracy within a broader history of Islamic piracy, including the Barbary piracy in which the newly created United States of America was embroiled.

So today I went to the library as I promised, and looked up the reference footnoted by Melvin E. Lee:

Thomas Jefferson, “‘The American Commissioners’ Report to John Jay,” in Paul L. Ford, ed., The Works of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 9 (New York and London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904-5), p. 358.

(More precisely, Lee footnotes a Frank Lambert book, The Barbary Wars, in which the Paul L. Ford edition is supposed to be cited, which Lee also provided—but not without problems, as we shall see.)

I went to the spot on the shelves where this multi-volume edition was supposed to be. And lo and behold, there it was. It was twelve volumes total. I checked the first volume, just to make sure the publication information was the same as that noted by Lee. It was.

At this point, I thought I was nearing the final pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. What could go wrong now? I took volume 9 in hand and went off to find a study carrell to sit in, so I could get to the actual meaty, juicy quote in question and copy it down on a piece of paper.

I should have known: when I flipped through to page 358, there was nothing resembling “The American Commissioners’ Report to John Jay” as Raymond Ibrahim and Melvin E. Lee had assured me. Instead, what I found on that page was “To the Secretary of the Treasury (Albert Gallatin.)” I read through it, just to make sure: nothing about the Barbary pirates or about any ambassador from Tripoli. Of course, I looked on adjacent pages before and after, just to make sure it wasn’t off by a page or two. Nothing.

Now what? I spent a good 20 minutes scouring through the general index supplied in the last volume, volume 12, looking up any reference that might lead me to the right place—“Barbary”, “ambassador”, “Tripoli”, and even tried the Muslim name of the ambassador which has been bandied about the Blogosphere, “Adja”—which I soon learned was misleading, if not inaccurate. Needless to say, the index had no “Adja”.

Frustrated and dispirited, I was about to leave the library, when I noticed another edition of Thomas Jefferson works nearby—this one titled The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, in 34 volumes (and still incomplete); a good three times the size of the Paul L. Ford edition. This edition’s publication information was the following:

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. 1786

Here 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”.