Guana means brothers and Hani is a traditional Arab name, giving rise to the idea that the island name meant “Hani Brothers.” Nearby in Honduras lived a tribe of natives known as Almamy, a corruption of the Arabic word Al-Imam, person who leads in prayer. Guanahani is believed to be a corruption of two Arabic words, brought to the island by early Muslim visitors who remained in the Caribbean and intermarried with the Native Americans. Although Columbus renamed it, the island was called Guanahani by the native Mandinka islanders.

The historian, Abul-Hassan Al-Masudi, added a map of the world to his book, one that contained “a large area in the ocean of darkness and fog (the Atlantic Ocean) which he referred to as the unknown territory (the Americas).Ĭolumbus landed on a small Bahamian island on Oct.

A book by a Muslim historian details the story of a Muslim navigator on a journey across the ocean to an unknown land, where they found much treasure.

These researchers argue that Muslims came from Islamic Spain, particularly the port of Delba (Pelos) during the rule of Caliph Abdullah Ibn Mohammed (888-912). Now some are suggesting that Muslims came to the Americas, possibly as early as the 700s. Since the Americas had been initially populated (probably between 13,000 BC and 11,000 BC) there had been no engagement with populations on any other continent, save small ventures by the Norse into Northeastern Canada. The conventional wisdom is that Columbus ended tens of thousands of years of near-total isolation for the Native Americans. While many of the details have been mythologized or fabricated over the ensuing 500 years, Columbus’s expedition represents the first major discovery of the Americas and the first appearance of non-Native Americans. Columbus encountered native inhabitants of this new world, and thinking that he had landed in India, he called them Indians. Are the claims true?Įvery elementary school student knows the story of Christopher Columbus that he set sail from Spain and mistakenly discovered America in 1492, landing on an island in the Caribbean. Is it possible that there were Muslims in the Americas before Columbus? Some claim that Muslims came to America hundreds of years before Columbus arrived in the New World.

Dr barry fell america bc