Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders by Denise A. Spellberg Page B

’81,” Library of Virginia, among a box of uncataloged documents referred to as “the British Depredations” of Goochland County, Virginia, 1782, call number BC 114 7038.
    6. Thomas Jefferson, “Letter to John Page,” February 21, 1770, in
The Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, ed. Julian P. Boyd et al., 40 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950–), 1:548. Hereafter cited as
Papers of Thomas Jefferson.
    7. Dewey,
Thomas Jefferson
, 154 n. 25.
    8.
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 1:35.
    9. Dewey,
Thomas Jefferson
, 154 n. 2;
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 1:35.
    10. Although Jefferson may have lost between three hundred and five hundred volumes, this letter to Page may have been “an exaggeration,” according to Hayes,
Road to Monticello
, 2–3, 8; quote on 2–3.
    11. Hoffman,
Virginia Gazette Daybooks
, Segment 2, folios 7, 11, 12, 13, 28, 159, 175.
    12. Prange, “Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an,” 4. Jefferson’s study of religion and law are paramount in the explanation for his interest in the Qur’an; see Hayes, “How Thomas Jefferson Read the Qur’an,” 247, 252; Hayes,
Road to Monticello
, 9.
    13. An emphasis on Jefferson’s interest in Islamic law is offered by Azizah Y. al-Hibri, “Islamic and American Constitutional Law: Borrowing Possibilities or a History of Borrowing?”
University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law
1, no. 3 (1999): 499–500.
    14. Jefferson initialed volume 1, page 113, of the Qur’an, Rare Books and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress, with a “T” and “I” rather than a “T” and “J.” On the commonality of Jefferson’s use of his initials in his books, see Hayes,
Road to Monticello
, 6–8.
    15. The first person to assert that “most likely Jefferson owned two copies of the Qur’an” because of the Shadwell fire was al-Hibri, “Islamic and American Constitutional Law,” 498 n. 30.
    16. Hayes, “How Thomas Jefferson Read the Qur’an,” 251, 257–58.
    17. Edwin S. Gaustad,
Sworn on the Altar of God: A Religious Biography of Thomas Jefferson
(Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1996), 18–19. I would like to commend the generosity of the late Shearer Davis (Dave) Bowman, a historian and colleague who recommended this work when he kindly shared his brief overview of Jefferson’s views of Christianity with me.
    18. Sale, “Preliminary Discourse,”
Koran (1764)
, 1:A; Hayes, “How Thomas Jefferson Read the Qur’an,” 247–48, 251–52; Hayes,
Road to Monticello
, 9.
    19. Ziad Elmarsafy,
The Enlightenment Qur’an: The Politics of Translation and the Construction of Islam
(Oxford: Oneworld Press, 2009), 1–2. For a more in-depth assessment of medieval translations of the Qur’an, see Thomas E. Burman,
Reading the Qur’an in Latin Christendom, 1140–1560
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).
    20. For the best account of translation as a “political act,” see Elmarsafy,
Enlightenment Qur’an
, ix–xii, 1–80; Bobzin, “Translations of the Qur’an,” 5:340, 344–49.
    21. Elmarsafy,
Enlightenment Qur’an
, 1–2; Bobzin, “Translations of the Qur’an,” 5:344–45; Norman Daniel,
Islam and the West: The Making of an Image
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1966), 19, 22, 24–25, 37, 75. Sale’s translation is described “as best expressing in English the meaning traditionally understood in Islam” by Daniel,
Islam and the West
, 14.
    22. Elmarsafy,
Enlightenment Qur’an
, 1.
    23. Ibid., 22 (quote).
    24. Ibid.
    25. Thomas S. Kidd, “ ‘Is It Worse to Follow Mahomet Than the Devil?’ Early American Uses of Islam,”
Church History
72, no. 4 (December 2003): 767.
    26. Sale, “To the Reader,”
Koran (1764)
, 1:vii.
    27. Ibid.
    28. Bobzin, “Translations of the Qur’an,” 5:345; Elmarsafy,
Enlightenment Qur’an
, 10–14, 37–63.
    29. Elmarsafy,
Enlightenment Qur’an
, 74–75; Sale, “To the Reader,”
Koran (1764)
, 1:vii.
    30. Elmarsafy,
Enlightenment Qur’an
, 8–9;