Nineteenth-century American Muslim knowledge came from Bible, Arabian Nights, and Twain

Evidence

Historian Douglas Little discusses American Orientalism in his book, American Orientalism. Tracing the history of American knowledge of the Orient and the Muslim world, Little notes that in the 1800s, the little white Americans knew about the religion, the peoples, and the lands came from the Bible, A Thousand and One Nights, and Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad. The popular opinion was that the Muslim world was a barbaric backwater beset by despotism and debauchery. Sensationalist accounts of white people enslaved by Turks helped propagate these disparaging, though titillating, views. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 211

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Early Americans’ image of Islam derived secondhand from British sources — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 115; Biblical textual criticism drove the era’s Arabic scholarship — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists…, 231; Mark Twain’s 1869 bestseller framed Muslims as inherently brutish and unprogressive — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 517 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Mark Twain’s 1869 bestseller framed Muslims as inherently brutish and unprogressive #exemplifies (0.82) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 517
• The Arabian Nights imagery signals Eastern sexual degeneracy as a moral corruption #expands (0.80) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 662
• Early Americans’ image of Islam derived secondhand from British sources #corroborates (0.78) — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 115
• Mark Twain’s life reflects universal themes in American identity. #expands (0.75) — Hamlin Garland Munseys, A Daughter of the Middle Border, 1264
• Biblical textual criticism drove the era’s Arabic scholarship #expands (0.72) — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 231
• Seventeenth-century Arabic learning centered on scripture and lexicons. #qualifies (0.70) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 2455