In 1453, when Columbus was two years old, the Ottomans conquered Constantinople and, over the coming decades, expanded southward into the Land of Israel, then into Egypt, and westward across North Africa. For Spanish Christians trying to reach the Holy Land, the voyage was now a potentially life-threatening enterprise.
The Crusades may have petered out at the end of the 13th century, but the hostility between Muslims and Christians continued in lower-level clashes. For example, for a thousand years, the coast of North Africa was “home” to thousands of Christian slaves kidnapped at sea by the so-called Barbary Pirates, who were not pirates at all; that was a colloquial nickname. In their own eyes, they were jihadis. The Jihad is eternal, and they believed they had the right and even duty to hijack Christian commercial shipping in the Mediterranean, keep the ships and cargos, of course, and to enslave the passengers and crews until ransomed.
It was the Jihad that catalyzed the need for finding a new route to the Far East, though historians with an economic bent teach that it was for the spices that the Muslims now made impossible to reach.
I heard he was focused on the Queen.
He was Vulcan.....................
Shai Ben-Tekoa has a weekly podcast, Phantom Nation, on Israel News Talk Radio, and several times a week on his own. He also has written several enlightening books. He has been at it a very long time.
The Italians have claimed him as one of theirs. I doubt if they would agree to give him up so easily. Sometimes, myth, folklore and ethnic pride work to cancel out any contrary data. science based or not.
That would be something like if the late Nelson Mandala was discovered to have actually been a dark skinned Pakistani, and not of African heritage at all. Those misguided Black Americans who claim to worship Mandela would be in a quandary.
That’s an excellent and thought-provoking essay. Thanks for posting.
Well this article from the NYPost came out today claiming his DNA shows he was a Sephardic Jew (from Spain).
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he cites circumstantial evidence
then contradicts himself saying no evidence
if his grandmother was jewish
so was columbus
this hack urinalist fron obamas fiefdom in chitgargo neglects to mention the 1492 expulsion of jews edict by the king of spain.
That is what I was taught that all the spice routes were cut off by the Muslim conquests so he was hired to find a route going the opposite way.