Every claim on this site traces to a source. Here are some of the sources themselves — the actual pages, paintings, and treaties, in the public domain, held by the nation's libraries and museums. Don't take our word for it. Look.
Thirteen pages on Islamic law and practice, handwritten in Arabic by Bilali Muhammad — enslaved on Sapelo Island, Georgia, and the leader of its Muslim community. It is among the earliest works of Islamic scholarship written in what is now the United States, composed under bondage from memory of a West African education.
The treaty communicated to the Senate in 1797 and ratified unanimously — including Article 11's declaration that the United States has 'no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility of Musselmen.' This is the document itself, as Congress saw it.
Charles Willson Peale — painter of Washington and Jefferson — spent two days in 1819 painting Yarrow Mamout, a formerly enslaved Fulani Muslim who had become a Georgetown property owner and financier in his eighties. It is among the earliest known portraits of a Muslim in America, painted from life with evident respect.
The Fula scholar from Futa Toro, enslaved in the Carolinas, who in 1831 wrote the only known Arabic autobiography by an enslaved person in the United States. His portrait survives — and so do all fifteen manuscript pages of his autobiography, digitized by the Library of Congress.
The oldest unbroken treaty in U.S. history, sealed by Sultan Mohammed III — the first sovereign to recognize American independence. The Library of Congress holds a digitized copy among Jefferson's papers; the original bears the sultan's seal.
Every item on this page is in the public domain. Images are served via Wikimedia Commons; the originals belong to the institutions credited above.