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Muslims in American history, 1492 to 2026

49 dated entries, each with its own page and a cited source. Where the record is thin or historians disagree, the entry says so. For the interactive version with filters and the migration map, open the homepage timeline. How claims are checked is explained in Methods.

Before 1776

  1. 1492Columbus sails as Muslim Granada fallsColumbus opens his voyage journal by describing the surrender of Granada, the last Muslim kingdom in Western Europe
  2. 1528Estevanico crosses the SouthwestA Moroccan-born man of North African Muslim-world background, enslaved in the Spanish world
  3. 1689Locke's Letter Concerning TolerationJohn Locke argues that pagans, Mahometans, and Jews should not be excluded from civil rights because of their religion
  4. 1731Ayuba Suleiman Diallo enslavedThe Fulani Muslim scholar is captured and enslaved in Maryland. A letter he writes in Arabic leads to his freedom, a stay in England
  5. 1734Ayuba Suleiman Diallo returns to AfricaThe Fulani Muslim scholar, who could write out the Qur'an from memory, enslaved in Maryland in 1731

1776 to 1865: the founding era and slavery

  1. 1776Declaration of IndependenceA Library of Congress historian estimates there may have been hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Muslims in America in 1776
  2. 1777Morocco opens its ports to American vesselsOn December 20, Sultan Mohammed III opens Moroccan ports to American vessels; formal U.S. recognition is dated to the 1786 treaty.
  3. 1786Treaty of Peace and FriendshipSigned at Marrakesh in 1786 and ratified by the Confederation Congress on July 18, 1787. It remains the oldest unbroken treaty in U.S.
  4. 1786Virginia Statute for Religious FreedomVirginia enacts Jefferson's statute. Looking back in 1821, Jefferson wrote that lawmakers refused to add 'Jesus Christ' to it so that it…
  5. 1788North Carolina debates whether a Muslim could be presidentAt the state's ratifying convention, delegates debate Article VI's ban on religious tests.
  6. 1790Free Moors win legal standing in South CarolinaFour free Moroccan subjects, sold into slavery despite a promised ransom, petition the South Carolina House citing the 1786 treaty with…
  7. 1791First Amendment ratifiedThe First Amendment is ratified on December 15, 1791. Historian Denise Spellberg argues that Jefferson, Madison
  8. 1796Yarrow Mamout gains his freedomAfter 44 years enslaved, the Fulani Muslim Yarrow Mamout is freed in Georgetown
  9. 1797Treaty of Tripoli ratifiedThe Senate ratifies a treaty stating the U.S. has 'no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility of Musselmen.'
  10. 1801–1805First Barbary WarA conflict over commerce, captives, and tribute, though Tripoli's envoy had framed the demands in religious terms in 1786.
  11. 1805Jefferson moves dinner to sunset for a fasting envoyHosting Tunisian envoy Sidi Soliman Mellimelli during Ramadan, President Jefferson shifts the White House dinner from half past three to…
  12. 1806America prints its first Qur'anA Springfield, Massachusetts press issues the first Qur'an printed in the United States: the Ross translation
  13. 1807Omar ibn Said enslavedThe Fula scholar from Futa Toro, in present-day Senegal, is brought to Charleston, South Carolina
  14. 1819Yarrow Mamout painted by PealeA free, property-owning Muslim of Georgetown, then part of the District of Columbia, sits for Charles Willson Peale.
  15. 1828Abd al-Rahman Ibrahima freedThe Fula prince from Futa Jallon is freed after his Arabic letter, mistaken for Moroccan, reaches the Sultan of Morocco, who asks U.S.
  16. 1846Elkader, Iowa named for an Algerian emirAn Iowa town is named for Emir Abdelkader, the Algerian scholar and resistance leader, a rare U.S.
  17. 1850Washington Irving writes the Prophet's biographyOne of America's first literary celebrities completes Mahomet and His Successors, a two-volume life of the Prophet Muhammad
  18. 1856The Army's Camel Corps hires Ottoman driversThe U.S. Army imports camels for the desert Southwest and hires Ottoman handlers to drive them.
  19. 1860Nicholas Said arrives in AmericaMuhammad Ali ben Said, born in the Bornu Empire (present-day Nigeria), reaches New York as a free man
  20. 1863Muslims in the Civil WarNicholas Said enlists in the 55th Massachusetts Colored Regiment and rises to sergeant.

1866 to 1964: first institutions and migration

  1. 1893Islam gets a seat at the Parliament of ReligionsAlexander Russell Webb, a former U.S. consul to the Philippines who embraced Islam in 1889
  2. 1907The Bengali sailorsFrom the 1890s through the 1940s, Bengali Muslim sailors (lascars) left British merchant ships in New York, New Orleans, and Baltimore
  3. 1913Moorish Science Temple foundedNoble Drew Ali founds the Moorish Science Temple in Newark, among the earliest organized movements drawing on Islam among African Americans.
  4. 1929The prairie mosqueSyrian-Lebanese homesteaders build a mosque near Ross, North Dakota, generally credited as the first purpose-built mosque in the United…
  5. 1934The Mother MosqueThe Mother Mosque of America opens in Cedar Rapids, Iowa: the oldest surviving purpose-built mosque in the United States
  6. 1947Two ambassador's sons remake American musicAhmet and Nesuhi Ertegun, sons of the Muslim Turkish ambassador, had hosted integrated jazz sessions at the D.C.
  7. 1964Malcolm X completes the HajjAfter his pilgrimage to Mecca, Malcolm X embraces mainstream Sunni Islam and takes the name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.

1965 to 2026: the modern community

  1. 1965The Hart–Celler Act reshapes American IslamThe Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 abolishes the national-origins quota system that had restricted immigration from outside…
  2. 1971Supreme Court reverses Muhammad Ali's convictionIn Clay v. United States the Court unanimously (8–0) overturns Ali's draft-refusal conviction on narrow procedural grounds.
  3. 1973The Sears Tower rises on a Muslim engineer's designBangladeshi-American engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan's bundled-tube system makes the Sears (now Willis) Tower the world's tallest building
  4. 1973A Yemeni farmworker dies for the unionNagi Daifallah, a 24-year-old Yemeni immigrant and United Farm Workers strike captain who organized in Arabic, Spanish, and English
  5. 1975W. Deen Mohammed leads a mass turn to Sunni IslamOn Elijah Muhammad's death, his son Warith Deen Mohammed leads most of the Nation of Islam's membership into mainstream Sunni Islam
  6. 1978Cham Muslim refugees reach AmericaCham Muslims (an ethnic group rooted in Cambodia and Vietnam, targeted by the Khmer Rouge) begin arriving as refugees
  7. 1987Alianza Islámica opens in East HarlemPuerto Rican converts found the nation's first Latino Muslim organization, with a storefront mosque on Lexington Avenue
  8. 1999Ahmed Zewail wins the Nobel Prize in ChemistryEgyptian-American chemist Ahmed Zewail wins the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for femtochemistry
  9. 2006First Muslim elected to CongressKeith Ellison of Minnesota is elected the first Muslim member of the U.S. Congress.
  10. 2007Jefferson's Qur'an returns to CongressRep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim in Congress, takes his ceremonial oath on Thomas Jefferson's own copy of the Qur'an
  11. 2015Aziz Sancar wins the Nobel Prize in ChemistryThe Turkish-American biochemist at the University of North Carolina shares the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for mapping how cells repair…
  12. 2016Ibtihaj Muhammad competes in hijab at the OlympicsFencer Ibtihaj Muhammad becomes the first American woman to compete at the Olympics in hijab and the first Muslim-American woman to win an…
  13. 2017Mahershala Ali wins the first acting Oscar for a MuslimMahershala Ali becomes the first Muslim actor to win an Academy Award, for Moonlight; he wins a second Oscar in 2019 for Green Book.
  14. 2018First Muslim women elected to CongressIlhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib become the first Muslim women elected to the U.S.
  15. 2021Operation Allies WelcomeAfter the fall of Kabul, the United States resettles more than 76,000 Afghans through a DHS-led operation
  16. 2026New York swears in its first Muslim mayor on a Schomburg Qur'anOn January 1, 2026, Zohran Mamdani takes the oath as New York City's first Muslim and first South Asian mayor
  17. 2026America turns 250On July 4, 2026, the United States marked 250 years since the Declaration, and the threads this site documents, Muslim ones among them