A stressful weekend, involving lots of travel and personal insecurity. Everything went fine, except inside my head. Best wishes to the principals involved; they know who they are.
I heard about this on Michael Medved’s show this morning—our Ivy League-educated chief executive gave a speech at “the annual iftar dinner” at the White House, in which he put a little spin on the actual historical record.
“The first Muslim ambassador to the United States, from Tunisia, was hosted by President Jefferson, who arranged a sunset dinner for his guest because it was Ramadan — making it the first known iftar at the White House, more than 200 years ago.”
That presents a nice, cozy picture—cosmopolitan Tom Jefferson, out of his tremendous respect for Islam (did you know he owned a copy of the Koran?) hosted a special dinner in accordance with Islamic law, as a sign of respect for a Muslim ambassador.
Not quite the way it was. According to “The Iconoclast” at New English Review, the guy wasn’t an ambassador, but an envoy, in this country to shake us down for the ransoms of American sailors kidnapped by the Barbary pirates. Jefferson served him dinner after sundown because that was the only time the guy would eat. By all accounts he was an arrogant jerk who made no effort to understand us, and when he left nobody missed him.
Jefferson balked at paying tribute but accepted the expectation that the host government would cover all expenses for such an emissary. He arranged for Mellimelli and his 11 attendants to be housed at a Washington hotel, and rationalized that the sale of the four horses and other fine gifts sent by the bey of Tunis would cover costs. Mellimelli’s request for “concubines” as a part of his accommodations was left to Secretary of State James Madison.. Jefferson assured one senator that obtaining peace with the Barbary powers was important enough to “pass unnoticed the irregular conduct of their ministers.”
In less irritating news related to the Middle East, Joe Carter at First Things, in his weekly 33 Things post, links to these clips of a virtual model of Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem, a sight that would have been most familiar to the Lord and His disciples.
We’ve been told so many times that Jerusalem was an out-of-the-way outpost of the Roman empire, that we sometimes forget that Herod made his city a world-wide tourist attraction through the construction of a temple complex that was, in fact, one of the world’s wonders. The Roman government wasn’t entirely happy about it, either.