Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam And The Founders - Plot & Excerpts
Adams’s private letters concerning his three prior meetings with the ambassador reveal a wealth of suggestive detail absent from the official report he and Jefferson ultimately sent to their secretary of state. Adams admitted to being “sometime in doubt, whether any Notice Should be taken of the Tripoline Ambassador [Abdurrahman].” Perhaps this feeling explains why nowhere else in his correspondence did Adams even mention the envoy by name, which today would be rendered Abd al-Rahman. Upon learning that the ambassador “made enquiries about me; and expressed surprise that when other foreign ministers visited him, the American had not,” Adams changed his mind about a meeting. Confirmation that the representative was also “a universal and perpetual Ambassador” sealed his decision. Intending only to leave his card on the evening of February 17, 1786, Adams was surprised to find the ambassador at home and immediately “ready to receive me.”81 And so a courtesy call turned into a first attempt at negotiation.
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