Chicago – March 19, 2024
Jefferson bought his copy of the Quran in 1765 in Williamsburg, when he was 21 or 22, studying law. The two volumes are a second edition of the influential 1734 translation by George Sale, with Jefferson’s copy published in London in 1764.
Jefferson, who had an abiding interest in world religions, may have also valued the Quran as a comparison for legal codes across the world. Further, some of the enslaved Africans brought to America were Muslims, as the Library documents in the writings of Omar Ibn Said. Jefferson, who enslaved more than 600 Black people over the course of his life, may well have had firsthand experience with members of the faith.
After the British burned the Capitol building and the Library of Congress during the War of 1812, Jefferson sold his collection of 6,487 volumes to Congress in 1815 for $23,950.
The collection was so large that it took 10 wagons to carry them from his Monticello estate to Washington. It is regarded as the founding of the modern Library, and Jefferson as the Library’s patron saint, with the Library’s main building bearing his name. A fire on Christmas Eve in 1851 destroyed two-thirds of Jefferson’s collection, but the Quran was one of the volumes that survived. The book was rebound by the Library in 1918.
It endures as powerful symbol of Islamic faith in the country ̶ U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, who in 2006 became the first Muslim elected to Congress, took his oath of office on Jefferson’s Quran.
The copy of Holy Quran is often up for display during the annual Ramadan Iftar at the White House. The copy was personally witnessed by Mujeeb Osman during President Obama’s time when he attended the Iftar during Ramadan.
