Muslims discovered the Americas more than three centuries before Christopher Columbus, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said.
He made the claim during a conference of Latin American Muslim leaders in Istanbul, pointing to a diary entry in which Columbus mentioned a mosque on a hill in Cuba.
Mr Erdogan also said “Muslim sailors arrived in America in 1178”.
He said he was willing to build a mosque at the site Columbus identified.
The Turkish president — whose AK Party is rooted in political Islam — gave no further evidence to back up his theory, instead stating: “Contacts between Latin America and Islam date back to the 12th Century”, BBC informs.
