Columbus set sail on his first voyage AUGUST 3, 1492, with the Nina, Pinta and the Santa Maria.

He explained how the Spanish monarchs approved his plan:

“… And ordained that I should not go by land (the usual way) to the Orient (East), but by the route of the Occident (West), by which no one to this day knows for sure that anyone has gone.”

Why did he seek to find a sea route to India and China?

Because 40 years earlier Islamic Ottoman Turks closed off the land routes.

The background to Columbus’ voyage goes back to the Islamic invasion of the Byzantine Empire, then the conquest of areas around the Mediterranean Sea, and then occupation of Spain.

In 711 AD, the commander of the Muslim crusaders, called “Moors,” was Ṭāriq ibn Ziyad.

Ṭāriq landed, with his 80,000-man Umayyad army, at a place where there was a large mount, for which the Arabic word is “jabal.”

The place took his name “Jabal Ṭāriq,” or as it was later pronounced “Gibraltar.”

Moorish cavalry, wielding curved scimitar swords, “went through all places like a desolating storm.”

The Mozarabic Chronicle, 754 AD, recorded that thousands of churches were burned and: “God alone knows the number of the slain.”

In 846 AD, just 46 years after Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Rome’s old St. Peter’s Basilica, 11,000 Muslims on 73 ships invaded Rome and sacked the Basilica.

They looted the historic basilica and desecrated the grave of St. Peter.

Invaders then trashed the remains of St. Paul, which were in the historic church, San Paolo fuori le Mura (St Paul’s outside the Walls.)

As a result of this invasion, Pope Leo IV built a massive wall, 39-feet high, to protect the Vatican from future Muslims raids.

A miracle saved Rome from being sacked again at the Battle of Ostia in 849 AD.

The battle was memorialized in a famous fresco by the painter Raphael.

Muslim Saracen pirates set sail from Sardina with a fleet to invade Rome.

Pope Leo rallied the cities of Amalfi, Gaeta and Naples to send ships to block the mouth of the Tiber River near Ostia.

Muslims fiercely attacked and were winning when suddenly a violent storm arose, dividing the Christians fleet from the Muslim attackers.

Christian ships made it back to port, but Muslim ships were decimated by the storm, and afterwards easily captured.

The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church Biographical Dictionary (1998, Salvador Miranda) described the Battle of Ostia:

“Danger from the Saracens was always imminent …

In 849 the Pope appealed to the maritime cities of Naples, Amalfi and Gaeta and asked them to join their fleets in a league not only in defense of Rome, but of their own trade affected by the raids of the Arab pirates …

Command was given to Cesare, son of the duke of Naples, who arranged for the fleets to meet at the entrance of the port of Ostia. Pope Leo IV imparted a solemn blessing …

The Christian fleet was victorious helped by a terrible and sudden storm that destroyed much of the Saracen fleet, of which many of the crews were taken prisoners.

Pope Leo IV communicated to the emperor that this was necessary to raise a new wall in Rome to protect … the Vatican … completely enclosing the neighborhood …

Fortification was also extended to … all the areas affected by the Saracen raids.”

Muslims warriors continued their raids.

Unfortunately, a subsequent Pope, John VIII (872-882), failed to rally a defense.

He was forced to pay the Muslim pirates an annual extortion tribute payment of 25,000 mancusi of silver.

Jihadi raiders increased their plundering of the coasts of Italy.

In 883 AD, they destroyed the renown monastery of Monte Cassino, even dragging the abbot, St. Bercharius, to the altar where they killed him.

They destroyed the abbey of San Vincezo in 884, and the abbies of Farfa and Subiaco in 890 AD.

Pope John X rallied Byzantines, Lombards, Gaeta, Capua, Salerno, Beneventum, and others Italian states and personally led the troops into the field to stop the Muslims at the Battle of Garigliano River in 916 AD.

Jihadis captured Reggio and Calabria, selling inhabitants into North African slavery.

In 1011, Muslims killed 2,000 in Cordoba, Spain.

In 1054, the Great Schism split the Byzantine Eastern Orthodox Church from the Roman Catholic Church, further weakening resistance to Islamic advances.

Beginning in 1045, Christianized Vikings, called Normans, sailed into the Mediterranean.

Norman Richard I of Capua took control of Calabria in the “toe of Italy,” and pushed back Muslims raiders.

In 1061, Normans Robert and Roger Guiscard recaptured Sicily from Muslim Saracens.

In 1066, the same year that William the Norman conquered Britain, fundamentalist Muslims massacred every one of the 5,000 Jews in Granada, Spain.

In 1189, Muslims raided Libson, Portugal, and enslaved 3,000 women and children.

In 1191, they attacked Silves, Portugal, enslaving another 3,000.

The Catholic Orders of Montjoie, and Calatrava, were organized to ransom back Christian slaves.

The Spanish effort to liberate Spain from Islamic control was called the “reconquista” or re-conquest.

In 1085, soldiers of the Kingdom of Castile freed Toledo from Islamic control.

The Spanish knight Rodrigo Diaz, known as “El Cid,” drove Muslim Almoravids out of Valencia in 1094.

An epic poem, El Cantar de Mio Cid, memorialized his courage.

Charlton Heston starred in the movie, “El Cid,” released in 1961.

In 1119, the Kingdom of Aragon fought and freed the city of Zaragoza from Islamic Almoravid control.

Finally, after 700 years, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella drove Moorish occupiers out in 1492.

Columbus wrote in his El Libro de la Primera Navegacion, as recounted by Bartolome’ de Las Casas’:

“After Your Highnesses had made an end to the war with the Moors who ruled in Europe, and had concluded the war in the very great City of Granada,

where in the present year, on the 2nd day of the month of January, I saw the Royal Standards of Your Highnesses placed by force of arms on the towers of the Alhambra (which is the citadel of the said city),

And I saw the Moorish King come forth to the gates of the city and kiss the Royal Hands of Your Highnesses.”

Columbus referenced how 40 years earlier, in 1453, Muslim Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople, effectively cutting off the land trade routes to travel from Europe east to India and China.

This gave rise to Columbus and other European explorers searching for a sea route.

Columbus continued in his El Libro de la Primera Navegacion:

“And soon after in that same month, through information I had given to your Highnesses concerning the lands of India, and of a Prince who is called Gran Can (Khan), which is to say in our vernacular ‘King of Kings,’

how many times he and his predecessors had sent to Rome to seek doctors in our Holy Faith to instruct him therein, and that never had the Holy Father provided them,

and thus so many people were lost through lapsing into idolatries and receiving doctrines of perdition;

And Your Highnesses, as Catholic Christians and Princes devoted to the Holy Christian Faith and the propagators thereof, and enemies of the sect of Mahomet and of all idolatries and heresies,

resolved to send me, Christopher Columbus, to the said regions of India, to see the said princes and peoples and lands and the dispositions of them and of all, and the manner in which may be undertaken their conversion to our Holy Faith …”

Columbus concluded his address to the King and Queen of Spain:

“… And ordained that I should not go by land (the usual way) to the Orient (East), but by the route of the Occident (West), by which no one to this day knows for sure that anyone has gone.”

Modern-day detractors who are critical of Columbus should instead be critical of the expansionist Islamic State, for it was only after the Turks cut off Europe’s use of the eastern land routes to India and China did Columbus seek a western sea route.

Columbus gave the reason for his persistence in his Libro de Las Profecias, written in 1502, between his third and fourth voyages:

“Our Lord wished to perform the clearest miracle in this of the voyage to the Indies, to console me and others in this other of the Holy Temple:

I spent seven years in your royal Court arguing the case with so many persons of such authority and learned in all the arts, and in the end they concluded that all was idle nonsense, and with this they gave up;

yet the outcome will be the fulfillment of what our Redeemer Jesus Christ said, and had said beforehand by the mouth of his Holy Prophets …

I offer as support the Holy Gospel, in which Jesus stated that everything would pass away, but not his wonderful Word; and with this he said that it was utterly necessary for all that was written by Him and by the Prophets to be fulfilled.

I said that I would state the argument I have for the restitution of the Holy Temple to the Holy Church …”

He concluded:

“Disregarding all my navigational skills … I only hold fast to the Holy and Sacred Scriptures and to some prophetic authoritative citations from certain holy persons, who have said something about this under divine inspiration …

The Holy Scriptures testify … that this world will come to an end …

St. Augustine says that the end of this world will occur in the seventh millennium following the Creation …

I have already said that for the execution of the enterprise of the Indies, neither reason, nor mathematics, nor world maps were profitable to me; rather the prophecy of Isaiah was fulfilled.”

Columbus wrote:

“There are but 155 years left … at which time … the world will come to an end …”

He continued:

“… The sign which convinces me that our Lord is hastening the end of the world is the preaching of the Gospel recently in so many lands.”