Erdogan claims Muslims beat Columbus to the Americas Muslims discovered the Americas in the 12 century, nearly 300 years before Christopher Columbus made his famous voyage there, according to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey. I would like to talk about it to my Cuban brothers. A mosque would go perfectly on the hill today," the Turkish leader said. History books say that Columbus set foot on the American continent in 1492 as he was seeking a new maritime route to India. Other accounts suggest he may have been beaten there by Leif Erikson, a Norse explorer, or by the ancient Phoenicians A tiny minority of Muslim scholars have recently suggested a prior Muslim presence in the Americas, although no pre-Columbus ruin of an Islamic structure has ever been found. In a controversial article published in 1996, historian Youssef Mroueh refers to a diary entry from Columbus that mentions a mosque in Cuba. But the passage is widely understood to be a metaphorical reference to the shape of the landscape. And while Columbus is frequently credited with discovering the country that became the US, he actually never set foot in it, exploring instead the Carribean and the South and Central American coastlines.