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 Islamist Ottoman warriors 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 A.D., 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."
In 731 A.D., the army of Duke Odo of Aquitaine was butchered by the cavalry of Umayyad commander Abd al-Rahman in southwest France at Bordeaux.
The city was put to the sword and the monasteries were raided.
In the century years after Mohammed’s death, an estimated 3,200 churches destroyed.
The Mozarabic Chronicle, 754 A.D., recorded that thousands of churches were burned and: "God alone knows the number of the slain."
The remnant of Duke Odo's army joined Charles Martel for the Battle of Tours/Poitiers on October 10, 732 A.D.
Martel means “the Hammer,” which was possibly a reference to Judas Maccabeus--“the Hammerer,” who drove Syrians from Judah.
Pope Gregory the Third called all soldiers of Europe to join Martel.
Martel assembled 30,000 soldiers at Tours, France, just 150 miles from Paris.
There was no other army this large in all the rest of Europe, so if Martel did not stop them, all of Europe would soon be Muslim.
With little armor and few horses, Martel's men, armed with spears, swords and axes, secretly marched on back trails to a wooded hill up from the Muslim camp.
The next day, the surprised Muslim commander, Abd al-Rahman, ordered an uphill attack.
His heavy cavalry, covered with chainmaille armor, attacked with 20 foot-long lances, and his light cavalry wielded bows and scimitar swords.
Abd al-Rahman’s warriors found it difficult to charge up the hill through trees.
On top, they met the Frankish infantry arranged in a disciplined, tight square, thus hindering the Muslim cavalry charge.
An Arab gave the account in the Medieval Source Book:
"And in the shock of the battle the men of the North - Franks - seemed like a sea that cannot be moved.
... Firmly they stood, one close to another, forming as it were a bulwark of ice; and with great blows of their swords they hewed down the Arabs.
Drawn up in a band around their chief, the people of the Austrasians carried all before them.
Their tireless hands drove their swords down to the breasts of the foe."
At the height of the battle, Martel's ally Duke Odo, led men to break into the undefended Muslim camp and free the captives.
When the Muslim warriors became aware of this, they feared the loss of their plunder and quickly retreated back to the camp.
Abd al-Rahman tried to rally his warriors back to the battle. Being distracted, he was surrounded and killed.
The next morning, Charles Martel waited for hours for the attack to resume, but nothing happened.
He thought it was a trick to lure him onto the open plain.
Finally, he sent down scouts who found the Muslim camp abandoned.
The Muslim account was that when they discovered their leader Abd al-Rahman was killed, confusion arose as to who would replace him. Preoccupied with their plunder, they retreated.
G.K. Chesterton wrote (The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton: Vol. XX, Introduction by James V. Schall, Ignatius Press):
"They seem entirely to forget that long before the Crusaders had dreamed of riding to Jerusalem, the Moslems had almost ridden into Paris."
Had Charles Martel not won the Battle of Tours, France would have been overrun and Europe would have likely become Islamic.
Europeans quickly adopted Muslim military tactics of fighting on horseback with stirrups.
This developed into knights of chivalry and the 700 year Reconquista to drive Muslim invaders out of Europe.
Bertrand Russell wrote in The History of Western Philosophy (bk 2, pt 2, ch. 10: Mohammedan Culture):
"Immediately after Mohammed's death the conquests began, and they proceeded with rapidity ...
Westward expansion - except in Sicily and Southern Italy - was brought to a standstill by the defeat of the Mohammedans at the Battle of Tours in 732, just one hundred years after the death of the Prophet ...
... It was the duty of the faithful to conquer as much of the world as possible for Islam ...
The first conquests of the Arabs began as mere raids for plunder, and only turned into permanent occupation after experience has shown the weakness of the enemy ...
The Arabs, although they conquered a great part of the world in the name of a new religion were not a very religious race; the motive of their conquests was plunder and wealth rather than religion."
In Fear God and Take Your Own Part, 1916, Theodore Roosevelt wrote his address to the American Sociological Congress:
"The civilization of Europe, America and Australia exists today ... only because of the victories of civilized man over the enemies of civilization ... stretching through the centuries from Charles Martel in the 8th century and those of John Sobieski in the 17th century ...
During the thousand years that included the careers of the Frankish soldier - Martel - and the Polish king - Sobieski - the Christians of Asia and Africa proved unable to wage successful war with the Moslem conquerors; and in consequence Christianity practically vanished from the two continents."
Charles Martel's grandson was Charlemagne --"Charles the Great.”
In 778 A.D., Charlemagne fought the Muslim army at Saragossa.
On his return, a detachment of his army was wiped out in the Pass of Roncevaux - Roncesvalles, as retold in epic poem The Song of Roland.
Anti-slavery Senator Charles Sumner wrote in White Slavery in the Barbary States, 1853:
"The Saracens, with the Koran and the sword, potent ministers of conversion, next broke from Arabia, as the messengers of a new religion,
and pouring along these shores, diffused the faith and doctrines of Mohammed ... even ... entered Spain, and ... at Roncevaux - Roncesvalles ... overthrew the embattled chivalry of the Christian world led by Charlemange. - The Song of Roland."
In 800 A.D., Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Rome's old St. Peter's Basilica, a title which with it the responsibility to defend Christendom.
Just 46 years later, 11,000 Muslim warriors on 73 ships invaded Rome and sacked the St. Peter's Basilica.
They looted the 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 the Fourth 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 A.D.
The battle was memorialized in a 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 the Fourth 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 the Fourth 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 the Eighth, 872-882 A.D., 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 A.D., 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 A.D., and the abbeys of Farfa and Subiaco in 890 A.D.
Pope John the Tenth 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 A.D.
Islamist fighters 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 the First 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.
Senator Charles Sumner wrote:
"Algiers, for a long time the most obnoxious place in the Barbary States of Africa, the chief seat of Christian slavery ... the wall of the barbarian world."
The Spanish effort to liberate Spain from Islamic control was 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.
In 1453, the Turkish Ottoman Sultan Mehmet the Second conquered Constantinople, ending the last remnants of the 2,000 year-old Byzantine-Roman civilization.
This effectively cut off European access to the land trade routes across the Silk Road to India and China, giving impetus to find a sea route.
Socialist historian Howard Zinn admitted in A People's History of the United States, 1980:
"Now that the Turks had conquered Constantinople and the eastern Mediterranean, and controlled the land routes to Asia, a sea route was needed.
Portuguese sailors were working their way around the southern tip of Africa. Spain decided to gamble on a long sail across an unknown ocean."
Thirty-nine years after the fall of Constantinople, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella ended the 700 year Islamic occupation of Europe by driving Moors out of Granada on January 2, 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 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 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."
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