Damn them! Fools!
I offered them a successful project, but they only care about their thrones and bellies.
What shall I do?
I'm sure they won't mobilize to get Jerusalem back.
All I have left is the king of Spain, I hope I can persuade him.
My lord, my queen... You know that the earth is round.
If we sail west, we'll beat the Portuguese and get to Asia easily from the east.
Therefore we won't cross through Ottoman lands or waters.
And so, we spread Christianity in that country
and fill your treasury with gold, cereals and spices.
And we'll equip an army for a new crusade,
to regain the Holy Land from Muslims.
Amazing! You're thinking outside the box, Christopher.
Your disciple, my lord.
Listen...
Yes, my lord.
I'll grant you three ships to sail.
And I'll eagerly wait for your return.
As you wish, Your Majesty!
In 1492AD, Christopher Columbus set sail towards Asia,
thinking that the sphericity of the Earth will help them reach the east
without the need to pass through Ottoman lands, or go around Africa
The start was from the western coasts of Spain
with three small ships, carrying little food and few men.
After two months of sailing, however,
they arrived to the Bahamas, the Antilles and Cuba,
or what's known today as Central America.
Columbus thought he had reached India, so he named those regions the "West Indies".
He immediately started his quest for a fortune that fills his pockets,
and serves his project to form an army in order to reconquer Jerusalem from Muslims.
Was Columbus truly an explorer?
Or did he lead the world into the dark abyss of occupation and displacement?
How is it possible to say that Columbus was the first man to discover America,
when it had a population of over a hundred million people?
With a civilization that extends for thousands of years.
As if Europeans are the center of history and geography in this world
How!?
Christopher and Ferdinand signed a royal agreement
granting Columbus the rank of Admiral of the Ocean Sea in his country
Besides 10% of gold and merchandise he'll bring in case he discovers new regions
And so he began his expeditions.
When Columbus and his soldiers entered the new lands,
Natives welcomed them with gifts.
They offered them gold, diamonds and exotic animals,
thinking that these strangers are peaceful and kind.
But Christopher and his soldiers didn't treat the natives likewise.
Instead, every adult boy was forced to collect a monthly amount of gold,
and if he doesn't, he's punished by chopping off his hands
and hanging them by his neck until he bleeds out.
Led by sheer greed, Columbus's soldiers
dug up the graves to extract gold and jewelry that was buried with the dead.
They enslaved and humiliated the natives for labor.
And when resistance started,
the soldiers subdued them with the power of arms and genocide,
decreasing the population by 95% in fifty years only.
Many of the oppressed people commited suicide, both individually and in groups
by eating poisonous herbs or jumping from high mountains.
Until the number of people who committed suicide reached over fifty-thousand people.
Christopher wrote to the king about his discoveries and sent him chests full of gold.
So, the king assisted him with seventeen more ships.
And when the amounts of stolen gold decreased,
Columbus started kidnapping people and sending them to Spain
to be sold in slave markets.
Columbus was the first European to exploit reaching America
in favor of the European occupation.
But many Viking sailors reached the coasts of Canada 500 years before him.
So did many Muslim expeditions during the Umayyad era in al-Andalus,
and during the time of the Islamic Empire of Mali
as confirmed by historical sources and discoveries of gold coins.
It is enough to observe the map drawn by the Ottoman navigator Piri Reis
thirty years before Colombus's journey to believe that.
This was only the beginning.
The European occupation annihilated the population of the new continent.
Then, they moved millions of Africans there for labor and enslavement.
And here's the American president Joe Biden,
after five centuries of celebrating Columbus the hero,
acknowledging these atrocities in Columbus Day and saying:
"Western exploration ushered a wave of devastation
through violence, displacement and theft."
But, what good is acknowledgement after annihilation?
And can they ever wash their hands of their ancestors' catastrophic acts?