ABSTRACT
Americans and Muslims encounter was part of the long afterglow of the Crusades, as when English mercenary John Smith, fighting for the Austrians against the Ottoman Turks, was captured in Transylvania. Eighteenth-century American and European literature made the Muslim world a counterpoint to the idea of individual autonomy, the central feature of the emerging American ideology. Travelers and other observers saw signs of decay in Muslim societies, and Americans were determined to avoid the causes and thus prevent the symptoms. American misunderstanding of the Muslim world rested on a profound ignorance of the Islamic religion, Muslim society, and the wild misinterpretations of the prophet Muhammad, who was known to eighteenth-century European and American writers as "Mahomet". Americans had developed an image of themselves and their society by looking at the Muslim world, holding an image of people and places that helped them, they thought, construct their own nation and identity.
