While all this is true, Columbus stands for and is a reminder of something else that is now little known if not completely (and intentionally) forgotten: he was, first and foremost, a Crusader — an avowed enemy of the jihad. His expeditions were, first and foremost, about circumventing and ultimately retaliating against the Islamic sultanates surrounding and terrorizing Europe — not just “finding spices” as we were taught in high school. …

Many Europeans were convinced that if only they could reach the peoples east of Islam — who if not Christian were at least “not as yet infected by the Muhammadan plague,” to quote Pope Nicholas V (d.1455) — together they could crush Islam between them. The plan was centuries old and connected to the legend of Prester John, a supposedly great Christian monarch reigning in the East who would one day march westward and avenge Christendom by destroying Islam.

All this comes out clearly in Columbus’s own letters: in one he refers to Ferdinand and Isabella as “enemies of the wretched sect of Muhammad” who are “resolve[d] to send me to the regions of the Indies, to see [how the people thereof can help in the war effort].” In another written to the monarchs after he reached the New World, Columbus offers to raise an army “for the war and conquest of Jerusalem.” That his voyages centered on liberating Jerusalem from Islam is evident in the title of one 2011 book titled, Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem.