Congressman Takes Oath on Thomas Jefferson’s KoranRep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) became the first Muslim member of Congress January 4 and memorialized the event by taking a ceremonial oath on a Koran once owned by President Thomas Jefferson. Ellison had asked the Library of Congress in December to use the two-volume set that is part of its Jefferson Collection. The library often provides historic bibles, such as the one Lincoln used at his inauguration, for use on ceremonial occasions.
Accompanied by a guard, Rare Book and Special Collections Division Chief Mark Dimunation carried the two volumes in a plain box through a maze of underground tunnels to the ceremonial hall in the Capitol building where Ellison was to be sworn in. “Large numbers of people were aware of who we were and what we were doing,” he told American Libraries. “When we went through the security system at the Capitol, one of the policemen walked up and asked to see the books.”
The Koran, an English translation by George Sale published in London in 1764, was acquired by Jefferson when he was studying law. Dimunation said it was considered a definitive English translation, one that “historians see as shaping Western Europe’s understanding of the language of the Koran.”
The volumes, rebound in leather by LC in 1919, were among the 6,487 books purchased by Congress from Jefferson in 1815 to replace those lost when the first congressional library was destroyed by the British one year earlier. Jefferson marked his ownership on the “T” signature of the book by making his corresponding initial “J” next to it.
Dimunation added, “It was certainly apt for Thomas Jefferson’s book to be at the ceremony. It felt like the book was returning to its original home, since it had lived in the Capitol building before it came over to LC.”
Posted January 8, 2007.
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