Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday hit back at ridicule of his claim from several days ago that Islamic explorers discovered the Americas three centuries before Christopher Columbus.

In fact, Erdogan called for his rewriting of history to be taught in schools.

“A big responsibility falls on the shoulders of the national education ministry and YOK (higher education board) on this issue,” Erdogan said at a ceremony in Ankara, according to the AFP news agency.

“If the history of science is written objectively, it will be seen that Islamic geography’s contribution to science is much more than what’s known,” Erdogan said in televised comments.

Erdogan stirred up controversy on Saturday when he claimed the Americas were discovered by Muslims in the 12th century, nearly three centuries before Columbus.

He cited as evidence for his claim that “Columbus mentioned the existence of a mosque on a hill on the Cuban coast.”

On Tuesday, Erdogan insisted that “very respected scientists in Turkey and in the world” supported his claim.

“Some youth of our country have begun objecting to this without doing any research or paying attention to discussions. Not only youths but also some very senior figures have begun disputing it,” he said.

“Why? Because they still do not believe a Muslim can achieve this… They do not believe that their ancestors carried the ships over land to the Golden Horn,” added Erdogan, referring to Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II’s conquest of Constantinople (now Istanbul) in 1453.

“They did not believe in the leaders who closed the Dark Ages and opened up the New Age. This is a lack of self-confidence.”

AFP noted that Erdogan’s claim had been mercilessly mocked by some prominent columnists in the Turkish media.

“Now it should be the turn to correct other assumptions misunderstood by the world,” wrote Mehmet Yilmaz of the Hurriyet daily with heavy sarcasm, suggesting that Erdogan’s next idea maybe that a Muslim, rather than Isaac Newton, discovered gravity.

Devlet Bahceli, leader of the opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), said Tuesday the controversy was a political maneuver devised by Erdogan to “cover up his faults”, including corruption claims targeting his inner circle.

But pro-government media supported Erdogan’s claim, saying world history for too long had been based on a distorted Western interpretation.

“If President Erdogan had not made the comments on the Americas’ discovery, a big majority would have been unaware of the continent’s discovery by the Muslims because Western sources wrote that it was Columbus who first set foot on America,” Mehmet Seker wrote in the Yeni Safak daily.

“We had copied the translated (Western) information into our books.”