Americans did not have the luxury of merely contemplating the Muslim world between 1785 and 1800. Over a hundred American sailors were captive in Algiers in this period. The escalation and temporary resolution of this dispute informed the imagery of Muslims in hundreds of articles published in American magazines. These Muslim people and places ranged across centuries of time, thousands of miles, and multiple ethnicities, and the images did not conform to one or even a few models. American magazine readers learned that Muslims were as diverse and complex as they themselves. This study considers much of the magazine archive from this period and finds clear patterns that parallel the historical experience of America with Algiers. Though the non-Barbary regions (Persia, Arabia, and Turkey) remained objects of fascination and even delight, the Barbary Coast (generally, the northern African coast) emerged as a pragmatic political concern by the mid-1790s. These magazines are a significant source about a crucial moment in American nation-formation. Muslims were an ethnic, religious, and cultural Other by which Americans began to imagine themselves. Though nineteenth-century Americans learned to think of Muslims through the familiar Orientalist categories, this periodical archive reveals an anxious, uncertain dance before the eventual swagger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]