According to some rabbinic traditions, his two wives were Aisha and Fatima, whose names are the same as those of Muhammad's wife and daughter Both Judaism and Islam see him as the ancestor of Arab peoples | The fact that Ishmael's wife and mother are both said to have been Egyptian suggests close ties between the Ishmaelites and Egypt |
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25:16 , representing perhaps an ancient confederacy | In the New Testament, Paul uses this incident to symbolize the relationship between Judaism, the older but now rejected tradition, and Christianity Gal |
Ishmael was circumcised at the age of thirteen by Abraham and expelled with his mother at the instigation of Sarah, who wanted to ensure that Isaac would be Abraham's heir Gn.
In the Genesis account, God blessed Ishmael, promising that he would be the founder of a great nation and a "wild ass of a man" always at odds with others Gn | The Ishmaelites, vagrant traders closely related to the Midianites, were apparently regarded as his descendants |
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Islamic tradition tends to ascribe a larger role to Ishmael than does the Bible | John Joseph Saunders, A history of medieval Islam, Routledge, 1965, page 13• Bibliography A survey of the Bible's patriarchal narratives can be found in Nahum M |
Joris, Pierre; Tengour, Habib 2012.
Sarna's Understanding Genesis New York, 1966 | Ishmael's mother was Hagar, an Egyptian slave girl whom Sarah gave to Abraham because of her own infertility; in accordance with Mesopotamian law, the offspring of such a union would be credited to Sarah Gn |
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, translated by Henrietta Szold and Paul Radin Philadelphia, 2003 |
Postbiblical traditions, with reference to Christian and Islamic views, are collected in Louis Ginzberg's exhaustive Legends of the Jews, 2d ed.
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