Ishmael, the son of Abraham and his wife’s slave Hagar is not connected at all to ‘Islam’ or Muhammad.  This is one of the more ludicrous lies from the Koran cult attempting to give it legitimacy.  Catholics, Protestants, Agnostics have long made this linkage which does not exist.  It comes from the Muhammadan cult itself.  The Koran and Hadith propose the linkage between Ishmael and Muhammad.  No other source does.  Why is this?  Because none exists.  This lie has given rise to the 3 Abrahamic faiths myth.  Only 2 are based on Abraham.  The cult of Muhammad is based on the Al Lah idol or moon deity and celestial worship found in Mecca which long pre-dates Muhammad.  Ishmael has no blood, geographical, or even philosophical connection with Muhammad.  

1-Geography

 

The story is that once Hagar birthed Ishmael she became disobedient and arrogant, knowing her son was the legitimate (based on the laws of that time), successor to Abraham a wealthy nomad and merchant.  Conflict ensued and Hagar was banished.  According to the Bible Ishmael settled in Paran and married an Egyptian from whom he had twelve sons: 

"He lived in the desert and became an archer. While he was living in the Desert of Paran, his mother got a wife for him from Egypt." Genesis 21:13-21

 

The Bible locates Paran near Israel (Canaan) and Egypt, south of Judah. John L. McKenzie in his Dictionary of the Bible notes:

 

The desert of Paran was the home of the Ishmaelites (Gn 21:21). It was, the itinerary according to P (cf. PENTATEUCH), reached by the Israelites after the desert of Sinai (Nm 10:12), and they camped in this desert for some time (Nm 10:12; 13:3, 26, mission and return of the scouts). In Dt 1:1 Paran is vaguely defined as a place in the desert. Hadad of Edom passed through the desert of Paran on his journey from Midian  to Egypt (1 Kings 11:18). Etc

 

There are many passages in the Bible locating Paran.  The Bible and archaeology place it near Sinai, with some offering Edom or southwest of the Dead Sea as a location.  Regardless it is nowhere near Mecca. 

 

2-Bloodlines and Geography

 

It is clear from the Bible and from Paran’s location that Ishmael never married as the Koran states, a Jurhumite woman.  He married an Egyptian not an Arab.  We also know where Ishmael's sons settled:

 

"This is the account of Abraham's son Ishmael, whom Sarah's maidservant, Hagar the Egyptian, bore to Abraham. These are the names of the sons of Ishmael, listed in the order of their birth: Nebaioth the firstborn of Ishmael, Kedar, Adbeel, Mibsam, Mishma, Dumah, Massa, Hadad, Tema, Jetur, Naphish and Kedemah. These were the sons of Ishmael, and these are the names of the twelve tribal rulers according to their settlements and camps. Altogether, Ishmael lived a hundred and thirty-seven years. He breathed his last and died, and he was gathered to his people. His descendants settled in the area from Havilah to Shur, near the border of Egypt, as you go toward Asshur. And they lived in hostility toward all their brothers." Genesis 25:12-18

 

McKenzie locates Shur around the area of Palestine and Egypt:

 

Shur (Hbsur), a geographical name which designates the slopes of Palestine and E of Egypt and N of the deserts of the Sinai peninsula. The Hb word suggests sur, "wall", and some geographers have thought that the name alludes to the line of fortresses constructed by the Egyptians to protect the E frontier of Egypt. The region is the scene of the flight of Hagar in the account of J (Gn 16:7). Abraham dwelt for a time in the Negeb between Kadesh and Shur (Gn 20:1). The Israelites traversed the desert of Shur after crossing the Sea of Reeds (Ex 15:22). The area from Havilah to Shur was the home of the Amalekite and other nomad tribes (Gn 25:18; 1 S 15:7; 27:8). (McKenzie, pp. 810-811)

 

Ishmael’s sons never settled anywhere near Mecca.

 

3-They migrated

 

It is claimed that some of the descendants of Ishmael's twelve sons migrated to Arabia.  One of Ishmael’s sons Nebaioth, is said to be the father of the Nabateans. The Nabateans flourished in northern Arabia, first establishing their capital in Petra in the 4th century B.C. which was captured by the Romans in 106 B.C. They then moved to Damascus. The Dead Sea Scrolls actually contains Nabatean documents from the later period.

 

There are two major problems with the above assertion. Even though it may be true that some of Ishmael's descendants settled in Arabia, this does not mean that they necessarily were the fathers of the Arabs.  Arab tribes already existed and are described in both the Bible and Egyptian history as existing. Muslim tradition itself affirms that Ishmael was not the father of the Arabs. Ibn Ishaq's biography of Muhammad states:

 

Ishmael is the son of Ibrahim (Abraham) b. Tarih (Azar) b. Nahur b. Sarugh b. Rau'u b. Falikh b. 'Aybar b. Shalikh b. Arfakhshadh b. Sam (Shem) b. Nuh (Noah). (Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad, tr. Guillaume, p. 3)

 

Ishmael was alive circa 1800 B.C.  Arab tribes had long existed. 

 

Another specious claim from the Hadith is that Ishmael journeyed to Mecca and married 2 Arab women (Ibn Abbas).  In this tradition Abraham was with Ishmael, a journey which never occurred and is not recounted in the Bible or any other texts.  In this rendition (2.127) (Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 55, Number 583) Ishmael is a boy taught by the Arabs in Mecca and grows up to marry 2 Arab women.  So the Koranic text itself is confused.  Did Ishmael journey to Mecca as a young boy or adult?  And if he is the ‘father’ of the Arabs how did the Arabs teach him and how did he marry Arab women?

 

Neither story is true of course and they make no sense.  Consider that since Arabic is not Ishmael's mother tongue, and since Arabic as a language existed before, Ishmael cannot be the ancestor of Arabs. This means that the notion that Ishmael is the progenitor of the Arabs is erroneous. At most, Ishmael can only be called an Arabicized immigrant. The Muslim traditions prove that Ishmael is not the father of all the Arabs.

 

4-No relation to Muhammad

 

Given the above, Ishmael has no blood relationship whatsoever to the Quraysh tribe of Mecca or Muhammad.  Muslim historians traced Muhammad's line to an 'Adnan, an alleged descendant of Ishmael. The following genealogy is taken from T.P Hughes' Dictionary of Islam, p. 217:

 

Adnan- Ma'add- Nizar- "Ilyas- Mudrikah- Khuzaimah- Kinanah- An-Nazr- Malik- Fihr- Luwaiy- Ka'b- Murrah- Kilab- Qusaiy- "Abdul Manaf- Hashim- Abdul Muttalib- Abdullah- Muhammad (source)

 

There are several problems with these genealogies. The first problem is the time span of 2500 years between Abraham and Muhammad.  There are not enough linkages in the ‘Adnan story to go from Abraham to Muhammad in that time frame given average human life spans.  Only 24 generations exist.  The story assumes a life span per generation of over 100 years.  This is factually incorrect of course.  Abraham did not live in 150 BCE; he lived some 1700 or more years earlier.  This is of course what we would expect from the Koran and Hadith.  Made up stories with no evidence.  In actual fact the genealogy of Muhammad is unknown.  As given in Ibn Sa'd, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir, Volume I, p. 4:

 

Ma'n Ibn 'Isa al-Ashja'i al-Qazzaz (silk-merchant) informed us; he said: Mu'awiyah Ibn Salih informed us on the authority of Yahya Ibn Jabir who had seen some Companions of the Prophet and said: The people of Banu Fuhayrah came to the Prophet and said to him: You belong to us. He replied: Verily, (the archangel) Gabriel has informed me that I belong to Mudar

 

To be a descendant of Ishmael (via Mudar) was a claim that started with Muhammad's own words but without historical evidence even in his lifetime. In the end, it comes down to nothing but an unsubstantiated claim from Muhammad and this claim is inconsistent with that given by Ibn Ishaq the earliest biographer of Muhammad in his Sirat Rasulullah who traces his line to Ishmael through Nabit (Nebaioth), not Kedar.  Basically the Muhammadans are trying to imitate the genealogy from Adam to Christ and have failed rather spectacularly.

 

5-The Cube or Kabaa

According to Muslim tradition, Abraham and Ishmael built the Kaaba, the cube-like structure in the Sacred Mosque in Mecca. But outside these traditions there is absolutely no evidence for this claim - whether epigraphic, archaelogical, or documentary.  Archaeology reveals a crude cube at the time of Muhammad built from the wreakage of a Roman vessel found in the Red Sea.  Probably in the pre-Roman Bronze age era there may have been a shrine built with rocks, a crude structure used for celestial worship.  But making up a lie that Abraham journeyed all the way from Haran in what is now northern Iraq to Mecca, to build an altar, in which no other document or proof supports, is simply another example of Muhammad appropriating Jewish and Christian texts for his own purposes.

 

Historian Snouck Hurgronje has shown that Muhammad invented the story to give his religion an Arabian origin and setting; with this improvisation Muhammad established the independence of his religion, at the same time incorporating into Islam the Kaaba with all its historical and religious associations for the Arabs. (Ibn Warraq, Why I Am Not A Muslim [Prometheus Books, Amherst NY 1995], p. 131)

 

Finally, Islamicist Alfred Guillaume notes that Ishmael as a name is incorrect in Arabic:

"... there is no historical evidence for the assertion that Abraham or Ishmael was ever in Mecca, and if there had been such a tradition it would have to be explained how all memory of the Old Semitic name Ishmael (which was not in its true Arabian form in Arabian inscriptions and written correctly with an initial consonant Y) came to be lost. The form in the Quran is taken either from Greek or Syriac sources." (Alfred Guillaume, Islam [Penguin Books Inc., Baltimore, 1956], pp. 61-62)

 

Bottom Line:

 

The diabolical claim that Ishmael is ‘the father of the Arabs’ is riddled with rotted stench and untruth.  It is rather obvious why Muhammad and the Koranic-Hadith scribblers need this narrative.  It is an attempt to mimic the genealogical links of Christ back to Abraham and Adam, granting Muhammad credibility.  It is done to displace the Bible’s very accurate history and placing of Ishmael in Canaan or near the Dead Sea, neither of which is remotely close to Mecca.  It is a feeble and mendacious attempt to link Abraham to Mecca and the Cube shrine.  What it does is confuse people and lead to claims by the ignorant that Islam is part of the ‘Abrahamic’ tradition which it clearly is not.  Arabs long pre-date Ishmael and Mecca was in the time of the Bronze age into Muhammad’s era, a site where celestial objects, especially the moon, the sun, venus and mars, were worshipped. 

 

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