The Son Cast Out, and the Father of a Nation

Ishmael is a figure whose significance divides sharply between the traditions that claim him. In Genesis he is Abraham's firstborn, son of the Egyptian bondwoman Hagar, conceived when Sarah despaired of children; when Sarah later bears Isaac, Ishmael and his mother are cast into the wilderness, where an angel saves them and promises that Ishmael too will father a great nation. The Hebrew narrative treats him as the son of the rejected line, the covenant passing through Isaac. Islam reverses the emphasis.

In Muslim tradition Ishmael (Ismail) is a prophet, the son whom Abraham is commanded to sacrifice (rather than Isaac, as in the Genesis account), and with his father he raises the foundations of the Kaaba at Mecca; the rites of the Hajj, including the running between Safa and Marwa, re-enact Hagar's desperate search for water for her child. The Arabs are traditionally reckoned his descendants, making him an ancestor of the Prophet Muhammad. The same figure is thus the discarded elder son in one scripture and a patriarch of the sacred sanctuary in another.