Jews and Others
to have been unique to himself, and we cannot be certain how far the other
ideas which he expresses would have been generally shared. But, like Philo-
storgius, he sees the ‘‘Ishmaelites’’ as having with time partially lapsed into
paganism, while preserving some Jewish customs—circumcision and (he
adds) abstention from pork. But what is unique and striking about his obser-
vations is his claim that contact with Jews, apparently recent, had led some
of them to recognise their true origin and to return to Jewish customs.
We cannot tell in which region or regions Sozomenus means to sug-
gest that this contact and reconversion took place—not presumably in Saba/
Himyar, whose population was not, it seems, conceived of as ‘‘Ishmaelite’’;
possibly in the Hedjaz, but far more probably on the fringes of the Roman
provincial area, or—most probably of all—in Sinai, to which (though he
does not explicitly say so) the story of Mavia in fact seems to relate. But
it is of crucial significance that he admits the reality of two separate paths
to the recovery of the inheritance of Abraham which were being taken by
‘‘Ishmaelites’’ in his time: via Judaism and via Christianity.
The long and complex story surveyed here must end at this point. To
the best of my knowledge we have little direct or contemporary evidence
of active conversions to Judaism among the Arabs in the period of rather
more than a century between the writing of Sozomenus’Ecclesiastical History
and the birth of Muhammad; but Islamic sources do of course record that
there were ‘‘Jewish’’ tribes in the Hedjaz in Muhammad’s time. Their origin,
whether by conversion or emigration (less likely), seems not be known.^72
But we do on the other hand have vivid narrative representations of ‘‘Ish-
maelite’’ conversions to Christianity, from Sozomenus’ contemporary, Theo-
doret of Cyrrhus, in hisPhilotheos Historia, a series of biographical sketches
of the monks and hermits of the Syrian region in the fourth and fifth cen-
turies.^73 Thus among the varied groups which came to see Symeon Stylites
were ‘‘Ishmaelites’’ who thereupon renounced the worship of Aphrodite, ac-
cepted Christianity, and ceased to eat the meat of asses and camels (, ).
A partial acceptance of Jewish dietary laws was thus said to have accompa-
nied their adoption of Christianity. But the clearest parallel to Sozomenus’
conception of the ‘‘Ishmaelites’’ as now having the opportunity to recover
a lost ancestral heritage comes from Theodoret’s account of an Ishmaelite
called Abbas, who began by attaching himself to a hermit, named Marosas,
living in the desert, before moving to the monastery of Teleda in : ‘‘There
. Trimingham (n. ), .
. See P. Canivet and A. Leroy-Molinghem, eds.,Théodoret de Cyr, Histoire des Moines
de SyrieI–II (Sources Chrétiennes, , and ).