and refraining from pork. True, the
Ishmaelite Arabs had been corrupt-
ed by their long association with the
pagans who surrounded them, but,
adds Sozomen, “many still live in
the Jewish fashion.”
None of this had anything to do
with Islam. The identification of the
Arabs as Ishmaelites was a strictly
ethnic one—everyone knew the
Arabs were polytheists—and it was
an ethnic identification based on a
similarity of customs. One who was
not, apparently, aware of the identi-
fication was Muhammad. Ishmael
appears a number of times in the
Quran, first as a somewhat indis-
tinct Hebrew prophet, and then, in
the later chapters, as Abraham’s
son. Quite remarkably, he and
Abraham are said to have built the
Ka’ba, the sacred shrine building
that stood in Muhammad’s day—as
it does today—in the midst of
Mecca (Quran 2:125-127). The
Quran offers no explanation for this
extraordinary piece of information,
and so we can only assume that is
was known and accepted as true
not only by Muhammad but, even
more astonishingly, by his listeners.
Muhammad came to put strong
emphasis on the fact that the Islam
that was being promulgated in the
Quran was nothing other than the
“religion of Abraham” and that the
earlier activity of Abraham—and
Ishmael—in Mecca was crucial to
this enterprise. But nowhere is it
suggested or even hinted at that
Muhammad was aware that
Ishmael was widely recognized
elsewhere as the ancestor of the
Arabs. Nor is it ever asserted that
Islam’s claim to be the new version
of the true faith was based on the
Arabs’ blood descent from Abraham
through Ishmael, as the Jews’ was
by their descent through Isaac and
Jacob. Muslims are not, in any
event, the “Children of Ishmael.”