Читать книгу A Dictionary of Islam. Being a cyclopedia of the doctrines, rites, ceremonies, and customs, together with the technical and theological terms, of the Muhammadan religion онлайн

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The Scripture account of the expulsion and destiny of this venerated progenitor of the Arabs is brief, but simple and affecting. Ishmael was the son of Abraham by Hagar, an Egyptian slave. When fourteen years of age, he was supplanted in the hopes and affections of his father by the birth of Isaac, through whom the promises were to descend. This event made it necessary to remove the unhappy female and her child, who were accordingly sent forth to seek their fortune in some of the surrounding unoccupied districts. A small supply of provisions, and a bottle of water on her shoulder, was all she carried from the tent of her master. Directing her steps towards her native country, she wandered with the lad in the wilderness of Beer-sheba, which was destitute of springs. Here her stock failed, and it seemed impossible to avoid perishing by hunger or thirst. She resigned herself to her melancholy prospects, but the feelings of the mother were more acute than the agonies of want and despair. Unable to witness her son’s death, she laid him under one of the shrubs, took an affecting leave of him, and retired to a distance. “And she went, and sat her down over against him, a good way off, as it were a bow-shot; for she said, Let me not see the death of the child. And she sat over against him, and lifted up her voice and wept.” (Gen. xxi. 16.) At this moment an angel directed her to a well of water close at hand,—a discovery to which they owed the preservation of their lives. A promise formerly given was renewed, that Ishmael was to become a great nation—that he was to be a wild man—his hand against every man, and every man’s hand against him. The travellers continued their journey to the wilderness of Paran, and there took up their residence. In due time the lad grew to manhood, and greatly distinguished himself as an archer, and his mother took him a wife out of her own land. Here the sacred narrative breaks off abruptly, the main object of Moses being to follow the history of Abraham’s descendants through the line of Isaac. The Arabs, in their version of Ishmael’s history, have mixed a great deal of romance with the narrative of Scripture. They assert that al-Ḥijāz was the district where he settled, and that Makkah, then an arid wilderness, was the identical spot where his life was providentially saved, and where Hagar died and was buried. The well pointed out by the angel, they believe to be the famous Zamzam, of which all pious Muslims drink to this day. They make no allusion to his alliance with the Egyptian woman, by whom he had twelve sons (Gen. xxv. 12–18), the chiefs of as many nations, and the possessors of separate towns; but as polygamy was common in his age and country, it is not improbable he may have had more wives than one.