"Abram's wife Sarai had not borne him any children. But she had an Egyptian slave woman named Hagar, and so she said to Abram, "The Lord has kept me from having children. Why don't you sleep with my slave?Perhaps she can have a child for me." Abram agreed with what Sarai said... Abram had intercourse with Hagar, and she became pregnant."- Genesis 16:1-4

         “Hagar bore Abram a son, and he named him Ishmael.”- Genesis 16:15 

  Ishmael was born around 1800 BCE and lived 136 years, dying in Mecca, Arabia.

• Roughly 13 years later, Sarah conceived Isaac, the son through whom God established His covenant. Isaac became Abraham’s sole heir, while Ishmael and Hagar were sent into the desert. Yet God promised that Ishmael, too, would be blessed.
  
  

“I will bless him [Ishmael] and give him many children and many descendants. He will be the father of twelve princes, and I will make a great nation of his descendants.” -Genesis 17:20

            In Islamic tradition, Ishmael is revered as both prophet and patriarch. The Qur’an suggests he assisted Abraham in raising Islam’s most sacred structure, the Kaaba in Mecca. 

         “And when Abraham was raising the foundations of the House and [with him] Ishmael, [saying], ‘Our Lord, accept [this] from us. Indeed You are the Hearing, the Knowing.’”- Qur’an 2:127  

Thus, from one family sprang two great lineages:

• Isaac → Jacob (Israel) → the Twelve Tribes → Judaism & Christianity
  
  

• Ishmael → Arab tribes → Islam
  
  

  This moment in Genesis is not merely a family drama, but the root of two of the world’s most celebrated faiths, whose intertwined stories continue to shape history.