The prayer of Abraham: the blessing of Ishmael

The prayer of Abraham

As they raise the foundations of the House, Abraham and Ishmael address a prayer to God:

The Prophet ﷺ said of himself: “I am the prayer of my father Abraham and the good tidings of Jesus” (reported by Ahmad, Ibn Hibban and al-Hakim, from al-Irbad ibn Sariya; graded authentic by al-Albani; al-Salihi, I, 94). The Bible, for its part, keeps the trace of what God promised concerning Ishmael.

Three promises

Genesis records three promises: to Abraham, to Hagar, and concerning Ishmael (Ameri, p. 141-142).

To Abraham:

And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: […] and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.

Genesis 12:2-3

To Hagar, the angel announces a son, Ishmael, “because the LORD hath heard thy affliction”, and a seed “that it shall not be numbered for multitude”; then he adds: “his hand will be against every man” (Genesis 16:10-12).

Concerning Ishmael, finally, God answers the prayer of Abraham:

And as for Ishmael, I have heard thee: Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly; twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation.

Genesis 17:20

The promise is repeated to Hagar in the wilderness: “I will make him a great nation” (Genesis 21:18; see also Genesis 21:13). And Ishmael “dwelt in the wilderness of Paran” (Genesis 21:21), the land where page 5 finds Mecca.

A blessing, not only a number

Three things are promised: number, blessing and strength. A blessing from God cannot designate an idolatrous nation: a promise made to Abraham, the imam of those who worship God alone, is good news, and the Bible itself ties blessing to obedience (Ameri, p. 143). The Qur’an says so of the descendants of Abraham:

Yet before Islam, the sons of Ishmael were neither blessed with a revelation nor strong. In the Bible, the Hagarites appear defeated (1 Chronicles 5:10, 19-20), and the Ishmaelites all but vanish from the narrative (Ameri, p. 145-146). Ibn Taymiyya noted it: the hand of the sons of Ishmael never prevailed before Muhammad ﷺ; after him, they overcame the Persians and the Romans, and the word of the Torah came true (Ameri, p. 145-146). Ibn Rabban al-Tabari, in the ninth century, concluded that without Muhammad ﷺ the promises made to Ishmael and to Hagar would have remained empty (Ameri, p. 143-144).

Munqidh al-Saqqar adds that the blessing of Ishmael is stated in the same words as that of Isaac. For Isaac, it is read as prophecy, the Book, kingship and number: the same blessing, given to Ishmael, cannot mean less (al-Saqqar, p. 50).

Number, blessing and strength came together among the Ishmaelites only with the mission of Muhammad ﷺ (Ameri, p. 153). It is he whom these promises foretell.

What others saw before us

This reading was not born of modern polemics. Jews and Christians made it, sometimes without drawing the conclusion.

• John bar Penkaye, a Nestorian Christian contemporary with the Companions, writes that the “prophecy of Moses” concerning Ishmael was fulfilled, since the hand of the Arabs had subdued every people (Ameri, p. 147).
• Bahya ben Asher reports from Rabbi Hananel that the promise of Genesis 17:20 was fulfilled after 2,333 years; Rabbi Chavel explains this figure by the span between the circumcision of Abraham and the rise of Islam (Ameri, p. 144).
• Dummelow’s commentary sees in Genesis 16:10 a promise fulfilled in the Arab race, and John Gill applies Genesis 17:20 to the Turks, that is, to the Muslims (Ameri, p. 144-145).
• Among Muslims, Ibn Qutayba relies on this passage as early as the ninth century, and Ibn Taymiyya takes it up (research file v1, part 1; Ameri, p. 146).

Objections and their answers

“The promise is fulfilled by the twelve princes.” Genesis does name the twelve sons of Ishmael, “twelve princes according to their nations” (Genesis 25:13-16). But twelve princes give the number, not the blessing nor the strength; and the Bible shows no great Ishmaelite nation before Islam (Ameri, p. 143-146, 153).

“The covenant is reserved for Isaac.” Genesis does say: “But my covenant will I establish with Isaac” (Genesis 17:21). But:

• the covenant is first given to all the seed of Abraham, when he had only Ishmael: “Thou shalt keep my covenant therefore, thou, and thy seed after thee” (Genesis 17:9), and circumcision is “a token of the covenant” (Genesis 17:11). Ishmael is circumcised that very day, at thirteen (Genesis 17:23-26);
• the Law protects the firstborn, even when he is the son of the hated wife: “the right of the firstborn is his” (Deuteronomy 21:15-17). Ishmael is the firstborn of Abraham;
• the Jews themselves do not make this covenant a monopoly on prophecy: Maimonides holds Job and his friends to be prophets, and Nethanel al-Fayyumi teaches that God sends prophets to every people, to the point of recognizing the prophethood of Muhammad ﷺ, which he says was meant for the Arabs (Ameri, p. 150);
• the argument turns against the Christians, whose religion passed from Israel to the nations. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus himself foretells it: “The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof” (Matthew 21:43) (Ameri, p. 150-151).

“Not all Muslims are sons of Hagar.” The prophecy does not say that the community will be made up of Ishmaelites alone: it says that a great believing nation will come from this line. Early Christians, moreover, called the Muslims “Hagarenes” and “Ishmaelites” (Ameri, p. 152).

Two readings to hold with caution

The only son. In Genesis, God asks Abraham to offer “thy son, thine only son” (Genesis 22:2). Ishmael was born when Abraham was 86 years old, Isaac when he was 100 (Genesis 16:16; 21:5): Ishmael was the only son for fourteen years. Munqidh al-Saqqar concludes that the son offered is Ishmael (al-Saqqar, p. 53-55). This is also how most Muslim scholars understand it, reading Sura 37, where the good tidings of Isaac come after the account of the sacrifice (37:99-113; research file v1, part 3). The present biblical text names Isaac: we keep this reading as a clue, not as a proof.

The lord of David. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus asks the Pharisees how the Messiah can be the son of David, if David calls him “Lord” (Matthew 22:41-45, citing Psalm 110:1). Al-Saqqar reads in it that the one foretold does not come from the line of David (al-Saqqar, p. 21-23, 104-105). It is an argument against one reading rather than a prophecy: it gains its force with the sceptre taken from Judah, on page 6.

How this page connects to the others

• The well where the angel spoke to Hagar, and the valley of Baca: page 5, Paran and Baca.
• “His hand against every man”, and the sceptre that departs from Judah: page 6, The time.
• The rejected stone, the despised line of Ishmael: page 7, The kingdom taken away and given.

Sources for this page

• Qur’an: Tanzil text (Uthmani); translation of the meaning by this site.
• Bible: King James Version.
• “I am the prayer of Abraham”: Mishkat al-Masabih 5759.
• Al-Salihi al-Shami, Subul al-huda wa-l-rashad, I, 94.
• Sami Ameri, al-Bishara bi-nabi al-islam fi kutub al-yahud wa-l-nasara, Takween, 2nd ed., 2021, p. 141-153.
• Munqidh al-Saqqar, Hal bashshara al-Kitab al-Muqaddas bi-Muhammad ﷺ?, al-Huda wa-l-Nur series, 5, 2023, p. 21-23, 43-55, 104-105.
• Research file Annonces du Prophète ﷺ, v1.0, 14 October 2026, parts 1 and 3.