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Case file s839 · Scripture and the ancient world · 1750 BCE
1750 BCE
Map of Saudi Arabia, marked on the globe
Map of Saudi Arabia. Keepscases, perlshaper. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.
Died
Abraham, aged 175 (Genesis 25:7); undated, placed at 1750 BC beside Hammurabi's laws
Place
Beersheba, Israel; Mecca, Saudi Arabia (Islamic tradition)
Field
pastoral household · Religion on the timeline
Legal tradition
Mesopotamian law on sons of slave women (Hammurabi 170-171); Israelite custom · Jewish and biblical law
Historical event
Founding stories of Israel (through Isaac) and of the Arabs (through Ishmael)

Scripture: this account comes from a sacred text. Court and archive records of it do not exist.

Genesis says Sarah demanded that Hagar's son "shall not be heir with my son," and Abraham sent mother and child into the desert

Genesis says Abraham had a son, Ishmael, by Hagar, an Egyptian slave woman, and later a son, Isaac, by his wife Sarah. At the feast for Isaac's weaning, Sarah saw Ishmael "making sport." She told Abraham to cast out the bondwoman and her son, because "the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac." Abraham was grieved. God told him to listen to Sarah. The next morning Abraham gave Hagar bread and a bottle of water and sent her away with the boy. In the wilderness of Beersheba the water ran out. She left the child under a shrub. An angel called to her and she found a well. Ishmael grew up an archer in the wilderness of Paran and married an Egyptian. Genesis 25 says Abraham "gave all that he had unto Isaac." To the sons of his concubines he gave gifts and sent them east while he was still alive. Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah. Babylon's Laws of Hammurabi gave a slave woman's sons an equal share only if their father had called them "my sons"; otherwise they received their freedom and nothing else. In Islamic tradition, recorded by al-Bukhari, Abraham left Hagar and the infant at the valley of Mecca with dates and a waterskin. She ran seven times between the hills of Safa and Marwa, and the spring of Zamzam appeared. Ishmael grew up there among the Jurhum tribe.

What the law took from it

Ishmael received gifts in Abraham's lifetime and no share at death, the pattern later used to settle a favoured heir.

Cite as: celebrity.estate, “Genesis says Sarah demanded that Hagar's son "shall not be heir with my son," and Abraham sent mother and child into the desert,” story s839, https://www.celebrity.estate/hagar-and-ishmael-1750-bc, updated 30 October 2026.

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