Medieval scholars identified the Saracens as Ishmael’s literal descendants

Evidence

But literally the actual descendants of Ishmael were held to be the Saracens. There was much in the known facts about their life to justify this identification. Ishmael had been driven into the desert: they came from the desert. Ishmael was a wild man whose hand was against every man’s: could any better description of the Saracens be found than this? Ishmael was outside the Covenant: so were the Saracens. — R. W. Southern, Western Views of Islam in the Middle…, 87

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the Biblical identification that grounded centuries of Western commentary on Islam.

Related

• Medieval encyclopedists taught that Saracens falsely claimed descent from Sarah (similarity 0.87)
• Medieval Christian scholars read the Bible as evidence about the Saracens (similarity 0.84)
• Medieval Christians framed Islam as an ethnicity-linked false law rather than a religion. (similarity 0.84)
• Medieval Christians labeled Muslims by ethnicity, not by religion, from biblical sources (similarity 0.83)
• Christians understand Islam through inherited frameworks of scripture and church history (similarity 0.83)
• Medieval manuscripts of the same text differ on whether ‘Saracen’ appeared (similarity 0.82)
• Medieval Christians read Islam’s rise as the predicted ferocity of Ismael (similarity 0.82)
• Christians understood Saracens through biblical and patristic categories (similarity 0.82)
• Even learned medieval polemicists had to correct the pagan view of Saracens. (similarity 0.81)
• Every seminal medieval idea about Islam originated in Spain (similarity 0.81)
• Christians read Saracens through the biblical figure of Ishmael. (similarity 0.80)
• Proximity to Islam led Christians to abandon the idolatrous image of Saracens (similarity 0.80)
• The Western canon of Islam was fixed by the mid-fourteenth century (similarity 0.80)
• Medieval Europe understood Islam through its existing category of the Jews (similarity 0.80)
• Medieval Christendom named Muslims Saracens, Moors, Ishmaelites, and Agarenes interchangeably (similarity 0.79)