Philip the Arab and Christianity that appear—save for one reference to Ishmael—figure in the political history of the first three centuries of the Christian era. To Eusebius, the Saracens of the 4th century are direct-line descendants of the biblical Ishmaelites, descendants of the handmaid, Hagar, and the patriarch, Abraham. They are thus outcasts, beyond God's Covenant with the favored son of Abraham, Isaac. The twin images of the Ishmaelite and the Saracen—outcasts and "latrones", raiders of the frontiers—reinforce each other and give Eusebius' portrait of the Arab nation an unhappy color. He may have been reluctant to associate the first Christian emperor with a people
Ishmael in Islam the Jurhum, the tribe who settled in the area around Zamzam. Abraham visits Ishmael in Mecca and when he arrives at his home, Ishmael is not there. Instead Ishmael's wife greets Abraham, but she is not welcoming or generous to him. Abraham instructs her to tell Ishmael some version of the statement that he is not pleased with or to change "the threshold of his door." When Ishmael returns home and his wife tells him this, he knows it is from his father and taking the advice, divorces the woman. He then marries another woman from Jurhum. Abraham once again