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
Qedarite to biblical tradition, are the offspring of the Abraham-Ishmael-Kedar genealogical line. The majority of Sayyid believe they are one of the modern day descendants of Muhammad, and that they are therefore the descendants of Ishmael and his second son Qedar. Abu Ja'far al-Baqir (676–743 CE) wrote that his father Ali ibn Husayn informed him that Mohammed had said: "The first whose tongue spoke in clear Arabic was Ishmael, when he was fourteen years old." Hisham Ibn Muhammad al-Kalbi (737–819 CE) established a genealogical link between Ishmael and Mohammed using writings that drew on biblical and Palmyran sources, and the ancient