Haggai Mazuz, a scholar of Islam associated with the Bar-Ilan University, asserts that Muslim polemicists' (like the Jewish convert Samawʾal al-Maghribī, 1125–1175 CE) appropriation of Deut. 33:2 has antecedence in Jewish tradition itself, as some Midrashim and Targumim, before the rise of Islam itself, posed a connection between Paran and Ishmael-Arabs. For instance, commentating on the "Sifrei Debarīm", a halakhic midrash on Deuteronomy, dated from the 3rd to the 5th century CE, he says: the link between Paran and the Arabs (actually the Arabic language), who are also called Ishmaelites after Ishmael (among other names), is very early although somewhat vague.