According to the Bible, Abram lived in the city of Ur on the lower reaches of the Euphrates River in southern Mesopotamia, probably around 1800 BCE. Located on the same site as modern Tall al-Muqayyar, around 200 miles (300 km) southeast of Baghdad in Iraq, Ur was one of Sumer’s major city-states, an important cultural and commercial center.
Abram, according to the account in Genesis, initially left Ur in the company of his wife Sarai (later called Sarah), his nephew Lot, and his father Terah and traveled as far as Harran, which was an ancient pilgrimage site for devotees of the Sumerian moon god Nanna and is now located in southeast Turkey. After staying at Haran for some time, and following the death of Terah, Abram was visited by God (the single god, Yahweh, later worshipped by the Israelites) and instructed to journey to a new land and found a great nation. Abram obeyed and departed to Canaan. His party made its first encampment in Canaan at Shechem. Genesis adds: “And the Canaanites were then in the land.”
God promised the land of Canaan to Abram’s descendants, but Abram was childless; his wife Sarai was unable to bear children. Initially, Abram adopted a manservant, Eliezer, as his heir. Then, Sarai gave Abram her maidservant, a young Egyptian woman named Hagar. Abram and Hagar had a son, Ishmael. Subsequently, God declared his intention
The Sacrifice of Isaac, painted in 1604 CE by Caravaggio, depicts the moment when an angel sent by God prevents Abraham from sacrificing his son Isaac.
To make Abram the “father of many nations” and again agreed an “everlasting covenant” with him to give Abram and his descendants the land of Canaan. God declared that Abram should be known as Abraham and Sarai as Sarah and promised that Sarah would bear Abraham a son. It would be with this child that God would keep his covenant.
Sarah’s son, Isaac, was the father of Jacob, who is celebrated in Judaism as the forefather of the Jews. Hagar’s son, Ishmael, on the other hand, is celebrated in Islam as the forefather of the Arab peoples. Both Abraham (Ibrahim) and Ishmael are viewed as prophets.
World History
