Note 217 — THE LINGUIST-DAME, THE DUENNA AND THE KING’S SON.
Richard Francis Burton translation · Edition 2
Modern Moslems are all agreed in making Ishmael and not Isaac the hero of this history: see my Pilgrimage (vol. iii. 306). But it was not always so. Al-Mas’udi (vol. ii. 146) quotes the lines of a Persian poet in A. H. 290 (=A. D. 902) which expressly say “Is’háku kána’l-Zabíh” = Isaac was the victim, and the historian refers to this in sundry places. Yet the general idea is that Ishmael succeeded his father (as eldest son) and was succeeded by Isaac; and hence the bitter family feud between the Eastern Jews and the Arab Gentiles.