Babylonian Rabbinic Descriptions of Arab Life

Babylonian rabbinic texts contain various depictions of Arabs, both as Others that the rabbis needed to differentiate from themselves and as kin descended from a parallel Abrahamic lineage. Arabs often appear in the Talmud, depicted as feeding, loading, and caring for camels. This association between Arabs and camels is seen in b. Shabbat 155b. In b. Mo‘ed Katan 24a, Arabs provide an example of public covering and face veiling, as covering the face would have served as protection from wind, sand, and sun. Arab circumcision and the Passover in light of Exodus 12, which states explicitly that no uncircumcised male may partake of the Passover sacrifice, are taken up in b. Yevamot 71a. The biblical text raises a question for the rabbis about the status of non-Jews who also practice ritual circumcision, namely Arabs and Gibeonites. In this reading, the rabbis insist that, even though these nations are circumcised, they are not permitted to eat from the paschal sacrifice.

Another text, b. Bava Meẓi‘a 86b, reads an Arab stereotype into the biblical text. According to Genesis, when Abraham encounters the three figures who announce the birth of his son Isaac (Genesis 18), he invites them to wash their feet. In the response imagined by the rabbis, the angels associate Arabs not only with Abraham’s son Ishmael but also with the worship of the desert itself. And while the rabbis associate Ishmael with the Arabs, b. Berakhot 56b demonstrates that the rabbis did not view all Arabs as Ishmaelites, at least with respect to rabbinic dream interpretation.