Ishmaelite

— The Apocalypse of Pseudo-Shenute is not the oldest surviving work to allege that the Muslim “Ishmaelites” were interested in restoring the biblical Temple. That distinction belongs to the History of Sebeos, which, as we observed in chapter 2, portrays Jews as the driving force behind the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem. This mid-seventh-century chronicle asserts that these Jews “decided to rebuild the Temple of Solomon. . . . But the Ishmaelites, being envious of them, expelled them from that place and called the same house of prayer their own.”