Desert of Paran

Location mentioned in the Hebrew Bible
The Desert of Paran or Wilderness of Paran (also sometimes spelled Pharan or Faran; , Midbar Pa'ran), is a location mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. It is one of the places where the Israelites spent part of their 40 years of wandering after the Exodus, and was also a home to Ishmael, and a place of refuge for David. In Islamic tradition, it has often been equated with an area of the Hejaz.

The Arab geographer Al Muqaddasi mentioned in his book that the Red Sea branches into two "at the extremity of al Hijaz at a place called Faran". The association of Paran in Genesis 21:21 with Ishmael and the Ishmaelites is affirmed by the Muslim geographer Yaqut al Hamawi who writes "Faran, an arabized Hebrew word, one of the names of Mecca mentioned in the Torah." Islamic and Arabic traditions hold that the wilderness of Paran is, broadly speaking, the Hejaz, the northern half of Tihamah, stretching along the east side of the Red Sea starting from Jordan and Sinai, and that the specific site where Ishmael settled is that of Mecca, near the mountains of Paran. The "Desert of Paran" is also interpreted as Hijaz in an old Arabic translation of the Samaritan Pentateuch. When it was translated into English in 1851, it was found to include a footnote making this interpretation. Al Hamdani in his book Geography of the Arabic Peninsula says that the Paran mountains around Mecca were named after Paran son of Amalek. Sam'ni in his Book of Surnames also says that the surname Farani is derived from the Faran mountains near Mecca in Hijaz

According to Wahb ibn Munabbih, there was a Tal Faran ("Hill of Faran") on the outskirts of Mecca, mentioned in his book Kitab al Tijan, a Pre Islamic Arabic folklore compilation. 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.

According to Uzi Avner, the biblical Desert of Paran was located in the southern mountain region of the Sinai Peninsula, encompassing the Wadi Feiran. Avner argues that inscriptions from the Nabatean period bearing the first or surname "Paran" indicate that the local population has preserved the biblical geographical name of this area for centuries.