Actually he was neither. Abraham probably came from Mesopotamia and at that time there were many Semitic tribes (Semitic.. a group of orginally nomadic peoples whose languages have similar basic characteristics, Arabic and Hebrew are both Semitic languages) migrating from Mesopotamia into Canaan. He was part of a seminomadic culture that contrasted greatly to the settled routine of farming life that was normal for the Canaanite culture he moved his family to.
Jewish history reveals that Israelite school children were taught to recite their nations history, and they began with "a wandering Aramean was my father."
Then in Gen 12 you have the great calling by God... "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land I will show you..... and Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their possessions... and they set forth to go to the land of canaan.
At the time of the call to go to Canaan, God told Abram, (Abraham), that he would become the father of many nations and that through Abraham the entire world would be blessed.
Now.. from that blessing and after they settled in Canaan, came two sons... Isaac born of Sarai (Sarah) and Ishmael born of Hagar, Sarah's hand maiden. God promised Hagar her son would become "a nation, as he was Abraham's son also" Genesis 21:18 "Lift the boy up for I will make him into a great nation."
Now, I suspect the Muslims here will now see that this is familiar ground, even if you don't accept the story as it differs from the different traditions as recorded in the Sahih-Bukari. You will probably be assuming that this makes Ishmael the father of the Arab nations.. but according to your own traditions this cannot be true
The Genealogy of Ishmael says other people are Arabs
In Ibn Ishaq's biography of Muhammad :
Ishmael is the son of Ibrahim (Abraham) b. Tarih (Azar) b. Nahur b. Sarugh b. Rau`u b. Falikh b. `Aybar b. Shalikh b. Arfakhshadh b. Sam (Shem) b. Nuh (Noah) (Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad, tr. Guillaume, p. 3).
Then we have another line from Noah, where we read :
`Ad b. `Aus b. Iram b. Sam b. Nuh and Thamud and Jadis the two sons of `Abir b. Iram b. Sam b. Nuh, and Tasm and `Imlaq and Umayan the sons of Lawidh b. Sam b. Nuh are all Arabs. Nabit b. Isma`il begat Yashjub and the line runs: Ta`rub-Tayrah-Bahur-Muqawwan-Udad-`Adnan. (Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad, tr. Guillaume, p. 4).
In other words, Ishmael's great-great-great-great...-great uncles were already the Arabs.
* Arabic is not Ishmael's mother tongue, but learnt from other people.
From the above quoted tradition in Sahih Bukhari 4.583, we learnt that Ishmael learnt Arabic from the tribe of (or a family from) Jurhum who settled in Mecca (highlighted in Tradition 2 above). Since Arabic is not Ishmael's mother tongue, and that Arabic as a language existed before he knew them, Ishmael cannot be the ancestor of Arabs.
This means that the notion that Ishmael is the progenitor of the Arabs is erroneous. At most, Ishmael can only be called an Arabicized immigrant. That also means that not all modern day Arabs are descendents of Abraham.
So?????