BANI ISRAEL INHERITED EGYPT: Q 26:37-59 & Q 44:25-28 explains that Bani Israel would inherit the land of the Egyptian kings and Pharaohs. According to the Quran, Moses lived during the reign of the Pharaoh Khufu whose cousin and vizier was Haman or Hemiunu. Haman (Q 28:38) designed the Great Pyramid at Giza which is also mentioned in the Q 28:38. Bani Israel left Egypt under the leadership of Moses, who was appointed to challenge Khufu’s magicians in a snake spell match. After many trials, Khufu allowed Moses and Bani Israel to leave Egypt, but he or his heir, Kewab, later pursued them and was drowned along with the military that accompanied him. Kewab was Khufu’s crown prince who died before he reached the throne.
Bani Israel fled to the Arabian Peninsula to re-unite with the tribe into which Moses married. That tribe was an Ishmaelite tribe also known to Bani Israel as Midian because of their tribal origins in the area of the mountain range of the same name. (Midian is the name of the northern portion of the Sarawat mountain range.). The leader of these Ishmaelites was Yether (Jethro in English) after whom was named the City of Yathrib which later became known as Medina. (Yathrib is Old South Arabic and means Clan of Yether aka Jethro.). This Ishmaelite tribe settled in the Arabian Peninsula along with Bani Israel.
Bani Israel were merchants and cattle herders who eventually returned to the Levant and then to the Egyptian Delta, where they and their fellow Levantines formed a Canaanite kingdom whose capital was Avaris. These Levantines or Canaanites settled in the Nile delta c. 1640 BC. They formed the 15th and 16th dynasties of Egypt and ruled a large part of the country until driven out c. 1532 BC. These Levantines were known to the Egyptians as Hyksos or ‘foregin rulers’. One the Hyksos kings was known as Yaqub-Har who ruled Egypt in either the 15th or 16th Dynasty. So, although Bani Israel had absorbed the culture of their fellow Levantines, it appears they retained the knowledge of their paternal ancestor and founder Yaqub or Jacob in English.
Now as to the whereabouts of Moses after he rejoined Yether (Jethro). (The name Yether is from the Old South Arabian root ‘wtr’ and means foundation or founder in the case of Moses’ father-in-law). Moses headed for Yether’s and his ancestral home described in Surah atTeen: By the Fig (tree) and by the Olive (tree) and by Tur EsSineen and by this Secured/Honorable City… ” This place was an oasis located in a valley of Mount Sineen (also spelled Sina’ Q 23:20) where grew fig trees and olive trees. Moses was first commissioned as a prophet in this oasis.
Moses had newly fled from Egypt where he was raised in the court of the Egyptian king, a place where he was educated in and conversed in the ancient Egyptian language. At that time the valley was known to Moses as the ‘sacred valley of Tuwa’ (Taha, 20/12; an-Naziat, 79/16). Tuwa is an Egyptian verb and means ‘to supplicate’, ‘to appeal’. The hieroglyphic spelling is X1 – V4 – G1 – A30. So, the ‘sacred valley of Tuwa’ is the sacred valley where the petitioner supplicates Allah (swt). That valley was known to Bani Israel as Bakka or the Valley of the weeping (flowing) well. Psalm 84 indicates that Bani Israel made numerous pilgrimages to Bayith Elah or Bayt Allah in Arabic (verses 3 & 4), so it is little wonder that Moses returned to his ancestral place of worship, a valley where Abraham and Ishmael built the Kaba or Bayt Allah.
As for Tur Sina’, the name derives from the Akkadian words ‘sinu’ and ‘nur sin’ and mean ‘moonlight’. The word ‘sinu’ was adapted into Arabic as ‘snu/sny’ but the word was redefined to mean : gleam, shine, radiate, to be resplendent in other words ‘to exude light’. Tur Sina (Moonlight Mountain) later became known as Jabal AnNur or the Mountain of Light. This is where Moses received the Torah during his time of wandering in the Arabian Peninsula after he led Bani Israel out of Egypt. The Arabian Peninsula was not only his ancestral home, it was the only place where Bani Israel would be safe from Firawn. (Firawn does not mean pharaoh ( pr a’a – great house in Egyptian). The meaning in Egyptian is the house of wailing (pr awn) because the crown prince, Kewab, died before he ascended the throne. So, Moses remained in the Arabian Peninsula with his small band (Quran 26:54) of Bani Israel. Gradually, over the next millennium, Bani Israel returned to the Nile Delta, formed a kingdom and dominated Egypt for a century.