So, today, I’ve got something VERY special for you. Courtesy of reader Marcin at POLARMS, I am pleased to show you pictures of a true unicorn: an IMI Magen-1. The Magen-1 has been a real mystery to me. There is a single reference to it online, with basically no useful information other than “it’s 9mm”. Well, now we’ve got pictures, and they tell a lot more of the story. More after the break!

First things first: we can place the Magen-1 in the Jericho timeline as somewhat later than I had expected. I had thought that the Magen-1 might have been the prototype for the compact (sub-compact?) Jerichos, but this slide being on the Jericho FBL frame tell us:

1. It wasn’t the prototype for the compact series.
2. It came later in Jericho Gen 1 development, because it’s on a polymer FBL frame rather than an aluminum-alloy FBL frame.

Next up, let’s look at that slide. HUGE change from the regular Jerichos. The rear sight assembly is very close to the original Barak’s, but is milled straight on the steel slide. It appears the screw on the side of the assembly is for adjusting the rear sight, which is way more intuitive than most sight adjustment schemes on pistols. It’s also insanely well protected – I can’t even imagine how you’d break that rear sight.

The slide’s profile has the rounded shape of the Barak, but uses the Jericho recoil system. If I were a betting man, I’d say the Magen-1 was a proof-of-concept that morphed into the original Barak.

Field stripped. Nothing unusual here. The lack of a captured recoil spring is indicative, again, that this is a later Jericho variant.

The Barak hammer is a lot more protected than this. Notice how the rear of the slide is at the same angle as the rear of the pistol frame – this was not a quick-and-dirty prototype. It looks much more like something that was halfway to production, and then halted. It is admittedly a bit of an ugly gun, and while aesthetics shouldn’t matter, they do, especially if you’ve got export sales ambitions.

Unfortunately, none of the other parts were serialized, so it’s impossible to tell if this is the original frame. I have no reason to believe it’s not, though.