ibrahim did not succeed in liberating his people from paganism. on the contrary, they punished him by throwing him into the fire. god rescued him by allowing him to run away to palestine together with his wife, sarah. from palestine he moved on to egypt, which was then ruled by the hyksos or amalekite kings. sarah was a beautiful lady, and as the hyksos kings were in the habit of taking into their households any beautiful married women they met, ibrahim therefore pretended that sarah was his sister and hence unmarried so that the king might not take her away and kill him in the process. the king, however, did take her and later realized that she was married. he returned her to ibrahim, blamed him for his lie, and gave him a number of gifts, one of which was a slave girl by the name of hagar. [haykal here reports a typical case of israelitism in the muslim tradition. with little variation the story of genesis had passed into muslim legends through jewish converts to islam. -tr.] as sarah remained barren after many years of married life, she urged her husband to go into hagar. after ibrahim did so, hagar soon bore him his son isma'il. later on, after isma'il became a youth, sarah bore a son who was called ishaq.