When Kings Enter a Town

What was the response of al-malikah, the queen? She said: verily, kings, when they enter a town, they despoil it and make the most honourable among its people the lowest. And then Allah (swt) approved what she said and said: and thus they do.

What did she mean by this? When the kings enter into a land, they corrupt it. She means that when you enter into a confrontation with another nation — king, or president, or government, whatever — when you enter into confrontation with another state or nation, and the other nation wins through war, when they enter into the land they would occupy it, and they would disrupt the system that was there, because they entered by force. And because they were fighting another government — because who is the one who took the decision to fight? It is the government — they would make that government, and the king, or whoever is in the position of responsibility, the lowest. Because they are our enemy: I won against you; you were the one who was fighting me; you are going to be the lowest. Most likely they killed them. But then they need assistance from the local people, so whom do they promote? They usually promote the lowest class, who are enemies of the former government. And that is something you find always in wars between states.

So the queen over here is saying: if we enter into a war with Sulaymān (peace be upon him), and he wins through war, then us — the government — we are going to be done with; he is going to get rid of us. And he is going to take our land as ghanīmah; he is going to invade our land, occupy it, and he will do corruption to our land. Because she is assuming that Sulaymān is like any other king; she does not know that Sulaymān is different — he is a nabī of Allah (swt). And we find how corrupt the Muslim lands were under the European occupation, and now we are still suffering from that corruption until this moment, because they entered through a state of war.

So she said: I will send them a gift, rather than fighting them — but verily, I am going to send him a present, and see with what answer the messengers return. This method of dealing really shows her intelligence, because it is going to work if Sulaymān (peace be upon him) were not a prophet. Because why do kings invade lands? Why do governments go to war with other countries?

She wants to send a gift to Sulaymān to convince him that we are going to pay you, rather than go to war with us and spend a lot of money on war; we are going to give you whatever you want. Here, I will send you a gift, and see what the response will be. She called it a gift; we can maybe call it a gift, but it also seems that it is looking for a gift — a little bit tilting towards being a bribe. And then she said: fa-nāẓiratun bima yarjiʿu al-mursalūn — I am going to see what the messengers, what the response, is.