News From Sabaʾ

Fa-makatha ghayra baʿīd — but the hoopoe stayed not long. The hoopoe, the bird, came back — and it came back with news. Fa-qāla aḥaṭtu bimā lam tuḥiṭ bih — I have grasped knowledge which you have not grasped. This bird is telling Sulaymān (peace be upon him): I have grasped knowledge; I came upon knowledge that you do not have.

A statement like this cannot be said to many kings in the world today. If you say that, you are dead. If you say that I have knowledge that you do not have — you could be dead. But Sulaymān (peace be upon him), a nabī of Allah (swt), with the humbleness of the anbiyāʾ, was willing to listen and to learn, even if it is coming from a bird.

Wa jiʾtuka min Sabaʾin bi-nabaʾin yaqīn — I have brought you from Sabaʾ true news. Sabaʾ is in Yemen, in an area called Maʾrib; that is the centre, or the capital, of the kingdom of Sabaʾ. And the kingdom of Sabaʾ was in a very fertile land and valley, but that area does not receive a lot of rain. The land is very fertile, but the area does not receive a lot of rain; it only receives rain in two seasons, and in very scarce amounts. Because the rain is received in two seasons, it is called in Arabic al-maṭar al-mawsimī. Mawsim means season — seasonal rain. The word mawsim was taken into English, and what is it called now? What do they call that type of rain? Monsoon rain. So the word monsoon comes from the Arabic word mawsim, which is seasonal rain.

Because that area does not receive a lot of rain, the people of Sabaʾ invented a dam. They built a dam in Maʾrib, and this dam was holding a lot of water that was coming down from the valleys and from the mountains. And they made an irrigation network that spread through areas which are now in al-Rubʿ al-Khālī, the Empty Quarter — and that was all gardens. And Allah (swt) says in the Qur'an: la-qad kāna li-Sabaʾin fī maskanihim āyah, jannatāni ʿan yamīnin wa shimāl — Allah (swt) says that Allah gave the people of Sabaʾ, in their land, an ayah, a sign: gardens on the right and the left. Even though the land is desert, because of that dam it turned into gardens.

This bird visited the kingdom of Sabaʾ. It went all the way from Jerusalem to Yemen — pretty long distance — and it came back with news to Sulaymān (peace be upon him).

The bird said: innī wajadtu imraʾatan tamlikuhum — I found a woman ruling over them. And the name of this woman is the queen Bilqīs; her name is Bilqīs. Wa ūtiyat min kulli shayʾ — and she was given from everything. Ibn al-Jawzī says this woman was given everything that a king, or a queen, would want; she had everything: wealth, power — wa lahā ʿarshun ʿaẓīm, and she has a great throne.

Now notice here that the bird said she has everything, but then the bird singled out her throne. Why? Because that throne was a sign for the kingdom of Sabaʾ; it was something that used to be a miracle of the world in its time: the throne of the queen of Sabaʾ. And she has a great throne.