Prophet Sulaiman (AS) – The King Whom None Would Equal حضرت سلیمان علیہ السلام – وہ بادشاہ جس جیسا کوئی نہ ہوا

Sulaiman was the son of Dawud, born in Jerusalem into a house where kingship and prophethood had already been joined. The Quran introduces him with the simplest of words: 'And Sulaiman inherited Dawud' (An-Naml 27:16). Dawud had many sons, but it was Sulaiman whom Allah chose to carry both the throne and the mantle of revelation, and the Quran says of him elsewhere: 'And to Dawud We gave Sulaiman. An excellent servant; indeed, he was one repeatedly turning back to Allah' (Sad 38:30).

His gift for judgement appeared while his father was still alive. The Quran records the case of the field grazed at night by a neighbour's sheep, in which 'We gave understanding of it to Sulaiman, and to each of them We gave judgement and knowledge' (Al-Anbiya 21:78-79). The commentators explain the two rulings. Dawud judged that the owner of the sheep should hand the flock to the owner of the field as compensation for the ruined crop. Sulaiman proposed something more balanced: the owner of the field should take the sheep for a time, benefiting from their milk, wool and young, while the owner of the sheep restored the field to its former condition; when the crop had recovered, each would take back his own. Dawud accepted the ruling of his son. Both had judged with knowledge, but Sulaiman's judgement repaired the harm without destroying one party to satisfy the other.

The Prophet ﷺ narrated another judgement of Sulaiman that has become famous. Two women each had a son, and a wolf carried off one of the boys. Each woman claimed the surviving child as hers. They went to Dawud, who ruled in favour of the elder. Then they went to Sulaiman, who said, 'Bring me a knife so that I may cut the child in two between you.' The younger woman cried out, 'Do not do it, may Allah have mercy on you; he is her son.' Sulaiman ruled that the child belonged to the younger woman, for only the true mother would surrender her claim to save the child's life (Sahih al-Bukhari 3427; Sahih Muslim 1720). Abu Hurairah said that until that day he had never heard the word 'sikkin' used for a knife, as they called it 'mudyah.'

When Dawud died, Sulaiman took his place and announced the extent of what Allah had given him. 'And Sulaiman inherited Dawud. He said: O people, we have been taught the language of birds, and we have been given from all things. Indeed, this is evident bounty' (An-Naml 27:16). His words are worth noticing. He did not say, 'I have achieved,' but 'we have been taught' and 'we have been given,' and he named the giver's bounty before he named anything else. This was the tone of his entire reign.

His first great act as king was a prayer. The Quran records it: 'He said: My Lord, forgive me and grant me a kingdom such as will not belong to anyone after me. Indeed, You are the Bestower' (Sad 38:35). The commentators observe that forgiveness came first in his prayer, before the kingdom; and that he asked for a unique kingdom not out of rivalry but, as the scholars explain, so that it would be an unmistakable sign of his prophethood. A kingdom that no other human could hold would prove that it came from Allah and not from armies or wealth.

Allah answered the prayer in full, and the remaining chapters of his story describe what that answer looked like: a dominion over wind, jinn, animals and men such as the world had never seen before and has never seen since.

The kingdom Sulaiman asked for was granted in forms that no king before or after him possessed. The first was mastery over the wind. 'And to Sulaiman We subjected the wind, blowing forcefully, proceeding by his command toward the land which We had blessed' (Al-Anbiya 21:81). Elsewhere the Quran describes both its speed and its gentleness: 'And to Sulaiman We subjected the wind, its morning course was a month's journey and its evening course was a month's journey' (Saba 34:12), and 'So We subjected to him the wind blowing by his command, gently, wherever he directed' (Sad 38:36). The commentators explain that he and his retinue would set out in the morning and by midday cover what a caravan covered in a month, and the same again by evening. The wind was powerful enough to carry armies and gentle enough that nothing was harmed.

The second was mastery over the jinn. 'And of the devils were those who dived for him and did work other than that, and We were of them a guardian' (Al-Anbiya 21:82). 'And among the jinn were those who worked for him by the permission of his Lord. And whoever deviated among them from Our command, We will make him taste of the punishment of the Blaze. They made for him what he willed of elevated chambers, statues, bowls like reservoirs, and stationary kettles' (Saba 34:12-13). The Quran also mentions 'every builder and diver' and 'others bound together in shackles' (Sad 38:37-38), the rebellious among the jinn whom Sulaiman restrained by Allah's permission. The great buildings of his reign, above all the sanctuary at Jerusalem that his father had begun, were raised with their labour.

This power over the jinn was not Sulaiman's own; it was lent to him, and the Quran makes clear that the devils who worked for him were watched over by Allah. The Prophet ﷺ once said that a jinn had come to him during prayer to disrupt it and that Allah had given him power over it; he intended to tie it to a pillar of the mosque so the Companions could see it, but he remembered the prayer of his brother Sulaiman, 'grant me a kingdom such as will not belong to anyone after me,' and let it go (Sahih al-Bukhari 461; Sahih Muslim 541). The Prophet ﷺ honoured the exclusivity that Sulaiman had asked for.

The third gift was a spring of molten copper. 'And We made flow for him a spring of liquid copper' (Saba 34:12). As iron had been softened for Dawud, copper was made to flow for Sulaiman, and from it, with the labour of the jinn, were cast the great vessels and fittings of his kingdom. Each prophet of this family was given mastery of a metal, and each used it for the benefit of people rather than for display.

The fourth was the understanding of animals. 'We have been taught the language of birds' (An-Naml 27:16), he announced, and the story of the ant and the hoopoe in the following verses shows that this understanding extended beyond birds. Birds in particular served in his army and in his intelligence, as the following chapters show.

The Quran then adds the most important line of the passage: 'This is Our gift, so grant or withhold without account' (Sad 38:39). Sulaiman was given freedom in his disposal of the kingdom, and he would not be called to account for how he distributed its bounties, because he had been tested and had proved that he would use them well. Allah says in the same breath, 'And indeed, for him is nearness to Us and a good place of return' (Sad 38:40). Worldly dominion and nearness to Allah were, in him, not in tension.

With all this, the Quran insists on a limit. 'And they followed what the devils had recited during the reign of Sulaiman. It was not Sulaiman who disbelieved, but the devils disbelieved, teaching people magic' (Al-Baqarah 2:102). After his death, the Jews of a later age claimed that his power had come from sorcery. The Quran clears his name absolutely. His kingdom came by Allah's permission, and the magic that was attributed to him was the work of devils and of those who followed them.

Of all the scenes in Sulaiman's life, the one the Quran chooses to show first is not a battle or a palace but a march through a valley, and the voice that stops it is not a king's but an ant's. 'And gathered for Sulaiman were his soldiers of the jinn and men and birds, and they were in orderly ranks' (An-Naml 27:17). The army that moved through the land was unlike any other in history: men marching, jinn among them, and birds overhead, all held in order under a single command.

'Until, when they came upon the valley of the ants, an ant said: O ants, enter your dwellings that you not be crushed by Sulaiman and his soldiers while they perceive not' (An-Naml 27:18). The commentators have noted every detail of the ant's speech. It addressed its people, warned them, told them what to do, named the danger, and then excused the soldiers: they would not crush the ants deliberately, but 'while they perceive not.' A single tiny creature displayed leadership, foresight, concern for its community and fairness towards those who might harm it.

Sulaiman heard and understood. 'So he smiled, amused at her speech' (An-Naml 27:19). The Arabic suggests that his smile broke into laughter, the laughter of delight. He was not amused that the ant feared him; he was moved that Allah had let him hear it. And then, instead of being proud that even the insects knew his name, he turned to his Lord: 'My Lord, enable me to be grateful for Your favour which You have bestowed upon me and upon my parents, and to do righteousness of which You approve. And admit me by Your mercy into the ranks of Your righteous servants' (An-Naml 27:19).

This prayer is the key to the whole story of Sulaiman. He asks for the ability to be grateful, because gratitude is itself a gift from Allah; he mentions his parents, because the favour he enjoys came through them; he asks to do deeds that Allah approves of, not merely deeds that are good in his own eyes; and he asks to be admitted among the righteous 'by Your mercy,' knowing that no amount of kingdom earns Paradise. A man with armies of jinn at his command, halting his entire host at the warning of an ant and asking for mercy, is the picture the Quran wants in the reader's mind before it describes his dealings with queens and thrones.

The story also shows how he ruled. He did not drive his army through the valley; the ants were given time to enter their homes. Power that could have crushed the weakest creatures on earth was held in check by a king who had been given the ears to hear them. The Prophet ﷺ taught his own Companions a similar lesson when he saw an anthill burned and said that no one should punish with fire except the Lord of fire (Sunan Abi Dawud 2675), and when he forbade the killing of ants (Sunan Abi Dawud 5267). In Sulaiman's valley, the ethics of Islam toward the smallest creation were already in force.

The passage ends with no battle, no conquest, no enemy. The whole scene is a lesson in hearing, in humility and in thanks. The Quran places it immediately after Sulaiman's declaration that he had been given 'from all things' and before the story of the Queen of Saba, as if to say: this is what a man does with all things when he has been given them rightly. He listens to an ant, he smiles, and he asks his Lord for the ability to be grateful.

One day Sulaiman reviewed the birds of his army and found one missing. 'And he took attendance of the birds and said: Why do I not see the hoopoe, or is he among the absent? I will surely punish him with a severe punishment or slaughter him unless he brings me a clear authorisation' (An-Naml 27:20-21). A king who commanded jinn noticed the absence of a single small bird. This is a lesson in itself about the attentiveness of a ruler, and in his threat is a lesson about justice: punishment was conditional on the absence of a valid excuse.

The hoopoe arrived soon after, and its excuse was more than valid. 'I have encompassed in knowledge that which you have not encompassed, and I have come to you from Saba with certain news. Indeed, I found a woman ruling them, and she has been given of all things, and she has a great throne. I found her and her people prostrating to the sun instead of Allah, and Satan has made their deeds pleasing to them and averted them from His way, so they are not guided' (An-Naml 27:22-24). Saba was a kingdom in the south of Arabia, in present-day Yemen, famous for its wealth and its great dam at Marib. The hoopoe not only reported what it had seen; it preached, adding that they should instead prostrate to Allah 'who brings forth what is hidden within the heavens and the earth,' the Lord of the Great Throne (An-Naml 27:25-26).

Sulaiman did not act on hearsay. 'We will see whether you were truthful or were of the liars' (An-Naml 27:27). He wrote a letter and sent it with the hoopoe, instructing it to deliver the message and then withdraw and observe their reaction. The letter was short and its contents are preserved in the Quran: 'Indeed, it is from Sulaiman, and indeed, it reads: In the name of Allah, the Entirely Merciful, the Especially Merciful. Be not haughty with me but come to me in submission' (An-Naml 27:30-31). It began with the Basmalah, stated the sender, and made a single demand: submission to Allah, not to Sulaiman.

The queen, whom later sources name Bilqis though the Quran does not name her, showed the qualities of a wise ruler. She called her council: 'O eminent ones, advise me in my affair. I would not decide a matter until you witness for me' (An-Naml 27:32). Her chiefs answered that they were strong and warlike and that the decision was hers. She replied with a political insight the Quran records with evident approval: 'Indeed, kings, when they enter a city, they ruin it and render the honoured of its people humbled. And thus do they do' (An-Naml 27:34). She chose diplomacy: she would send a gift and see how the king responded. If he accepted it, he was an ordinary king who could be bought; if he refused, he was something else.

Sulaiman refused. 'Do you provide me with wealth? But what Allah has given me is better than what He has given you. Rather, it is you who rejoice in your gift' (An-Naml 27:36). He sent the envoys back with a warning that he would come with armies they could not resist. The queen understood. This was not a king demanding tribute; this was a man calling her to a religion. She resolved to come to him herself.

In these verses the Quran paints two rulers of unusual quality facing each other: a prophet-king who could not be bribed and a queen who consulted her people, feared the destruction of war, and was willing to travel to find the truth. What follows in the next chapter is the meeting of these two, and the sign that turned a sun-worshipper into a Muslim.

As the queen set out for Jerusalem, Sulaiman prepared a sign for her. He turned to his court and said: 'O eminent ones, which of you will bring me her throne before they come to me in submission?' (An-Naml 27:38). A powerful one of the jinn, an ifrit, answered: 'I will bring it to you before you rise from your place, and indeed, I am for this strong and trustworthy' (An-Naml 27:39). Sulaiman's sessions lasted hours; the ifrit promised to cover the distance to Yemen and back within one of them.

But another voice spoke. 'Said one who had knowledge from the Scripture: I will bring it to you before your glance returns to you' (An-Naml 27:40). The Quran does not name him. Many commentators say he was Asif ibn Barkhiya, a righteous man of Sulaiman's court, but his identity is not established in any sound text, and some have said it was Sulaiman himself or an angel. What the Quran stresses is not who he was but what he had: knowledge from the Book. By that knowledge, and by Allah's permission, the throne of the queen was before Sulaiman in the blink of an eye.

Sulaiman's reaction to this wonder is the heart of the passage. 'And when he saw it placed before him, he said: This is from the favour of my Lord to test me whether I will be grateful or ungrateful. And whoever is grateful, his gratitude is only for the benefit of himself. And whoever is ungrateful, then indeed, my Lord is Free of need and Generous' (An-Naml 27:40). He saw a throne cross a thousand miles in an instant and his first thought was that he was being tested. The greatest of his miracles was, in his own words, an examination of his gratitude.

He then ordered the throne disguised. 'Disguise for her her throne; we will see whether she will be guided or will be of those who is not guided' (An-Naml 27:41). When she arrived and was asked, 'Is your throne like this?', she answered with care: 'It is as though it was it' (An-Naml 27:42). She neither denied nor affirmed; she recognised her throne while sensing that something impossible had happened. The commentators praise her intelligence in this answer. Then she added words that showed she had already begun to believe: 'And we were given knowledge before her, and we have been Muslims,' says Sulaiman's court, and the Quran explains that what had kept her from this was only 'what she was worshipping other than Allah' (An-Naml 27:42-43).

The final sign came in the palace. 'She was told: Enter the palace. But when she saw it, she thought it was a body of water and uncovered her shins to wade through. He said: Indeed, it is a palace whose floor is made smooth with glass' (An-Naml 27:44). She had been deceived by appearances, as she had been deceived all her life by the apparent majesty of the sun. The glass floor over water showed her that what the eye sees is not always what is. Her response was immediate and complete: 'My Lord, indeed I have wronged myself, and I submit with Sulaiman to Allah, Lord of the worlds' (An-Naml 27:44).

She submitted 'with Sulaiman,' not 'to Sulaiman.' The Quran is precise. Her Islam was to Allah; Sulaiman was her companion in it, not its object. The whole story, from the hoopoe's report to the glass floor, was designed to bring a nation from sun-worship to the worship of the Lord of the Great Throne.

The Quran says nothing about what happened afterward. Reports that Sulaiman married her, or that she married a king of Yemen, or details about her ancestry involving the jinn, are all drawn from Isra'iliyyat and popular tales. Ibn Kathir mentions them and notes their weakness; they are not established and should not be narrated as fact. The Quran ends her story at the moment of her submission, because that was the purpose of telling it.

Sulaiman was tested as every prophet was tested, and the Quran records three episodes that show how he responded. The first concerns horses. 'When there were exhibited before him in the afternoon the poised, swift horses, and he said: Indeed, I gave preference to the love of good things over the remembrance of my Lord until it disappeared into the curtain of darkness. Return them to me, and he set about striking their legs and necks' (Sad 38:31-33).

The commentators differ on the details. The most widely held view among the early scholars is that the review of the horses occupied him until the sun set and he missed the time of the afternoon prayer, not deliberately but by absorption; in grief at having preferred anything to the remembrance of his Lord, he had the horses brought back and struck their legs and necks with his sword, slaughtering them, giving their meat in charity. Another group of scholars, following a different reading, hold that he stroked their legs and necks with his hand out of affection, marking them for the cause of Allah. Whichever reading is right, the lesson is the same: a king whose horses were the pride of his kingdom could not tolerate in himself any love that competed with the remembrance of Allah. The phrase 'love of good things' (hubb al-khayr) is itself telling. The horses were not evil; they were good things, kept for jihad. Yet even love of good things, if it distracts from Allah, is a fault in a prophet.

The second test is described in a single mysterious verse. 'And We certainly tried Sulaiman and placed on his throne a body; then he returned' (Sad 38:34). The Quran does not say what the body was. The books of tafsir are full of stories about a devil who stole his ring, sat on his throne in his form for forty days, and ruled in his place while Sulaiman wandered as a beggar. Ibn Kathir records these reports and states clearly that they are from the Isra'iliyyat and are not to be accepted; the notion that a devil could rule the believers in the form of a prophet is rejected by the scholars. The sound explanation is the one given in the Sahih, which follows.

The Prophet ﷺ narrated: 'Sulaiman son of Dawud said: Tonight I will go round to seventy wives (in some narrations, ninety or a hundred), each of whom will bear a horseman who will fight in the way of Allah. His companion (an angel, in some versions) said to him: Say, if Allah wills. But he did not say it. He went round to them all, but none of them conceived except one, who bore half a man.' The Prophet ﷺ then said: 'By Him in whose hand is my soul, had he said: if Allah wills, they would all have fought in the way of Allah as horsemen' (Sahih al-Bukhari 3424, 5242, 6639; Sahih Muslim 1654). Many scholars, including Ibn Kathir, hold that the 'body' placed on his throne refers to this incomplete child, and that the test was the lesson of 'in sha Allah.' 'Then he returned' means he turned back to his Lord in repentance and humility.

This hadith is also an explanation of the Quranic command to the Prophet ﷺ himself: 'And never say of anything, Indeed, I will do that tomorrow, except when adding, if Allah wills' (Al-Kahf 18:23-24). The lesson Sulaiman was taught by a half-formed child was later taught to the whole ummah in a verse.

The third test was the test of power itself, which the Quran names directly: 'This is from the favour of my Lord to test me whether I will be grateful or ungrateful' (An-Naml 27:40). Every gift Sulaiman received was a trial, and he treated it as such. His response to the ant, to the throne of Saba, to the horses and to the lesson of the oath was always the same: he returned to his Lord. That is why the Quran calls him 'awwab' (Sad 38:30), one who returns again and again, and why, after narrating his tests, it says: 'So We forgave him that, and indeed, for him is nearness to Us and a good place of return' (Sad 38:25 is said of Dawud; Sad 38:40 of Sulaiman). Father and son share the same ending in the Quran, because they shared the same heart.

The Quran describes the death of Sulaiman more fully than that of almost any other prophet, and it does so in order to teach one thing: that no one but Allah knows the unseen, not even the jinn who had boasted of their knowledge. 'And when We decreed for Sulaiman death, nothing indicated to them his death except a creature of the earth eating his staff. But when he fell, it became clear to the jinn that if they had known the unseen, they would not have remained in humiliating punishment' (Saba 34:14).

The scene the verse describes is this. Sulaiman died while standing, leaning on his staff. The commentators say he was in his place of worship, where he would often stand long in prayer, and the jinn who were labouring at their tasks assumed that he was alive and watching them. They continued to build and dive and work, as they had done for years, in fear of him. Time passed; the sources do not agree on how long. Then a termite, which the Quran calls 'a creature of the earth,' slowly ate through the staff until it gave way, and the body of Sulaiman fell. Only then did the jinn realise that the king had been dead for a long while and that they had worked in fear of a corpse.

The Quran draws the lesson explicitly. The jinn used to claim that they knew the unseen, and the people of the time believed it; the soothsayers and sorcerers who dealt with them built their trade on this belief. Allah exposed the claim by the simplest of means. If the jinn had known the unseen, they would have known that their master was dead and would not have continued in 'humiliating punishment,' the toil to which Sulaiman had bound them. A termite knew more about Sulaiman's staff than all the jinn knew about Sulaiman.

Ibn Kathir and other scholars record various reports that give details beyond the Quran: that Sulaiman had asked Allah to conceal his death from the jinn so that mankind would know that the jinn do not know the unseen; that the staff was eaten over the course of a year; that afterward the jinn honoured the termite by bringing it water and mud. Some of these are reported from the Companions and Successors, but they are not from the Prophet ﷺ, and the details beyond the verse should be treated as reports, not as established facts.

Sulaiman had reigned, according to the historians, for about forty years, and died in Jerusalem, though neither figure is established by a sound hadith. His great legacy was the sanctuary of Jerusalem, Bayt al-Maqdis, which he completed. The Prophet ﷺ said: 'When Sulaiman son of Dawud finished building Bayt al-Maqdis, he asked Allah for three things: judgement that would accord with His judgement, a kingdom that no one after him would have, and that whoever came to this mosque intending nothing but prayer in it would leave his sins behind as on the day his mother bore him.' The Prophet ﷺ added: 'As for two of them, they have been granted, and I hope the third has been granted as well' (Sunan an-Nasai 693; Sunan Ibn Majah 1408; graded sahih by al-Albani).

After him the kingdom of the Children of Israel never again reached such a height. Within a generation it was divided, and the Quran turns from its glory to its corruptions and the prophets who were sent to call it back. But the Quran preserves Sulaiman's own epitaph in his words at the sight of the throne of Saba: 'This is from the favour of my Lord to test me whether I will be grateful or ungrateful' (An-Naml 27:40). The kingdom passed, the staff was eaten, the jinn were freed, and what remained was the gratitude of a servant. That is what the Quran means when it calls him, in the same breath as his father, 'an excellent servant; indeed, he was one repeatedly turning back to Allah' (Sad 38:30).