Bilqis, Queen of Sheba

Saba — or Yemen — lies in the southwest of the Arabian Peninsula. It is thought that 'Saba' is derived from the Sabians, that religion which gathered together many Jewish and Christian beliefs.

The Sabaeans were famed for agriculture and trade. The most important of their ancient monuments is the great water reservoir called the 'Dam of Ma'rib,' in whose building Bilqis took part; it was counted among the wonders of the world.

Some German Orientalists say that the story of Bilqis is a spurious borrowing from the Indians and Jerusalem, on account of the contradictory tales told of her in their legends. The English Orientalists, for their part, hold that she was an Arab princess, while Arab history ranks her among the kings of Yemen.

Josephus calls Bilqis by the name Nikaulis, saying that she ruled Egypt and Abyssinia.

Bilqis lived in the tenth century B.C. The reason she came to the throne, despite the Arabs' disdain for the rule of women, is that her cousin — Hadhad ibn Sharahbil, who inherited the throne of Yemen after her father — abused his people most grievously: he no sooner learned of the existence of a beautiful girl, be she daughter of vizier or of emir, than he defiled her honor. This drove Bilqis to offer herself to him. He told her that he had long thought of marrying her but had never found in himself courage enough to come forward with the proposal. He then wrote to her to come to him; but Bilqis refused, unless he asked her hand of her people and the wedding were held in her own palace. On one of those evenings Bilqis prepared the pretended banquet, and scarcely had Hadhad crossed the threshold of her palace when two men lying in wait for him dealt him the mortal blow. Bilqis then summoned the viziers and the commanders and told them that she had killed her cousin to save the honor of their daughters and to avenge their plundered dignity; and she went on to upbraid them for their slackness in guarding their daughters' honor, out of their self-abasement before him and their fear of his tyranny. So they elected her queen over them in reward for her good deed.

The transmitters differ, moreover, over Bilqis's lineage, though most agree that she was of Qahtan. One party of them excelled in weaving legends around her descent; and in some of these there is a literary symbol pointing to the shrewdness and influence that certain women possess.

In Bilqis's killing of her cousin there is proof of her tenderness toward her sex and a witness to her championing of its dignity. How could it be otherwise, when she was the chaste and stately lady who withheld herself even from King Solomon?

The most famous things known of her are the multitude of her soldiers and the magnificence of her throne.

Ibn al-Athir, however, rejects the exaggerations in the descriptions of her throne and the numbers of her armies, saying they are among the things that cannot be believed.

Among these exaggerations is the claim that her throne was a couch of pure gold and silver, studded with precious jewels, standing within seven chambers, in the innermost of them.

It is said that its front was of gold, inlaid with red rubies and green emeralds, and its back of silver, crowned with every kind of jewel and pearl; it had four legs — one of red ruby, one of yellow ruby, one of green chrysolite, and one of white pearl — and the panels of the couch were of pure gold.

It was said to measure thirty cubits by thirty, and thirty in height; others say eighty by eighty. In any case it was one of the wonders of the world. A poet said of it:

Her throne rises high, eighty fathoms,
all crowned with gems and peerless pearl;
with pearls she has bound it, and rubies,
and with pure gold — what a binding!

Bilqis spent a thousand uqiyyas of gold on the aperture through which the sun entered, that she might prostrate herself before it. In the Torah there is a chapter recording the golden gifts she carried to King Solomon.

Solomon refused the gold. As for the pierced bead which she asked him to pierce — he prayed to God, who inspired him to fetch a termite; the termite came, took a hair in its mouth, entered the bead, and after a while came through it. Others say the bead was pierced with a crooked hole, and Bilqis asked him to pierce it with another, straight one.

Among the gifts she sent him were five hundred boys in the dress of slave-girls and five hundred slave-girls in the dress of boys. Solomon was able to discover their true nature and tell their sex apart by the manner in which they washed their faces. When her messengers returned and told her what they had seen, she knew that he was a prophet, and she resolved to journey to him with twelve thousand chieftains. When she had drawn near his place, he saw one day, while he was in the desert, a cloud of dust close by, and asked about that dust; he was told: it is the throne of Bilqis. He said: 'Who will bring me her throne before they come to me in submission?' An ifrit of the jinn said: 'I will bring it to you before you rise from your place.' Another said: 'I will bring it to you before your glance returns to you.' But Solomon wanted the throne brought faster still, so he prayed — and behold, the earth split open, and behold, the throne stood glittering.

When the jinn learned that Bilqis was coming and that Solomon might marry her — whereupon she would divulge to him the secrets of the jinn, for she had been reared among them, and if she bore a son the kingship would pass to him and they would never be free of servitude to Solomon and his son — they spoke ill of her and made her hideous in his eyes, saying that she was without reason or discernment, that her foot was like a horse's hoof, and that her legs were hairy as a goat's.

Solomon wished to put their words to the test. So he disguised her throne, making changes among its jewels, to see whether she would know it; and he ordered a pavilion of glass to be built for her, with water running beneath it, in which he placed creatures of the sea, so that when she saw it she would take it for water and bare her leg, and he could verify the matter for himself — stockings being unknown in that age.

Others say the pavilion was built of vessels of green glass, with floors of vessels of white glass, and beneath the floors images of the creatures of the sea, so that it seemed a very sea.

Solomon sat upon a couch at the head of the place. When Bilqis was brought in to him, she was asked: 'Is this your throne?' She said: 'It is as though it were. Yet I left it within fortresses, with soldiers all around it — how did it come here?' Some say she recognized it, but made the matter as doubtful to them as they had made it to her, saying neither yes, for fear of lying, nor no, for fear of being mocked. So Solomon knew the perfection of her mind. Then she was brought into the pavilion, and when she saw it she took it for a deep pool and bared her legs to wade in.

She put several questions to Solomon, among them: What is the color of God? And she asked him about a sweet water that comes neither from earth nor from sky, and so on. He fell from his couch as if thunderstruck, in a swoon; she rose and left him, and his soldiers scattered from around him, until God inspired him to return to his couch and answer the questions she had put to him. The answer to the first question: the sweat of horses.

Solomon wished to marry her, but disliked the abundance of hair on her legs; he asked for something that would remove it without harming the skin, and was told: quicklime paste. So he married her and loved her with a great love, and restored her to her kingdom in Yemen after she had believed in God. He would visit her once every month and stay with her three days, and she bore him a boy whom he named David, who died in his lifetime.

Others say that Solomon commanded her to marry a man of her own people, and she disdained it, saying: 'If it must be, then marry me to Dhu Tubba', king of Hamdan.' So he married her to him, gave her husband dominion over Yemen, and commanded the jinn of Yemen to obey him. Dhu Tubba' set them to building a number of fortified palaces, among them Salhin (or Sailhin), Marwah (or Sirwah), Falyun, Hunaydah, Sabnun, and the palace of Ghumdan, the most famous of them. When Solomon died, the jinn no longer obeyed Dhu Tubba', and his reign, and the realm of Bilqis, ended with Solomon's death. Others say that Bilqis died before Solomon, in Syria, and that he buried her in Palmyra and hid her grave from the people.