Sheba

66
THE QUEEN OF SHEBA
Africa, Socotra, India, the Andaman Islands, Malaysia, Philippines, and
Papua New Guinea. In modern Yemen there is a caste of menial laborers
called akhdam, whose social rank is lower than former slaves. Marriage
into the higher qaba’il social levels are rare, the reason often being given
that the Akhdam are jinn. The Akhdam have African ancestry but
discrimination against them seems based more on caste connotations.
Perhaps the reference to the Queen of Sheba’s mother as a jinn meant she
was not a mischievous spirit but either a foreigner with unusual powers
(perhaps a knowledge of medicine, divination, even rainmaking) or a
member of an unrelated ethnic group famed for magical practices or skills
such as metalworking. This aspect is worth emphasizing because it could
explain the success the Queen of Sheba had in the next part of her career.
When the future queen was twelve, i.e. marriageable, the King of
Sheba, deeply impressed by her intelligence, successfully approached her
father to take her as his wife to make her joint ruler as Queen of Sheba.
This tradition is supported by Sabaean inscriptions at Abuna Garima near
Mekele in northern Ethiopia that testify to the joint rule of Sabaean kings
and queens, a practice imitated in Aksum even as late as the mid-sixth
century A.D. when two kings ruled jointly. The young woman remained
queen after her husband’s death and was assisted by the jinn, her mother’s
people. Perhaps the seeming fantasy of this story is in fact an account of
two different groups in Arabia that the queen united as her parents came
from each side. From the other traditions it would appear that one
community would be Sabaeans moving south; the other, a Semitic people
from or closely related to the people of Aksum with whom the Sabaeans
intermarried.
A third tradition, from Arabia, again maintains that the Queen of Sheba
was the daughter of the chief minister of Shar Habil, ruler of Yemen, and a
jinn. When ordered to marry the king she got him drunk and beheaded him,
after which she was proclaimed queen. Another Muslim writer, al-Kisa`i,
speaks of Dhu Sharkh ibn Hudad, an extremely good-looking wazir
(minister) of the ruler of Sheba. This young man was smitten by the beauty
of ‘Umarah, daughter of the king of the jinn. He obtained permission to
marry ‘Umarah and she bore Bilqis, the future Queen of Sheba who
ascended to the monarchy, according to al-Kisa`i’s account, by beheading
Sharakh ibn Sharahil, the tyrannical ruler of Sheba. Nashwan ibn Sa’id al-
Himyari, writing in the twelfth century A.D. and claiming to be descended
from the Queen of Sheba’s family, said her father’s name was al-Hadhad
ibn Sharah ibn Dhu Sahar. The similarities of the traditions - the minister