Fatima.Mernessi_The-Forgotten-Queens-of-Islam-EN

142 The Arab Queens
This is the way Balqis, the queen of Sheba, is presented in the
Koran - in full exercise of royal power. But she and the people
whom she leads are on the wrong path - that of the devil. The
hoopoe is absolutely certain of that:
24. I found her and her people worshipping the sun instead of Allah;
and Satan maketh their works fair-seeming unto them, and debarreth
them from the way (of Truth), so that they go not aright. 6
At the end of the narrative, the queen loses her throne. A jinn,
working for Solomon, steals it from her; but although stripped of
her material assets, Balqis would gain in spirituality. She ceases to
worship the sun and makes a double surrender - first to Allah, and
then to his prophet Solomon:
44. ... She said: My Lord! Lo! I have wronged myself, and I
surrender with Solomon unto Allah the Lord of the Worlds. 7
The Koranic text has a limpid beauty due to its lack of adornment
and the wondrous clarity of its message focused on the essential
point, which was the throne and its transfer from the female to the
male. What is most fascinating about the story of Balqis, however,
is that it prompted the commentators to get involved in a long,
tangled, oversubtle exegesis of the problems which seemed to torture
them personally and which the Koran superbly ignored. One
of the principal problems the writers stumbled over was the nature
and importance of the queen's throne. It absolutely had to be
reduced in importance, even if the unfortunate creature finally lost
it. 'Adhim (mighty) is the adjective used to describe the throne of
Balqis. It is a word whose shades of meaning are very difficult to
express. But Tabari found a means to diminish it: it is not the size
of the throne nor its 'material importance' that the word 'adhim
describes, he tells us, 'but rather the danger that it represented'.
Nevertheless he does mention that its material aspect was not
negligible: the throne was of gold encrusted with pearls and precious
stones. 8 The other problem that the Koran totally neglects (for it
apparently considers it unimportant even though it disturbs the
experts) is the marital status of the queen. Was she a virgin when
she met King Solomon, or had she earlier contracted a marriage?
One early historian, Tayfur, marries her, as was obligatory, to her
cousin, Ibn Zara. 9 Kahhala, a modern biographer who is so fascinated
by women that he has devoted a many-volume 'Who's Who'