Solomon and the Queen of Sheba: The Throne, the Test, the Legend

Quick answer: Solomon and the Queen of Sheba is a story told in three major traditions. In the Hebrew Bible (1 Kings 10), the queen travels to Jerusalem to test Solomon's wisdom with hard questions and leaves impressed. In the Quran (Surah An-Naml 27:20–44), a hoopoe reports her sun-worshipping kingdom, Solomon writes to her, her throne is brought to his court in an instant, and she enters a palace floored with glass before submitting to God. Ethiopian tradition makes her the mother of Solomon's son Menelik.

Related guides: the ifrit in Solomon's court, King Solomon and the jinn, history of the Seal of Solomon, Surah Al-Jinn explained, the Testament of Solomon, kings of the jinn tradition.

Who was the Queen of Sheba, and what do the sources actually say?

The Queen of Sheba is a ruler who appears in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, the Quran, and a wide body of later Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and Ethiopian storytelling. In every version she is a powerful foreign monarch who hears of Solomon’s reputation and travels to meet him. Beyond that shared core, the traditions diverge in tone, detail, and purpose, which is exactly what makes the story of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba such a useful case study in how legends grow.

The earliest written account is 1 Kings 10:1–13, repeated with small changes in 2 Chronicles 9:1–12. The queen is never named. She arrives in Jerusalem with a large retinue, camels carrying spices, gold, and precious stones, and she questions Solomon on everything she has in mind. The text says he answered all of it. She praises his wisdom, his court, and his God, gives him gifts, receives gifts in return, and goes back to her own land.

Sheba itself is usually identified with the kingdom of Saba in southern Arabia, in what is now Yemen, whose capital Marib was famous for its great dam and its trade in frankincense and myrrh. Some ancient and medieval writers, including the historian Josephus, placed her instead in Ethiopia or Egypt. The Ethiopian tradition built on that southern placement and made her its own, calling her Makeda.

Solomon and the Queen of Sheba in Surah An-Naml

The Quran tells the fullest and most dramatic version of king Solomon and queen Sheba in Surah An-Naml (27:20–44), the chapter named for the ants. The episode opens with Solomon reviewing the birds and noticing that the hoopoe is absent. When the bird returns, it reports that it has found a woman ruling a people in Saba, that she has a magnificent throne, and that she and her people prostrate to the sun instead of God.

Solomon tests the report by sending a letter. The queen reads it to her council, which assures her of their military strength but leaves the decision to her. She chooses diplomacy and sends gifts. Solomon rejects them, saying what God has given him is better than what they offer, and warns that he will come with forces they cannot resist. The queen decides to travel to him herself.

Before she arrives, Solomon asks his assembly who can bring her throne to him. An ifrit of the jinn says he can do it before Solomon rises from his seat. Then one who has knowledge of the Book says he can do it before Solomon’s glance returns to him, and the throne appears (27:38–40). Solomon orders the throne altered and asks her whether it is hers. Her answer, that it is as though it were the same, is read by commentators as a sign of her intelligence and caution.

Finally she is invited into the palace. Its floor is a sarh, a smooth surface of glass or crystal, which she mistakes for water, so she lifts her garment to wade through. Solomon explains what it is. She responds by declaring that she has wronged herself and now submits, with Solomon, to God, the Lord of the worlds (27:44). The story ends on that note of recognition rather than conquest.

The throne of Bilqis and the ifrit who offered to carry it

The throne scene is the part of the story that readers of this site ask about most, because it is one of the few places in the Quran where a jinn speaks. The passage is short, so it is worth reading closely rather than relying on retellings. The ifrit’s offer stresses speed and reliability: he promises to bring the throne before Solomon stands, and adds that he is strong and trustworthy for the task.

Yet Solomon does not use him. The throne is brought instead by someone described only as having knowledge from the Book. The Quran does not name this person. Later commentators proposed various identities, including a scribe or minister of Solomon, and some suggested Solomon himself. The text leaves it open, and the contrast seems to be the point: raw jinn power is real, but knowledge connected to revelation outranks it. We discuss this contrast in detail in our article on the ifrit in Solomon’s court.

The name Bilqis is attached to the queen in tafsir (Quranic commentary) and in the qisas al-anbiya, the stories of the prophets, from roughly the eighth century onward. The Quran never names her. Once named, she gathered legends: that her mother was a jinn, that her legs were hairy or had a deformity which the glass floor was designed to reveal, that Solomon married her, or that he married her to a Yemeni king. These are later additions, and good readers keep them separate from the scriptural text.

How the Bible, the Quran, and the Kebra Nagast differ

Comparing the three major accounts side by side shows how each tradition shaped the same encounter for its own purpose.

The biblical account: a test of wisdom

In 1 Kings 10 the queen is a peer, not a convert in the formal sense. She comes with hard questions, and the narrative is interested in Solomon’s answers and the splendor of his court. Her praise of Solomon’s God is warm but brief. The passage sits inside a larger description of Solomon’s wealth, trade, and international fame.

The Quranic account: a story of submission to God

Surah An-Naml reframes the meeting as a movement from sun worship to monotheism. The hoopoe, the letter, the council, the throne, and the glass floor all serve that movement. Solomon is a prophet-king whose authority over jinn and birds is a gift from God, not a personal achievement. The queen’s final words are a declaration of faith.

The Ethiopian account: a dynastic origin

The Kebra Nagast, the Glory of Kings, was compiled in Ge’ez around the fourteenth century. It names the queen Makeda, tells of her journey to Jerusalem, and relates that she bore Solomon a son, Menelik I. Menelik later visits his father and, in the Ethiopian telling, the Ark of the Covenant comes to Ethiopia. This story underpinned the Solomonic dynasty’s claim to descent from Solomon until the twentieth century.

Jewish and Christian elaborations

Later Jewish midrash expanded the riddles the queen asked. Christian readers followed Matthew 12:42 and Luke 11:31, where Jesus mentions the Queen of the South who came from the ends of the earth to hear Solomon’s wisdom. Medieval Christian art often painted her as a type of the Church or of the Magi coming to a greater king.

Common misunderstandings about the Queen of Sheba

Because the story is retold so often, several claims circulate that the sources do not support. Here are the ones that come up most.

• The Quran names her Bilqis. It does not. The name comes from later commentary and storytelling. The Quran calls her only a woman who rules them.
• The glass floor was built to expose jinn ancestry or hairy legs. That interpretation comes from some tafsir and folklore. The Quranic text simply says she mistook the floor for water and Solomon corrected her.
• The Bible says she married Solomon or had his child. The Bible says nothing of the kind. The child Menelik belongs to Ethiopian tradition.
• The ifrit brought the throne. He offered. The throne was brought by one who had knowledge of the Book.
• Sheba was certainly in Ethiopia. Most scholars connect the biblical Sheba with Saba in Yemen, while acknowledging strong cultural ties across the Red Sea. Ethiopia’s claim is a tradition, not an archaeological finding.

None of these corrections diminish the story. They simply let readers see which layer each detail comes from, which is the first step in reading any legend well.

Solomon and the Queen of Sheba in art, music, and modern culture

Few biblical scenes have been painted, carved, and sung as often as this meeting. Medieval cathedral sculpture in France placed the queen beside Solomon as a pair of royal figures. Piero della Francesca painted her meeting Solomon in his fresco cycle in Arezzo in the fifteenth century, treating her as a figure of reverence for the wood of the future cross. Handel’s oratorio Solomon (1749) gave the world the orchestral piece now known as the Arrival of the Queen of Sheba, still played at weddings and ceremonies.

In Islamic manuscript painting, Persian and Ottoman artists loved the scene of Bilqis enthroned, surrounded by jinn, birds, and courtiers, with the hoopoe in attendance. These images were made centuries after the Quran and reflect the expanded legend rather than the bare text. In Ethiopia, painted panels telling the Makeda story in comic-strip rows remain a popular folk art form.

Today people search for the story for many reasons: Bible study, Quran study, curiosity about the throne of Bilqis after watching a documentary, interest in Ethiopian history, or simply the romance of a queen who crossed deserts to test a king. Archaeological work at Marib has kept Saba in the news, though no inscription naming the queen has been found.

How to read the sources for yourself

If you want to go beyond summaries, read the three primary passages in order of length. Start with 1 Kings 10:1–13, which takes a few minutes. Then read Surah An-Naml 27:15–44 in a reliable translation, noting where the Quran names things and where it leaves them open. Finally, sample the Kebra Nagast in an English translation, remembering that it is a medieval national epic rather than scripture for most readers.

When you encounter the name Bilqis, the hairy legs, the jinn mother, or the marriage, ask which source the detail comes from. Commentators such as al-Tabari and later storytellers recorded many such traditions, often noting that they were reports rather than certainties. Treating those layers as later elaboration, not as the Quran itself, keeps the reading honest.

For the symbolic side of the story, the queen’s recognition of the altered throne and her correction at the glass floor are both about seeing truly. That theme connects to the wider Solomonic material on this site, including the history of the Seal of Solomon and the Quranic chapter devoted entirely to the jinn, Surah Al-Jinn. Read together, they show how Solomon came to stand for a kind of authority grounded in knowledge rather than force.

Disclaimer

This article describes religious scripture, commentary, and folklore for educational and historical purposes. Beliefs about Solomon, the jinn, and the Queen of Sheba are presented as the traditions hold them, not as endorsed facts, and no outcome of any kind is promised.