Tafsir of An-Naml 27:29

"She said" (meaning after the hoopoe had departed with the letter, cast it to them, and withdrew from them in accordance with the command given to it. The omission of the mention of its departure is intended to signal the perfection of its haste in fulfilling the service commanded, and to indicate that it is unnecessary to state it explicitly due to the extreme clarity of the matter).

It is narrated that he (Solomon, peace be upon him) wrote his letter, perfumed it with musk, sealed it with his signet ring, and entrusted it to the hoopoe. It went off and found her sleeping in her palace in Ma'rib. Whenever she slept, she would lock the doors and place the keys under her head. It entered through a small aperture and dropped the letter onto her chest while she was lying on her back; in another narration, it dropped it between her breasts. It is also said that it pecked her, so she awoke startled. It is also said that it arrived while the leaders and soldiers were surrounding her, and it hovered for a while as the people watched, until she raised her head, whereupon it dropped the letter into her lap. When she saw the seal, she trembled and became submissive, and thus she spoke what she spoke.

It is also said that in the roof there was a small aperture through which the sun would shine every day, and whenever she looked at it, she would prostrate. The hoopoe came and blocked it with its wings, so she noticed this and stood up toward it, and it cast the letter to her. She was a woman who could read and write, an Arab from the lineage of Ya'rub ibn Qahtan. It is famously held that she was from the lineage of Tubba' al-Himyari. Arabic script was in a state of extreme precision, mastery, and excellence during the era of the Tubba' rulers; this was known as the Himyarite script. In Himyar, there was a script called al-Musnad, its letters were distinct, and they forbade teaching it to anyone except by their permission. From Himyar, Mudar learned; some discussion on this has already preceded.

Ibn Khaldun favored the view that the inhabitants of al-Hirah learned Arabic writing from the Tubba' rulers and the Himyarites, and the people of the Hijaz learned it from them. The outward appearance of Bilqis being an Arab and her reading the letter dictates that the letter was in Arabic. Perhaps Solomon (peace be upon him) knew Arabic, even if he was not of the Arabs, and he who is taught the language of the birds is not unlikely to know the language of the Arabs, which is the most noble of languages. It is possible that he had someone who knew this, as well as others who knew different languages, as is the custom of kings to have those who speak several languages to translate for them what they need. It is also permissible that the letter was not in Arabic, but in Solomon’s own language and script—his script, as reported from Imam Ahmad al-Buni, was Kahni (priestly)—and Bilqis had someone who translated it for her and informed her of its contents. She gathered the nobles of her people, informed them of that, and consulted them, as the Almighty narrated from her when He said: "(She) said: O you nobles! Indeed, a noble letter has been cast to me..." and so on.

Solomon (peace be upon him) proceeding to write the letter to her in that manner is supported by the hoopoe’s statement: "And she has been given of all things," and a translator is among the things a monarch requires. Moreover, it is befitting of his status and majesty not to abandon his own language and imitate her in hers. It is also possible that she herself knew that script and therefore read the letter. The possibility that the letter was not in Arabic is argued by the fact that writing to her in Arabic would require prior knowledge of her condition, and he (peace be upon him) had not yet gained knowledge of it. This is countered by the argument that the hoopoe’s statement, "I have come to you from Sheba with certain news; I found a woman ruling over them," indicates that she was an Arab, for he (peace be upon him) is among those for whom the fact that Sheba were Arabs would not be hidden, and it is apparent that their queen was of them.

The letter is described as "noble" because it was sealed. In the Hadith, "The nobility of a letter is its sealing." In the commentary of Adab al-Katib, it is said: "You have honored the letter; it is noble if you seal it." Ibn al-Muqaffa' said: "Whoever writes a letter to his brother and does not seal it has belittled him." Ibn Abbas, Qatadah, and Zuhayr ibn Muhammad interpreted "noble" here as "sealed." In this, as has been said, is the recommendation to seal a letter due to the nobility of its contents and its honor, or due to the nobility of the sender, his exalted status, and his learning of that through hearsay, or because his letter was sealed with his name according to the custom of kings and great men, or because his messenger was a bird, or because he began it with the name of Allah, the Almighty, or because of the strangeness of the matter and its arrival to her in an unaccustomed manner. It is also said that she thought it was a heavenly book because the one who cast it was a bird—but this is nothing. The passive construction of "was cast" (ulqiya) is due to the lack of concern for the agent; some say it is because she was ignorant of him, or because he was considered lowly in her eyes.

The Great Sheikh (Ibn Arabi), may his secret be sanctified, said in al-Fusus: "Among the wisdom of Bilqis is that she did not mention who cast the letter to her. This was only so that her subjects would know that she had a connection to matters whose source they did not know. In this, there was a policy of hers that instilled caution of her within the people of her kingdom and her private administrators, and by this, she deserved to be mentioned before them." And the emphasis of the sentence is for the sake of the concern for the matter of the ruling.