ﲵ ﲶ ﲷ ﲸ ﲹ ﲺ ﲻ ﲼ ﲽ ﲾ ﲿ ﳀ ﳁ ﳂ ﳃ ﳄ
So when she arrived, it was said [to her], "Is your throne like this?" She said, "[It is] as though it was it." [Solomon said], "And we were given knowledge before her, and we have been Muslims [in submission to Allah].
Tafsir
Verse range: 27:41-43
{نكروا لها عرشها} Make it unrecognizable; alter its state and form, just as a man disguises himself from people so they do not recognize him. It is said: Expand it, reverse its front to its back, and its top to its bottom.
{أتهتدي} It is read with jazm (jussive) as a response to a conditional, and with rafʿ (nominative) as a new sentence. Does she find the way to recognize it? Or to the correct answer if asked about it? Or to the religion and faith in the prophethood of Solomon (peace be upon him) when she sees that clear miracle—the arrival of her throne, which she had left behind, locked, and guarded?
{أهذا عرشك} It is three words: the particle of alerting (a), the particle of comparison (ka), and the demonstrative pronoun (hadha). He did not say, "Is this your throne?" but rather, "Is it like this your throne?" so as not to prompt her.
{قالت كأنه هو} She did not say, "It is it," nor "It is not it." This is due to the soundness of her intellect regarding what is possible.
{وأوتينا العلم} This is from the speech of Solomon and his retinue. If you ask: To what is this speech conjoined, and what is it connected to? I say: Since the situation in which she was asked about her throne and answered as she did was a situation in which Solomon and his retinue would naturally say something appropriate, such as: "She has answered correctly and hit the mark; she is intelligent and wise, and she has been granted Islam, having known the power of God and the truth of prophethood through the signs that preceded the arrival of the messenger, and through this wondrous sign regarding her throne." They then conjoined to that their statement: "And we were given knowledge of God, His power, and the truth of what came from Him before her knowledge, and we have remained in the religion of Islam," as a way of thanking God for their superiority over her and their precedence in knowledge of God and Islam.
{وصدها} What prevented her from advancing to Islam was the worship of the sun and her upbringing among the disbelievers. It is also permissible that this is from the speech of Bilqis, connected to her statement: "It is as if it were it," meaning: "We were given knowledge of God, His power, and the truth of the prophethood of Solomon (peace be upon him) before this miracle or this situation," meaning: "What I perceived of the signs at the arrival of the messenger, and we entered into Islam." Then God Almighty said: "And her error in deviating from the straight path prevented her from what she had entered into before that." It is also said: God or Solomon prevented her from what she used to worship, with the omission of the preposition and the verb being made transitive. It is read as annaha (with a fatha), as a substitute for the subject of sadda (prevented), or in the sense of "because she."
{قيل لها ادخلي الصرح فلما رأته حسبته لجة وكشفت عن ساقيها قال إنه صرح ممرد من قوارير قالت رب إني ظلمت نفسي وأسلمت مع سليمان لله رب العالمين}
"It was said to her, 'Enter the palace.' But when she saw it, she thought it was a body of water and uncovered her shins. He said, 'Indeed, it is a palace made smooth from glass.' She said, 'My Lord, indeed I have wronged myself, and I submit with Solomon to God, Lord of the worlds.'"
