The Glass Floor: Solomon and the Queen of Sheba

Solomon is conducting a census of his armies — birds, jinn, and humans — when he notices that the hoopoe is missing. He threatens to punish it severely when it returns. The hoopoe arrives and pleads its case: it has news that Solomon does not have. There is a great kingdom in the south, ruled by a woman named Bilqis, the Queen of Sheba, and her people worship the sun instead of God.

Solomon sends a letter. He does not send an army first — he sends a letter, carried by the hoopoe: Be not arrogant toward me and come to me in submission. Bilqis convenes her advisors. They say they are mighty, but the decision is hers. She sends gifts, to see what Solomon is made of. Solomon sends the ambassadors back: Do you give me wealth? What God has given me is better than what He has given you. Return to your queen and tell her we are coming with forces she cannot meet.

Bilqis decides to come herself. Before she arrives, Solomon asks his court: who can bring her throne here before she comes in submission? One of the jinn offers to bring it by the end of the day. Then a man who had some knowledge of the Book speaks: I will bring it to you before your gaze returns to you. In the time it takes to blink, the throne stands before Solomon.

He orders it altered slightly — will she recognize it? She says: It is as though it were the same. She is canny, discreet, careful with her words.

Then comes the trick that has echoed through literature and architecture for three millennia. Solomon's palace has a floor of polished glass with water flowing beneath it. Bilqis, entering, thinks she is wading into a pool and lifts her skirts. Solomon tells her it is crystal. She stands still. Then she says it: My Lord, I have wronged myself, and I submit with Solomon to God.

The Quran closes the story there. She converts. Commentators for fourteen centuries have read the glass floor as a metaphor for spiritual illusion — mistaking what is temporal and material for the deep reality moving beneath it — and the moment of her seeing as the moment of enlightenment.