Surah An-Naml, The Ants

Surah 27 · 93 verses · revealed at Mecca

An-Naml is named after an ant that warns its colony to get out of the way of Solomon's army, and after Solomon who overhears it and smiles.

The surah holds the Qur'an's fullest account of Solomon and the queen of Sheba: the hoopoe that brings news of a people worshipping the sun, the letter sent and read out to her council, her refusal to decide without consulting them, the gift she sends and Solomon refuses, and her arrival at a floor of glass she mistakes for water. It is told with more detail and more attention to character than almost any other narrative in the book.

The queen is treated with unusual respect throughout. She is shown as careful, politically shrewd and willing to be persuaded, and the surah lets her speak for herself several times before she submits.

Around this sit shorter passages on Moses at the fire, on Thamud and the nine men who plotted in the city, and on Lot.

Its most quoted verse asks who it is that answers the distressed when they call and removes the harm, and makes people the inheritors of the earth. It is recited very widely in difficulty, and is one of the verses Muslims turn to when they do not know what else to say.

It also gives Solomon's own reaction when the queen's throne is set before him: that this is from the favour of his Lord, to test whether he is grateful or ungrateful, and that whoever is grateful is grateful for his own good. A king at the height of his power is shown reading his success as a trial rather than a reward.

Surah An-Naml on this site

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