وَ دَاوٗدَ And Dawud وَ سُلَیْمٰنَ and Sulaiman اِذْ when یَحْكُمٰنِ they judged فِی concerning الْحَرْثِ the field اِذْ when نَفَشَتْ pastured فِیْهِ in it غَنَمُ sheep الْقَوْمِ ۚ (of) a people وَ كُنَّا and We were لِحُكْمِهِمْ to their judgment شٰهِدِیْنَۗۙ witness فَفَهَّمْنٰهَا And We gave understanding of it سُلَیْمٰنَ ۚ (to) Sulaiman وَ كُلًّا and (to) each اٰتَیْنَا We gave حُكْمًا judgment وَّ عِلْمًا ؗ and knowledge وَّ سَخَّرْنَا And We subjected مَعَ with دَاوٗدَ Dawud الْجِبَالَ the mountains یُسَبِّحْنَ (to) glorify Our praises وَ الطَّیْرَ ؕ and the birds وَ كُنَّا And We were فٰعِلِیْنَ the Doers وَ عَلَّمْنٰهُ And We taught him صَنْعَةَ (the) making لَبُوْسٍ (of) coats of armor لَّكُمْ for you لِتُحْصِنَكُمْ to protect you مِّنْۢ from بَاْسِكُمْ ۚ your battle فَهَلْ Then will اَنْتُمْ you شٰكِرُوْنَ (be) grateful وَ لِسُلَیْمٰنَ And to Sulaiman الرِّیْحَ the wind عَاصِفَةً forcefully تَجْرِیْ blowing بِاَمْرِهٖۤ by his command اِلَی to الْاَرْضِ the land الَّتِیْ which بٰرَكْنَا We blessed فِیْهَا ؕ [in it] وَ كُنَّا And We are بِكُلِّ of every شَیْءٍ thing عٰلِمِیْنَ Knowers 21. Al-Anbya Page 329 وَ مِنَ And of الشَّیٰطِیْنِ the devils مَنْ (were some) who یَّغُوْصُوْنَ would dive لَهٗ for him وَ یَعْمَلُوْنَ and would do عَمَلًا work دُوْنَ other than ذٰلِكَ ۚ that وَ كُنَّا And We were لَهُمْ of them حٰفِظِیْنَۙ Guardians
(21:78) We bestowed the same favour upon David and Solomon. Recall, when they gave judgement regarding a tillage into which the sheep of some people had strayed at night, and We were witnesses to their judgement.
(21:79) We guided Solomon to the right verdict, and We had granted each of them70 judgement and knowledge. We made the mountains and the birds celebrate the praise of Allah71 with David. It was We Who did all this.
(21:80) It was We Who taught him the art of making coats of mail for your benefit so that it may protect you from each other's violence.72 Do you, then, give thanks?73
(21:81) And We subdued the strongly raging wind to Solomon which blew at his bidding towards the land We blessed.74 We know everything.
(21:82) And We subdued many devils who dived (into the sea) for him and carried out other jobs besides that. We kept watch over all of them.75
70. This incident is not mentioned in the Bible. Nor do we find any trace of it in Judaic literature.
According to Muslim commentators on the Qur’an, the incident described relates to an episode when someone’s herd of goats trespassed on to another person’s field at night. The aggrieved person petitioned the Prophet David, who decided that the goats should be taken from their owner and given to the aggrieved person. The Prophet Solomon, on the other hand, disagreed with this judgement, holding that the goats should only be retained by the aggrieved party until the field was restored to its original state by the owner of the goats. . (See the comments of Ibn Kathir and al-Qurtubi on_verses 78-9 in their respective Commentaries — Ed.).
The Qur’an, however, does not provide any details about this case, nor is: there any direct information about the matter in the Hadith. Since such details are absent from the Qur’an and cannot be corroborated on the authority of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be on him) in Hadith, it cannot be said with certainty, therefore, what the authoritative Islamic position on the question is.
This accounts for the variety of opinions of Hanafi, Shafi‘, Maliki and other Muslim jurists on the question of whether the owner of the goats should be penalized if his herd damages a field; and what penalty if any is to be levied, i.e. the quantum and mode of such a penalty.
Mention of this particular incident as it relates to David and Solomon just goes to emphasize that even though Prophets are endowed by God. with extraordinary powers and abilities, they still remain hun.an beings and do not partake of His Divinity. In this particular case, when God did not provide any guidance to David through revelation, the father’s own decision was incorrect.
On the other hand, God provided Solomon with the right decision. This. is significant in so far as both David and Solomon were Prophets. It is also noteworthy that both these Prophets have been referred to as individuals endowed with great personal qualities, conferred upon them by God, but this did not make them equal to God. Incidentally, the above verse also establishes that if two judges rule on a case and find differently, and regardless that only one judgement is correct, both judges will be considered vindicated in their rulings provided they have the necessary qualifications, knowledge and experience, needed for judging that case. This point is elaborated upon in traditions from the Prophet (peace be on him). In a tradition on the authority of ‘Amr ibn al-As it is reported that the Prophet (peace be on him) said: ‘If a magistrate judges, exerting himself to the full, and arrives at the right judgement he. will receive twice the reward whereas if he judges, exerting himself to the full, but errs in his judgement, he will receive a single reward.’ (See Abu Da’ud and Ibn Majah.) A tradition from: Buraydah mentions that the Prophet (peace be on him) said: ‘Judges are of three kinds: one of them will go to Paradise while the other two will go to Hell. He who discerns the truth and decides the case accordingly, will go to Paradise. However, he who discerns the truth and yet decides otherwise will go to Hell.
Likewise, those judges who decide cases without the necessary knowledge will also go to Hell.’ (See Abu Da’ud, Sunan, K. al-Aqdiyah, ‘Bab fi al- Qadiukhti’ Ibn Majah, Sunan, K. al-Ahkam, ‘Bab al-Hakim yajtahid fa yusib al-Haqq’ — Ed.)
71. The words used here are (with David) rather than (‘for David’). In other words, the mountains and the birds, along with David, were made subservient; not that the mountains and birds were subservient to David.
As a result, the mountains and the birds together with David celebrated the glory of God. The same point has been made elsewhere in the Qur’an: ‘It is We Who made the mountains subservient along with him: they celebrate Our praise at eventide and at the break of the day, and the birds were mustered together, each turning [to Allah]’ (Sad 38: 18-19). This is further explained by another verse: ‘We commanded the mountains to celebrate Our glory with him; and also the birds’ (Saba’ 34: 10).
The point which emerges from those passages is that when the Prophet David was saying his hymns, the mountains echoed with his loud, melodious - voice, causing the birds to suspend their flight just as if his voice had cast a spell upon them. This notion is further borne out by the following hadith: ‘Once, when Abu Musa al-Ash‘ari, who had an exceptionally melodious voice was reciting the Qur’an, the Prophet Muhammad (peace be on him) passed by and stopped at hearing the recitation. He listened to him for a while, and when he [i.e. Abu Musa] had finished, the Prophet exclaimed: ‘*He has a portion of Davud’s melodies”
72. This point is further elaborated upon in Sarah Saba’: ‘We made the iron soft for him [David] and commanded him: make coats of mail, balancing well the rings of the chain armor’ (Saba’ 34: 10-11). Thus we learn that God granted David complete mastery over iron, especially for military purposes. In the light of the historical and archaeological information these verses can be explained as follows: The Iron Age began somewhere between 1200 B.C. and 1000 B.C. which was the time of the Prophet Davud. The Hittites, inhabitants of Syria and Asia Minor, who had their hey-day during the period 2000 B.C. to 1200 B.C., were the first to invent techniques for melting and manufacturing iron; an expertise which they kept a closely-guarded secret. The iron that was thus made was, however, extremely expensive — like gold and silver and consequently the requisite techniques were not widely used. Later on, the Philistines also acquired this knowledge but they too kept it a closely-guarded secret. Before Saul’s accession to the throne, the Hittites and Philistines had continually defeated the Israelites and had almost driven them out of Palestine. According to the Bible, one of the factors which had ensured their superiority was their use of chariots and other weapons manufactured from iron (Joshua 17: 16; Judges 1: 19 and 4: 2-3). When Saul, under God’s command, became ruler in 1020 B.C., he crushed the Hittites and Philistines and recovered a major portion of Palestine. The Prophet David (1004 B.C.-965 B.C.) extended the Israelite domain to the rest of Palestine to Transjordan and a major part of Syria.
It was during this period that melting techniques, thus far only known to the Hittites and Philistines, were disclosed. Within a short period of time, other techniques of iron-manufacturing produced inexpensive iron, as a result of which iron products were manufactured and commonly used. Edom, in the southern part of Palestine, is immensely rich in iron ore. Recent archaeological excavations show at several places remnants of furnaces obviously used for melting and moulding iron. Indeed, a furnace excavated near Ezion-Geber, a port on the Gulf of Aqaba in the days of the Prophet Solomon, appears to have been built, on the very same principles. which are employed to. this day in blast furnaces. Quite naturally, Davud would have used this discovery of iron for military purposes since it was armor manufactured from this metal which in the then recent past, had created such difficulties for the Israelites.
73. For further details about Davud see al-Baqarah 2: 251, and Bani Isra’ il 17, nn. 7 and 63.
74. This is elaborated elsewhere in the Qur’an thus: ‘And We subjected the wind to Solomon: its early morning stride was a month’s journey, and its evening stride was a month’s journey’ (Saba’ 34: 12). Alternatively: “We subjected the wind to him to flow gently to his order, whithersoever he willed’ (Sad 38: 36). , We, thus, know that the Prophet Solomon (peace be on him) was granted control over the wind and that this greatly facilitated his voyages to places lying as far as a month’s sea-journey away; the wind favoring him both on his outward as well as return journeys. We learn both from Biblical sources and from modern researches that Solomon (peace be on him) embarked on large-scale naval expeditions. His fleet-sailing from Ezion-Geber through the Red Sea to Yemen, and to-countries lying to the south and east of his empire.
Similarly, another of Solomon’s fleets, called Tharashish in the Bible, operated at ports on the Mediterranean Sea and in Western countries.
The furnace which Solomon had built at Ezion-Geber for melting and molding iron ore was substantial — no other furnace of like size has so far been discovered anywhere in Eastern Asia or the Middle East. Archaeologists believe that the ore used in this furnace was brought from the iron and copper mines of ‘Araban in Edom. The iron and copper ore melted in this furnace was used for ship-building and for other purposes. This would, thus, seem to explain the meaning of the Qur’anic verse: ‘And We caused molten copper to flow for Solomon’ (Saba’ 34: 12).
This historical background also enables us to grasp what is meant by Solomon’s ‘mastery over the wind’. Sea voyages in those days were totally dependent upon favourable winds. And with God’s special favor Solomon’s fleet always enjoyed favorable winds. If Solomon enjoyed control over the wind so that he could order it to move in the direction he wished, as is implied in the Qur’anic statement ape: a (‘it blew at his bidding’, verse 81) this could only have been conferred upon him by God — such a task not being difficult for God. Furthermore, since God Himself granted Solomon this authority, it need not vex us here.
75. The point is thus elaborated in Surah Saba’: “There were jinns that worked in front of him by the permission of his Lord and if any of them turned aside from God’s command, God made him taste of the penalty of the Blazing Fire. They worked for him as he desired, making arches, images, basons as large as reservoirs, and cooking cauldrons fixed in their places: ‘Work you, sons of David; with thanks; but few of My servants are grateful!’’ Then, when We decreed Solomon’s death, nothing showed them his death except a little worm of the earth, which kept gnawing away at his staff; so when he fell down, the jinn saw plainly that if they had’ known the unseen, they would not have tarried in the humiliating penalty’ (Saba’ 34: 12-14).
This verse makes it quite plain that the satans who had been made subservient to the Prophet Solomon (peace be on him) and who performed many tasks for him, were, in fact, jinn. They were the same jinn who, according to the beliefs of Arab polytheists, had knowledge of those realms beyond sense-perception. If one studies the Qur’an with open eyes, and with a mind free of all biases and preconceived notions, it is clear what the Qur’an means when it uses the term ‘satans’ without any qualification, what those creatures are whom it refers to as jinn. It is also clear what kind of-jinn were considered by the polytheists of Arabia to possess knowledge of those realms beyond sense-perception.
Modern commentators on the Qur’an have gone to extreme lengths to prove that the jinn and satans who had been put under the Prophet Solomon’s control were in fact men from neighboring nations. The words of the Qur’an, however, exclude all such far-fetched interpretations. Additionally, wherever this story is recounted in the Qur’an, it occurs in a context and a style which leaves no grounds for such an interpretation. If the masons employed by Solomon were indeed human beings, then what prompted the Qur’an to mention those same masons in such an exceptional manner? For man’s ability to erect buildings, ranging from the pyramids of ancient Egypt to the skyscrapers of present-day New York, is well-known. And if it is human beings who are referred to here as jinn, what prince or business tycoon has not enjoyed the services of such ‘jinn’ and ‘satans’?