I — The King Who Asked Impossible Questions

Suleiman — سليمان, Solomon in Hebrew — is one of the few figures whose story appears, in slightly different form, in every Abrahamic tradition. In the Hebrew Bible, he is the son of David, builder of the First Temple in Jerusalem, a king whose wisdom was described as greater than all wisdom in the east and Egypt. In Islamic tradition, he is a prophet — نبي — to whom God granted dominion not only over humans but over wind, animals, and the jinn. In the Quran, Surah An-Naml — the Chapter of the Ant — dedicates more verses to his encounter with the Queen of Sheba than to almost any other single narrative.

In all three traditions, Solomon is identified with a particular quality beyond his political power: he could not be deceived. He saw through appearances to what lay beneath them. He posed riddles that required genuine understanding to answer, not merely intelligence. He was, in the deepest sense of the word, someone whose judgment could not be purchased.

This quality — the incorruptibility of true wisdom — is exactly what the Queen of Sheba came to test. And it is exactly what made the gifts she brought something more interesting than tribute.

II — What She Brought and What He Did with It

The biblical account in 1 Kings 10 describes her arrival with precision: “a very great train, with camels that bore spices, and very much gold, and precious stones.” The Islamic account in Surah An-Naml is more nuanced about the purpose — in the Quranic narrative, the Queen (whose name is never given in the sacred text itself — Bilqis, بلقيس, comes from the commentary tradition) sends gifts not as tribute but as a test. She wants to know whether Solomon is a prophet or simply a powerful king.

Among the gifts that her caravans carried northward from Yemen to Jerusalem were the products her kingdom was famous for: frankincense, myrrh, the spices that Egypt and Greece and Persia could not produce themselves. And honey — the dark, dense, extraordinarily concentrated honey of the Sidr trees that grew in the same mountain valleys where her kingdom’s power was rooted. عسل السدر. Not generic honey. The honey of those specific mountains, produced by bees that had been kept by the same families for generations, from flowers that bloomed for a few weeks each year and gave what they gave without reservation.

Solomon returned the gifts. In the Quranic account, he told her emissaries: “Do you think to provide me with wealth? What God has given me is better than what He has given you.” He was not interested in her gold or her honey. He was interested in her.

III — The Kingdom That Made the Honey

To understand what the honey meant, you have to understand where it came from. The Kingdom of Saba — سبأ, Sheba — was centred around the ancient city of Marib in what is now Yemen. Its power rested on control of the frankincense and myrrh trade routes — the routes along which every gram of incense that reached the temples of Egypt, Greece, Persia, and Israel passed through Sabaean hands.

In the mountain valleys of this kingdom — in the Hadhramaut region, in the highlands above Aden — the Sidr tree grew in the same calcareous limestone soil where it grows today. At altitudes between 1,500 and 2,800 metres. In terrain so dry that the honey the bees produced had a moisture content below 17%. Concentrated, dense, with a flavour that lingered for minutes after tasting — warm, woody, with a caramel depth that the flat lowlands could not replicate.

This was the honey that went north with the Queen’s caravans. Not because it was plentiful — it was not. Not because it was cheap — it was not. Because it was the finest thing those mountains produced, and when you are presenting yourself to the wisest person on earth, you bring what is finest, not what is easiest.

IV — Solomon, Honey, and Wisdom in Tradition

The connection between Solomon and honey runs deeper than the Queen’s tribute. In Jewish tradition, the Book of Proverbs — attributed to Solomon — contains one of the oldest recorded comparisons of wisdom to honey: “My son, eat thou honey, because it is good, and the honeycomb, which is sweet to thy taste: So shall the knowledge of wisdom be unto thy soul.” The comparison is deliberate: wisdom is like honey because both are sweet, both are produced through sustained collective effort, and both are found by those who know where to look and have the patience to wait for them.

In Islamic tradition, the Quran’s Surah An-Nahl — the Chapter of the Bee — describes honey as a healing for humanity and as a sign of divine provision: “There comes forth from their bellies a drink of varying colours, wherein is healing for mankind.” This verse does not specifically connect to Solomon, but the cultural resonance between the Prophet-King who received honey from the Queen of the greatest honey-producing region on earth, and the Quranic designation of honey as something sacred and healing, runs through Islamic scholarship on both figures.

V — From Jerusalem to Sharjah

The honey that the Queen of Sheba carried northward to Solomon was produced in mountain valleys that still produce the world’s most celebrated Sidr honey today. Wadi Do’an in Yemen’s Hadhramaut Governorate — the source of what honey connoisseurs consider the finest Sidr on earth — sits within the ancient heartland of Saba. The Sidr trees that flower there today are the same species that flowered in those valleys three thousand years ago. The bees that make the honey — the native Apis mellifera jemenitica — are the descendants of the same native bee that worked those flowers when the Queen’s beekeepers were gathering honey for the royal tribute.

The same tree grows in the Hatta mountains on the border of Dubai and Oman — 105 kilometres from the city that has named a shopping mall after the explorer who crossed these same roads in the fourteenth century. The honey from Hatta was recognised at the London Honey Awards in 2022. It comes from trees that predate every building in the city around them.

Solomon received honey from the Queen of Sheba’s kingdom and returned it as unnecessary — he already had wisdom, which was worth more. What he could not return was the memory of it. Three thousand years later, the honey is still being produced. The wisdom of not wasting it is the same.