Ideas - Legends and facts of the shapeshifting Queen of Sheba

Episode Date: April 6, 2026

The Queen of Sheba is a holy figure to some; a demon in disguise to others. Her indelible presence has haunted religious scholars and fuelled nationalist visions in East Africa and Southern Arabia. IDEAS explores the many afterlives of the Queen of Sheba — and how ideas about gender and power have shifted in each retelling of her life.Guest in this episode:Shahla Haeri is a professor of anthropology and a former director of the Women's Studies Program at Boston University, and one of the pioneers of Iranian anthropology. Her books include Law of Desire: Temporary Marriage in Shi'i Iran, No Shame for the Sun: Lives of Professional Pakistani Women and The Unforgettable Queens of Islam: Succession, Authority, Gender.Jillian Stinchcomb is a director's visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey working as a postdoctoral fellow in the "Interactive Histories, Co-Produced Communities: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam" project. In 2020, she defended her dissertation, "Remembering the Queen of Sheba in the First Millennium," a reception history of the Queen of Sheba across Jewish, Muslim, and Christian texts from the biblical to the early medieval period. She works with material in Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, Greek, Latin, and Ge'ez.Safia Aidid is an interdisciplinary historian of modern Africa and an assistant professor at the University of Toronto. Her research addresses anticolonial nationalism, territorial imaginations, borders, and state formation in the Horn of Africa, with a particular focus on modern Somalia and Ethiopia.Eyob Derillo is a reference specialist in the Reading Room of Africa and Asian Studies at the British Library, and previously served as curator for the library's Ethiopic and Ethiopian Collections. He is a Ph.D. student at the School of Oriental and African Studies, focusing on the history of Ethiopian magic.Yousra Ishaq is a director and producer in Yemen, facilitating local productions and coordinating multinational teams including international media outlets such as the BBC and PBS. In 2017, she co-founded the Yemen-based film foundation and production company, Comra Films.

We all have bad days and sometimes bad weeks and maybe even bad years. But the good news is we don't have to figure out life all alone. I'm comedian Chris Duffy, host of Ted's How to Be a Better Human podcast. And our show is about the little ways that you can improve your life, actual practical tips that you can put into place that will make your day to day better. Whether it is setting boundaries at work or rethinking how you clean your house, each episode has conversations with experts who share tips on how to navigate life's ups and downs. Find how to be a better human wherever you're listening to this.

This is a CBC podcast. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyed. She's been written about in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Quran. Celebrated in music by Handel. Beyonce. And the Nala, Sister Naruba, Hoshun Kwin-Shiba, I am the mother. And the Dalidots. Her story has been told.

told on stage by Barnum and Bailey, and on screen by Gina Lola Brigida and Halliberry. I will sit at the feet of Solomon, like the wise man who flock to Jerusalem. And perhaps I will learn from his own lips, the way to destroy him. She is a holy figure to some, a demon in disguise to others.

And Sheba, the wild warrior queen of the battlefields. The voluptuary of the perfumed bar. A wise woman with unparalleled diplomatic skills in certain accounts and a vanglorious seductress in other retellings of her story. Her indelible presence has haunted religious scholars and fueled nationalist and imperial visions in East Africa and Southern Arabia. In the storytelling, you see almost a fusion of imperial power, you see religion. Even her name is a shapeshifter.

The queen of Sheba is Bill Kis in Yemen, Mecheda in Ethiopia. It's hard to find a woman who has bridged as many cultures and survived as many attempts to destroy her reputation. She saves herself and her people. But this has been completely forgotten by the exodus. and the biographers, who seem to have been fixated on the sexual dynamics. Author and University of British Columbia Journalism Professor Kamala Sulele, brings us this documentary about one of antiquities' most mysterious women.

We're calling this episode the many afterlives of the Queen of Shiba. As someone who was born in Aden to a Yemeni family, I grew up hearing about the Queen of Shiba. She was consistently upheld as a powerful woman from our homeland's ancient past. She represented civilization, power, wealth beyond compare, many things that contemporary Yemen lacked. She appears in the Quran, which made her real, divine, and beyond questioning. I can't say that I've thought much about her over the decades, but that all changed about five years ago. I always go back to the fact that Yemen was once ruled by Queens.

That's my niece, Yusra, a journalist and TV producer based in Sana, the capital of Yemen. In 2018, she was interviewed by New York Magazine about life as a woman in a war zone. Yemen used to be ruled by Queens, she told the reporter. I hope one day this country goes back to normal and we lead. It's interesting that she was once ruled. ruling this country, while this particular moment we don't have our 100% freedom as women. Your stress vision of the Queen of Sheba as a powerful feminist icon stayed with me, because today she's often remembered as a beauty icon instead.

Take this wildly anachronistic commercial, where the Queen of Sheba, here known as Bilkis, is used to advertise a beauty. clinic in Sanaa. Oh, oh, where do you see a friend? Egyptian Queen Nebertitti takes a selfie,

then calls the Queen of Shiba in a state of panic. I'm ruined, she cries. My body is sagging, my face is wrinkled, and I'm becoming hairy. Hello? Belis, alhaini.

Neverteite, he's. Malle's. Calm down, Boki says. Come to Sanaa and everything will be fine. Come to Sanaa, oh, my God.

Have you seen that commercial that talks about Bilkisan? Have you seen it? What do you think of it? This is Yostra and her friends talking about the images of the Queen of Shiba in popular Arabic culture. This was my first issue with the conversation. The fact that Belgeese was a political leader.

But with all women political leaders, It's always about the looks, how she wore her clothes, who fell in love with her. The general conception of these people is never what they did as a political leaders. I think most of the stories that we've heard is also the same thing with the Suleiman. Yeah, that he fell in love with her. That's what I was going to say. Maybe it's like that with women, whatever they are and whatever field they're walking. And beauty is still there.

And the issue is at times it's the only thing that is shown. There was two stories in Quran about political leaders. One was a negative one. It was about Pharaoh, the pharaoh, the Egyptian pharaoh. The other one was Bill Peace. The positive ones. And it said very clearly that she ruled with democracy. So this is very interesting.

What interested me more than the scholars were ordinary, quote-unquote, of course, women who seemed to have, in fact, taken her role as a leading guide for themselves. My name is Shahla Hairi, and I'm a professor of anthropology at Boston University. I was born in Iran and raised in Tehran until I finished high school, and then I came to Boston. So I've lived here ever since then, although I do visit Tehran and Iran every time that I get a chance. The first woman who seriously drew my attention to her was a woman in her veil in Iran, whom I was interviewing for a video documentary I was making on some Iranian women who had nominated themselves as presidential candidates in 2001. One, the first thing she told me, she said, look, we have in the Quran a woman, the queen of Sheba, who ruled her country and her people. Of course, that's important for us. She assumed legitimacy for herself on the basis of what's in the Quran.

I wanted to understand how the story of the Queen of Sheba has morphed over the years, how the same figure who inspires women in Iran and Yemen has also been recast as a demonic seduct. So I return to the earliest accounts of her life in the Hebrew Bible and the Quran. Both accounts revolve around her meeting with Solomon, son of David and King of the Israelites, in Jerusalem sometime roughly between 900 and 1,000 BC. The Hebrew Bible rendition is the oldest. It's also the briefest. When the Queen of Shiba heard about the fame of Solomon and his relationship, to the Lord, she came to test Solomon with hard riddles.

Arriving at Jerusalem with a very great caravan, with camels carrying spices, large quantities of gold and precious stones, she came to Solomon and talked with him about all that she had on her mind. What does the Hebrew Bible, I'm thinking particularly the Book of Kings and Chronicles, actually tell us about the encounter between King Solomon and the Queen of Shiba. What do we know, what don't we know, just from those two texts? What we are told is that the Queen of Shiba heard reports about Solomon and came of her own initiative to see him for herself and to test him with hard riddles.

Hedot is the term in Hebrew. My name is Dr. Gillian Stinchcombe and I am a researcher in biblical studies and Jewish studies. My dissertation project was a reception history of the Queen of Sheba, and I'm currently working on a book that looks at the Queen of Sheba between the Bible and the Kevernagast. And currently, I'm a researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. I would say that the sort of equality of their stature is indicated by the fact that she comes to test him with hard riddles. To me, that's really crucial, because you don't test someone who's superior to you, right? That's not how testing really works. I mean, I guess maybe if you have a toddler, you might say that they test you all the time.

But the fact that she comes to test him in order to see him and to really hear if the reports are true. She asked him all these questions. He answered her forthrightly. Solomon answered all her questions. Nothing was too hard for the king to explain to her. And then we are told that she gives him these. sort of effusive blessings. Not even half was told me.

In wisdom and wealth, you have far exceeded the report I heard. How happier people must be. Praise be to the Lord your God who has delighted in you and placed you on the throne of Israel. Gives him a host of gifts, and the Bible is really interested in telling us that she was sort of remarkably wealthy. Never again were so many spices brought in as those the Queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon. So what does her wealth,

does her wealth tell us anything about her political power? That's a good question, because money talks, right? You know, presumably her wealth does give her political power. I would say that her wealth is probably why her function, as an external witness to Solomon's greatness matters so much. That is the Queen of Sheba's true function in the Hebrew Bible. The fact that such a wealthy monarch is so impressed with Solomon, who at this point in history was relatively unknown,

means the reader should be impressed with him too. What we are not told is her name, what she looks like, anything about the land of Sheba, political governance, how it came to be ruled by a queen, nothing along those lines. The Queen of Sheba also goes on. unnamed in the Quran. There are several women mentioned in the Quran, but none has been named except for Mary, mother, of Jesus.

All other women, about 20, 23 of them, who have been mentioned in the Quran, they are contextualized within the kinship and marriage relations. They're identified as the wife of so-and-so, daughter of so-and-so, mother of so-and-so. The only woman who's also unnamed, but it's been identified is the queen of Shiva by her position. That's who she was.

She was a Meleke, a queen, and that is very important. And God had given her everything, everything, everything, including a mighty throne. And what is important is the word used for her mighty throne is exactly the same word that is used for God's celestial throne. Arshah azim. So she has that, meaning that she's legitimately a leader, right? And the powerful one at that, which seems to throw of Solomon, who commanded the natural and supernatural worlds like no other. According to the Quran, King Solomon had the ability to communicate with all animals,

from ants underground to birds in the sky. One day he notices one of his birds is missing, and he threatens to punish it severely. When he asked the bird where it was, the bird replies that he's just flown back from the land of Shiba, a land ruled by a heretical queen with a magnificent throne. I found her and her people prostrating to the sun instead of Allah, for Satan has made their deeds appealing to them,

hindering them from the right way and leaving them unguided. Solomon said, we will see whether you are telling the truth or lying. Go with this letter of mine and deliver it to them. Then stand aside and see how they will respond. Is that response that says the Queen of Sheba in a league of her own? As wise as she is, she realizes that this is a very important letter and she realizes that the threat in that letter, which says, actually the letter says, Actually, the letter says, come, submit, or be destroyed.

In the name of Allah, the most compassionate, most merciful. Do not be arrogant with me, but come to me, fully submitting to Allah. So she realizes that she has to find out a way of dealing with that because the thread is very real. So she consult her advisors, who happened to be only men. Oh, chiefs, advise me in this matter of mine, for I would never make any decision. without you. And it's amazing what they say. They say, look, we are men of war. We are willing to follow your order. Tell us what to do and we wage battle royal on your behalf. She says, no. When kings attack a village, a place, they subject their people to misery.

When kings invade a land, they ruin it. and debase its nobles. That is what was amazing to me. As I read the story over and over and over again and read the stories of the exegites, the biographers, the storytellers, I was dumbfounded of how smart, how caring, how wise she was, and how little attention by the exeges,

by the biographers have been paid to that part of her actions, her leadership, which it is. highlighted in the Quran. She was a wise leader, and she saved her people from unnecessary violence and destruction, right? She says, no, I am not going to allow that happen to my people. But I will certainly send him a gift and see what response my envoys will return with. King Solomon rejects her gift on the grounds that what God has created him is far greater than anything the queen can give him. He sends the envoy back with a warning. that he would mobilize his forces against the land of Sheba.

So she goes on an act of diplomacy herself. Not only does King Solomon summon the queen of Sheba to his court, he also arranges for her mighty throne to be brought to him in a blink of an eye. Then Solomon plays a little trick on her. He paves the hole to his palace with glass. When she saw the hall, she thought it was a body of water, so she bared her leg. Only to realize that this is not water, but glass.

Realizing her mistake in terms of understanding one reality for the other, so she says, God, I have wronged myself, and I submit to God of Solomon, not to Solomon, but to God of Solomon. At last she declared, my Lord, I have certainly wronged. wronged my soul. Now I fully submit myself, along with Solomon, to Allah, the Lord of all worlds. Yes, we all surrender to God. It doesn't mean that she's been completely dominated by Solomon. And from then on, her individuality, her psychology, her very being is being controlled by Solomon. No, I don't think that's the case. She surrenders just like we surrender to God to our faith.

not submit in a more physical sexual sense. Whether there is any of that in the Quran, you know, it's really not clear, I mean, other than the fact that we have a man and a woman. Now, they automatically assume there's got to be sexual dynamics there, and then they go on and on and on with that. The relationship between the Queen of Sheba and Solomon has become central to her mythology and cultural footprint. She exists in relation to the king.

In the Hebrew Bible, there's a line about King Solomon meeting all the queen's desires. King Solomon gave the queen of Shiba all she desired and asked for. But that can be a reference to material or spiritual needs. Rather than forming a relationship with him, she exits the text. Then she left and returned with her retinue to her own country. She sort of disappears into the unknown at the moment. the end of this, right? We don't see her ever again. So there are what I would call loud silences around this figure who's fascinating for coming and meeting Solomon as a fellow monarch,

but as a woman in all of these weird ways. And by presenting these narratives with these loud silences around them, they're sort of breathing room for exegetes and interpreters to sort of project their own creativity and to have space to think with this figure. And so when they are remembering her or reimagining her or reformulating her, there's not too many constricting bounds and they can take it in a variety of directions, which is precisely what we see in the post-Coronic period. And so the floodgates open to the era of the exegetes, the interpreters of passages in holy texts like the Bible or the Quran.

It is here that we begin to see the Queen of Shiva use as a vehicle for other people's ideas about gender and the natural order. For her male biographers, she becomes a transgressive figure whose body is vetted and controlled, and whose life is modified to make room for male power. The wildest retelling of the Queen's encounter with King Solomon from the Jewish tradition appears in the Targumshini to the Book of Esther, the second Aramaic translation of the Book of Esther. It was most likely written in the late 7th or early 8th century. One time, when K. Solomon was under the influence of too much wine, he issued invitations to all the kings of the East and the West.

It shares some details with the Quranic narrative, the missing bird, the sun-worshipping queen, and a threatening letter from Solomon. Know that the beasts of the field are my generals. The birds in the sky are my riders, and the demons, spirits and liliths are my contingent, who will strangle you in your beds. The beasts will slay you in the field. and the birds will eat your flesh. But in this version, when the queen arrives at Solomon's court,

the glass pathway is a ruse. It's a trick to reveal whether or not she has hairy legs. Solomon's response is immediate and harsh. You're a beautiful woman, but hairiness is for men. You look absolutely disgraceful. In some versions, the Queen of Shiva's legs aren't just hairy. They're the legs of a donkey. Let's just talk a little bit about the whole idea of her having the legs of a donkey,

because it's a bizarre intersection between demonology in one level and gender and what's expected of women. But also, you have the kind of the animalistic part of it as well. Yeah, absolutely. So Solomon had been associated with female demons who have, had hair or donkey legs hidden underneath their skirts since probably the 4th century CE, where there's a text called the Testament of Solomon that describes Solomon interacting with one such demon. It's not until we get to the writings of Altaburi, who is a Muslim polymath historian Exeat. He wrote exegetical literature as well. He records traditions that say that maybe the Queen of Sheba was someone,

was a woman who had donkey legs underneath her skirts. She's ruling her country. She has all these men who are following here. She has the people who are very satisfied with her. Everything, everything. So nobody is dissatisfied with them. Now, for the exegiate, storytellers, biographers, to understand that and then to make that, to allow that to be propagated is a big deal. They're not going to do that. Yet at the same time, because it is revelations to Prophet Muhammad. Revelations are words of God. They had to deal with it. One way. fair enough. By the time Muslim scholar Ahmed bin Muhammad Atalabi takes hold of the story in the 11th century in his classic Tafsir or interpretation of the Quran, the queen of Shiba, now known as Bilkis, acquires supernatural lineage as the daughter of a Yemeni king and a jinn. In Arabic mythology, the jinn are powerful spirits capable of taking on different shapes and have the free will to be good or evil. Bilkis's father was a king, possessing great influence, ruler of all the Yemen he would proclaim to the provincial dynasts,

there is not one among you who is my equal. As he refused to marry among their people, they paired him off to a woman of the Jin called Rehana bin Talshukra. Her mother was a Jin princess and then there's a story there. And then Ibn Arabi says, no, well, maybe it was her father who was a Jin. Whatever that was, it is to say that she's not a human. She's neither a man nor a woman. Her legs are hairy, symbolic of her masculine characteristics. Her mother was a gin or her father was a gin. So the jinns helped her to be powerful in one way or another. So to say that she's really outside of patriarchal order of gender relations. In some ways, this goes back to the earliest portrayals in the Hebrew Bible, where she sort of comes from beyond the edge of the map, so to speak.

In these later sources where she is presented as this sort of frightening female monarch as opposed to a sort of positive female monarch, it seems really clear that it's precisely the mixture of the known and the unknown that she embodies really strongly. That is one of the things that is so intimidating or maybe off-putting or viewed negatively by these later figures. Because the thing about monsters, right, is monsters are not totally opposite to anything we can know. maybe in sort of lovecraft's horror or lovecraftian horror where the, you know, the absolute other emerges into reality and it's sort of brain-breaking. But by and far with monsters, monsters are not absolute other. They're right on the edge of the familiar and the unfamiliar. And that's what makes them so intriguing to people, why some people, you know, find monsters sexy, et cetera, et cetera. It's that liminality of being on the edge of the known and the unknown that makes monsters such powerful figures. And that's precisely what the Queen of Shiba sort of always has been,

even when she wasn't portrayed as monstrous. The Queen of Shiba's hairy legs symbolize a breakaway from the natural order. But Solomon finds a way to bring her back to it. In some renditions, he offers her a hair removal cream before he sleeps with her. The king immediately perceived her to be exceedingly beautiful. As she was unmarried, he spoke of love. playing with her. But when he heard that she was the daughter of a gin and thus had hairy legs, he said, what shall I do? This is from the Yemenite tale of Sadia Ben Joseph from the 18th century.

He sent her cosmetics and a debilatory, which she used in making herself ready. She came to him, and he lay with her. On Ideas, you've been listening to the many afterlose. lives of the Queen of Shiba. We're a podcast and a broadcast heard on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, across North America, on Sirius XM, in Australia, on ABC Radio National, and around the world at cbc.ca.ca slash ideas. You can find us on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nala Ayyed. We all have bad days and sometimes bad weeks, and maybe even bad years. But the good

good news is we don't have to figure out life all alone. I'm comedian Chris Duffy, host of Ted's How to Be a Better Human podcast. And our show is about the little ways that you can improve your life, actual practical tips that you can put into place that will make your day to day better. Whether it is setting boundaries at work or rethinking how you clean your house, each episode has conversations with experts who share tips on how to navigate life's ups and downs. Find how to be a better human wherever you're listening to this. The Queen of Sheba has worn many faces. She's been portrayed as a powerful and benevolent ruler, a seductress, and as an otherworldly donkey-legged creature.

The early stories about her are thin on details. She comes from beyond the edge of the map, a figure whose origins are shrouded in mystery. She's portrayed as a monster, a half-deemon, a half-gin, sort of whatever. have you, sort of hidden in plain sight, who comes into view. And by working on this sort of simultaneously known but unknowable register, I think that is one of the factors alongside the silence of the scriptural accounts that makes her so potent for people to think with. Throughout history, people have used the story of the Queen of Sheba as a vehicle to express other ideas, ideas about gender and power, but also about empowerment.

higher and nation. That's most visible in a revered 14th century text from Ethiopia called the Kibernagest. It's oftentimes called the national epic of Ethiopia. And this comes to legitimize then the Solomonic dynasty, which continues until 1974. And so this claim to religious legitimacy, this claim to political legitimacy through and mediated through the story of King Solomon and the Queen of Shiba, offers a sort of religious justification and political justification for power. Ideas contributor Kamala Sulele brings us this documentary

about the many lives and afterlives of the Queen of Sheba. And the Queen said unto her subjects, ye who are my people, listen to my words, for I desire wisdom, and my heart seeketh to find understanding. The Cabernagas is the origin story for a family, a dynasty, and the nation. And as an origin story, it diverges from the Hebrew Bible and the Quran in several crucial ways. Here, the Queen of Shiva is not an exotic other from a faraway land.

She's the Black Queen of a Black Kingdom, a wise and gracious leader who identifies with her people. It's not the first text to portray her as an African queen, but it's the longest, and most significant. The text foregrounds are wisdom, as well as their relationship with Solomon. I am smitten with the love of wisdom, for wisdom is far better than treasures of gold and silver, and wisdom is the best of everything

that have been created on the earth. You see this very intelligent lady who is informed about the wisdom of Solomon, not that his country is rich or he's very powerful, but how he's able to govern with intelligence or, as they say, Tabab and Amharic, which is equivalent to wisdom, but much more than wisdom. My name is Iope Derrilo. I'm currently working at the British Library as a reference specialist in the Reading Room of Africa and Asian Studies. I was previously the curator for the Ethiopic collection.

And I'm also currently completing my PhD at the School of Oriental on Africa. African studies where I am focusing on the history of Ethiopian magic. And the text reads, Listen to my story. I'm searching for knowledge. And I have fallen in love with wisdom. It's as if a bee has stung her. It is like seeking wisdom.

And she says, I am also tied by the rope of wisdom. I'm not there's this amazing dialogue she has and she discusses with him and she explains her interest in wanting to learn about his religion, a very philosophical, very thinking person. Makeda I look upon thee and I see that thy wisdom is immeasurable and thine understanding inexhaustible and that it is like unto a lamp in the darkness. Solomon replies, Wisdom and understanding spring from thee thyself. As for me, I only possess them in the measure in which the God of Israel hath given them to me, because I asked and entreated them from him.

And thou, although thou dost not know the God of Israel, has this wisdom which thou hast made to grow in thy heart. This mutual admiration society takes a strange turn shortly after. She promised Solomon she would take nothing from his house without explicit permission from him, and then he fed her spicy food, but didn't give her water. And so when she woke up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water, he says, you know, you took something from my house without my asking, and that means that I can request something from you, and so we request a sexual relationship.

The text actually describes this sort of debate between the two of them as being very philosophical. because she asks, you know, it's just water. And he says, what more wealth is there? What's more important than water? We can look askance at the questions of consent raised by this issue. But the text views it positively because she becomes pregnant and gives birth to her son, Menelik I first after she comes home to Ethiopia. And Menelik I first is the first ruler of the Solomonic House.

So this is the reading where I do not feel comfortable. Because, you know, he does seduce her. But obviously for the author, there is an important reason for this because, you know, she's going to give birth to the monarchy. The way that the Kibbonagos sort of portrays this is that it was sort of meant to happen. There was a purpose for Minilic being born. Much more important than that, you know, there's going to be this powerful story that's about to unfold.

A powerful story that will unfold without the Queen of She. After she gives birth of Minilik, it stops there. We don't hear any more about her, because for the text, I think, whoever was writing the Kibranakis, the most important thing here was that she's the vehicle to carry Minilik. Not only does she disappear from the text, in fact, she steps aside for her son to take the throne. So you see almost immediately a sidelining of female power. My name is Sophia Aed. I am a historian and an assistant professor of history and African studies at the University of Toronto,

and I work on the history of the heart of Africa. And really from then on, you see almost a chronology of male emperors. From the beginning, the Cabernagas had an important political purpose to position the House of Solomon as the natural rulers of the Ethiopian Empire. which continues until 1974 with the overthrow of the Emperor Haile Selassi in the Ethiopian Revolution. As you've heard in the world at 6th, the end has finally come for Emperor Haile Selassi of Ethiopia. After months of humiliation, with his powers being stripped from him by the army command, the old man is deposed.

The whole thing came to a head last night, with an ultimatum from the army, either bring back to Ethiopia the millions of dollars you've salted away in Europe or get out. The outcome we now know. To understand this, we do need to go a little bit further to an earlier civilization, the kingdom of Aksum. So Aksum emerges as a really important state in the Horn of Africa, occupying territories of present-day Eritrea, Ethiopia, and at various times in its history, also expanding across the Red Sea to parts of Yemen,

southern Arabia. And so Aksum also notably becomes Christian. in the 4th century under a king named Isana. And so there's a period of interruption that takes place. So Aksum begins to decline really with the rise of Islam in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Around the 8th, 9th century, you start to see a significant decline. And it's replaced by another dynasty known as the Zagwe. We don't know much about the Zagwe dynasty, but the Salomonic dynasty came afterwards and were very interested in

justifying their rule as something that was rooted in the biblical past. Essentially, we're not a new dynasty. We have a very, very ancient history. And so really, the story of the Queen of Shiba emerges with the restoration in a sense, or at least a claim to restoration that's brought on in the 13th century by a king named Jehuna Amlak. And Yehuna Amlak claims descent from the kings of Aksum. And in doing so, he claims the story of the Queen of Shiba and the King Solomon.

They literally count from the Queen of Shiva. There is a long list of kings. There is that continuous tradition right to Emperor Halis Alassi. There's also an important tradition that has spread beyond the borders of Ethiopia. This is a song called Makeda by the French band Lenubians. Makeda was queen, beautiful and powerful, they sing. Solomon dreamed of her black skin. The song references the Queen of Shiba's Ethiopian name,

while turning her into a transnational icon of black female power. The Queen of Sheba lives in me, they sing. Ethiopia was famously known across the African diaspora as the unconquered kingdom. And so this national epic of Ethiopia, this story that told the Cabernagas literally means the glory of the kings. So this story that told the glory of the kings of the unconquered kingdom of Africa was very, very important for many African diasporic movements. Certainly for peoples of the African diaspora who were able to witness, for instance, Emperor Menelik II, defeat successfully repel Italian colonization. Ethiopia, one of the only two countries on the continents that were never colonized, celebrated 121 years of defeating the Italians. Adwar, the story of African sing to their own freedom played out against a background of almost unrelenting European colonial expansion.

Ethiopia and Liberia were the only two African countries that were never colonized. Immediately you see a sort of twinning, you know, this idea that Ethiopia is in fact this free black state. Ethiopia is a place of power. And relating this to biblical verses, for instance, in Psalms, speaking of Ethiopia, raising its hands unto God. So you see that kind of understanding emerging at a time where the colonization of Africa is taking place. Globally, you see an intensification of anti-black racism, the rise of Jim. crow in the United States. And so in that context, you see, again, this appeal to biblical symbols that the African diaspora associates with black power, in this case also the Queen of Shiba,

and these are all associated with, again, black sovereignty, essentially, or black power. Yet, the way the story of the Queen of Shiba has been used to legitimize the role of the Solomonic dynasty has a contested history for other African nations in the region. especially those bordering Ethiopia. In that 19th century moment, where you see the consolidation of the Ethiopian state, its centralization and expansion, in this moment where Africa is also subject to colonial conquest.

And so Ethiopia, by the turn of the 20th century, under Menelik II, he essentially doubles Ethiopia in size through a process of colonial conquest. And so this claim to religious, legitimacy, this claim to political legitimacy through and mediated through the story of King Solomon and the Queen of Shiba offers a sort of religious justification and political justification for conquest and for control and for power. It's almost like a manifest destiny. It claims Ethiopia

as the real site of Christianity, the real inheritors of Christian tradition, the owners of the covenant. And so to this day, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church believes that they possess the original Ark of a covenant. So in this text, you do have, you know, a claim to really Ethiopia being the real Zion, right? Ethiopia being the real homeland, Ethiopia being and Ethiopians being the true chosen people. Yemenis, on the other hand, believe Mahram Belkis, or the Shrine, of Bilkis in the province of Marit to be her final resting place and the true seat of her kingdom. In the late 1990s, an international expedition began excavating the site to reveal one of the oldest

religious shrines of the ancient world. I think last year I was in Belgeese's throne and the feeling you get there is very majestic. It's not normal. When you get there, maybe it's because I'm Yemeni, and I feel like this is where this iconic woman ruled from. That's why I was feeling like that. When I met a young man from Arab at a Yemen-related event in Paris last year, I told him about this documentary

and questioned the legitimacy of his home province's claim. He took it as an insult. For many people in Marib, and by extension, Yemen, she's their queen, and they're not going to share her with other nations. But for Dr. Adi, the nationalist thug of war between Yemen and Ethiopia, but who can truly claim the Queen of Shiba, misses the point. I mean, really, these places are just so linked. And at its narrowest point, I mean, we're talking about a distance of just over 30 kilometers, right? The Babamendib.

You can see Yemen from Djibouti. You can swim. You can swim. You can swim. You can swim. So this is really, I mean, this is even in the ancient world. I mean, it's not a long journey. The Red Sea has been, and really not only the Red Sea, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the

Western Indian Ocean, this whole area has been an important site of global commerce, of trade, really for millennia. The paraphras of the Erethrian Sea, a document from the Roman times, the first century AD, written by a Greek writer, an Egyptian Greek. is a document that describes in a lot of detail, the port cities, trade routes, commodities available to the Romans at the time. And in this document, actually, they describe Shiva. They describe Saba, they describe Himyar, all of these states in what's modern day Yemen. They also describe Aksum and the port city of Adelis in present-day Eritrea as being really important zones,

as well as port cities along the Somali coast. But not only is there a truce. But not only is there trade and commerce taking place kind of in this region as a whole in between the Horn of Africa and Southern Arabia. But you also have a migration of people. You have the exchange of ideas. And of course, importantly, these ideas include religious beliefs. And so, you know, Islam and Christianity have a very important role in this zone as well, as well as pre-Islamic and pre-Christian religious beliefs. And so Christianity arrives in the Horn of Africa by way of the Red Sea. Importantly, Islam also arrives in the Horn of Africa by way of the Red Sea. And so I think going back to this area is really a shared zone, a shared space of exchange,

I think resists trying to nationalize a particular story, right? I think the Queen of Sheba really exemplifies, I think, the transnational nature of this space. The fact that this is a world that really predates borders. And so bordering the history, I think, of the Queen of, Neshiba to say it's Yemeni or Ethiopian. I think it's very difficult to do. Of course, we also have Nubia, which again, it's possible. She ruled as far as that there's a historical link between all these nations. And I think if anything that should bring these people together that historically, once upon a time, they were very powerful. So I think, yeah, I'd love to say,

obviously for me she's 100% Ethiopian, but if she's Yemeni, I'm happy because we love Yemen. And we love Ethiopia in Yemen. But to this day, there's no conclusive archaeological evidence of the Queen of Sheba's existence in Yemen, Ethiopia, or anywhere else. So, to the questions of human or jail, wise woman or temptress, we may add a third more fundamental one. Real or not? I mean, personally, I think that's immaterial. The fact that we do not have any physical evidence of her having ever lived. But just think, over 3,000 years, she has existed. She has been, her life has been highlighted by many people only to knock her down and say that she didn't exist or she's not good.

Just think how powerful that personality must have been in the history of, you know, all our cultures, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and in some African countries, of course, as well. So I think to search for physical evidence doesn't take us anywhere. So suppose that we find, you know, a bone and we, how do you? we know, I mean, can we identify her DNA? Her DNA is in our very culture. I actually love that because we have no archaeological evidence for the Queen of Sheba, it kind of invites us to ask, you know, what do you mean by the real Queen of Sheba, right? I'll also say it's not that unusual. I mean, coming from biblical studies, we actually have no contemporaneous evidence of Solomon either.

We also have no contemporaneous evidence of David, for that matter, or a lot of biblical history. So, you know, on the one hand, no, I don't think it matters because I see evidence every day of how people engage with biblical figures from the Bible, biblical texts, the biblical past. And the effects of those figures is very real and very much happens in the sort of day to day. And I would argue actually that the sort of heterogeneity, the richness of the variety of people who identify with the Queen of Shiva is enabled actually by that sort of archaeological silence. Last year or a year or so ago, I wrote a paper, sort of tongue-and-cheek paper in which I called it, what if the Queen of Shiva could visit Iran? My wish or my imagination was that I was a guide to the Queen of Shiva, both of us riding on her magnificent throne and going from one campsite or one headquarter to another. Well, that was just a fantasy on my part. But the woman's demand is no longer a fantasy. Zan, Zindagi, Azadi, woman, life, freedom.

And before long, women across Iran shed their mandatory hijabs in defiance. This time, many people believed things could be different. Who do you see as the true inheritors of the Queen of Sheba's legacy today? Reflecting on what is happening in Iran, In Afghanistan, in Pakistan, and across the Muslim world, I would say the queen of Shiba are all these women. We do not need to have one single queen. We're far too many right now. And all these women, you know, women who are just saying that enough is enough.

I need to be in charge of some aspects of my life. And look at what men have done all over the Muslim world. I'm sorry. Come on, we're doing respect. I agree. No argument here. No argument here. But I think the Queen of Shiba is a composite figure, character, all of us. All these women, young women in Iran, I'm just, you know, flawed when I see what they are doing. In Afghanistan, my goodness sake, in Yemen, of course, you know, of course in Yemen.

And your wonderful niece who can represent this amazing figure. And we need to make her more known. Because we have this idea that we once was ruled by the queen, so we want to regain this legacy somehow. Yemeni women know that the queen of Shiva, whether an idea or a real person, is not an aberration in the country's history. There's also the woman known as the little queen of Shiva,

Queen Arwa, who ruled for 71 years as Queen Regent, in concert, and outright queen in the country. 11th and 12th century. Like her predecessor, she was a politically astute leader who tried to avoid bloodshed. She valiantly preserved her throne from warring tribes and the meddling of the Fatimite Caliphate in Cairo. She remains the only woman in Islamic history to hold both political and religious mandates as a leader. This whole concept gives me hope. Because now we're at a very, very, very low time for women, especially in Yemen. And I was sitting with an activist, a lawyer.

She's actually a bit older. And she said, my grandchild can't do the things that I used to do. It means that we're going back. We're going back. We're going back. She said, I have to fight for things, for simple things, for my grandchild that I did not that I thought that we've

made this battle. We're done with this battle. We're done with the battle of wearing specific things. We're done with the battle of women political participation. But now I, there is nothing. But the whole concept of

Queen Bilgis, Queen of Shaba or Arwa gives me always hope that this time will end. These groups, these religious ideologists group will end and the culture, the history

will continue. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Every time line has an ups and downs and they think we are in the lowest of the lowest now. But anything that gives me hope is seeing that long time ago there was a down and people got better somehow.

there is always hope when it comes to a war that you think nothing will be lasting forever. And I'm sure that women will be part of that. I hope so. So I'm thinking that so many, many powerful women, determined women, smart women, intelligent women, who are now, you know, can easily assume the position of leadership and lead Muslim, societies which they really need some kind of queen of Shiba to take them out of the rot they're in right now. You were listening to The Many After Lives of the Queen of Shiba by ideas contributor Kamala Suleli and producer Pauline Holdsworth.

Special thanks to Yusra Ashaq, Jacob Lassner, Wendy Laura Belcher and Matthew Laysen Rider. Greetings by Elisa Siegel, Adrian Harewood and Matthew Laysen Rider. Ideas is a podcast and a broadcast. If you like the episode you just heard, check out our podcast fees vast archives, where you can find more than 300 of our past episodes. Technical production, Danielle Duval, web producer Lisa Ayuso, senior producer Nikola Lukshic. Greg Kelly is the executive producer of ideas, and I'm Nala Ayyad.

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