27. An-Naml

An-Naml ('The Ant'), 93 Meccan verses, is named for the ant that warns its colony of Solomon's approaching army (27:18). It recounts Solomon's power over jinn, wind and speech with animals, the hoopoe's report of the sun-worshipping Queen of Sheba, and her coming to faith, alongside the stories of Moses, Salih and Lot.

The ant's warning to its colony (27:18), instructing the other ants to enter their dwellings so Solomon's army does not crush them unknowingly, is read by classical commentators as demonstrating Solomon's Quranic gift of understanding the speech of creatures generally, established a few verses earlier (27:16), rather than as an isolated miracle attached only to this encounter; Solomon's smile at overhearing the ant, and his prayer of gratitude that follows, is cited as a model of humility in a ruler granted extraordinary power. The hoopoe's report of the Queen of Sheba, describing a people who prostrate to the sun rather than to God (27:22-26), sets up an extended exchange of letters and gifts between Solomon and the queen that culminates in her recognising true sovereignty and, in the surah's own words, submitting 'with Solomon to God, Lord of the worlds' (27:44), a conversion narrative read across the tradition as showing worldly power submitting to revealed truth without military conquest. The queen's throne, transported to Solomon's court before her arrival through a feat the surah attributes to one 'who had knowledge of the Scripture' (27:40) rather than to Solomon's own jinn, has generated centuries of exegetical speculation about this figure's identity, left unnamed in the text itself.

Every surah but one opens with the Bismillah, 'in the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate,' placed before the text as a heading rather than counted among its verses, which is why At-Tawba alone lacks it. An-Naml preserves the one clear exception to this pattern within the body of the Quran itself: Solomon's letter to the Queen of Sheba, quoted directly in the narrative, opens with the identical formula, 'it is from Solomon, and it is: in the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate' (27:30), making this the sole place the phrase appears as part of a verse rather than as a heading standing outside the numbered text.

Classical commentators read Solomon's use of the formula in a diplomatic letter to a non-believing monarch as evidence that invoking God at the opening of correspondence and undertakings was already an established, recognisable convention understood across the ancient world the Quran depicts, rather than a wholly new Islamic innovation. The detail is often noted in works cataloguing the Bismillah's occurrences, since it is the one instance a reciter counts the phrase as a numbered verse within the running text rather than as the unnumbered heading that opens every other surah.