the sheep themselves, enabling him to profit from their flow of milk, dairy fat, wool, and any income they generated during that period. Solomon’s ruling was therefore nearer to what was right and more advantageous to both the owner of the sheep and the owner of the field; hence the Almighty said, “We made Solomon understand it, while to each of them We gave judgment and knowledge” (al-Anbiyaʾ 79).

A similar case is the judgment rendered by David and Solomon between the two women who went out, each carrying her child. A wolf attacked the elder woman’s son, whereupon she claimed that the wolf had eaten the younger woman’s child and that the child who had been spared was her own. The younger woman denied this and said, “Rather, the wolf ate the elder woman’s son.”

They brought the matter before David, and when he (1) found no evidence for either of them beyond her own statement, he ruled in favor of the elder out of personal reasoning and compassion for her age, thinking that the younger woman, still at the start of her life, would in due course receive another child from God in his place.

The case was then referred to Solomon. He said to them, “Bring me a knife so that I may split him between you.” The elder agreed, but the younger—faced with the choice of her child’s death or his survival in someone else’s care, the latter being the lesser of the two harms for her—cried out, “He is her child, O Prophet of God!” From this instinctive reaction, one of the strongest forms of proof, Solomon understood that the child was not the elder woman’s, for she was willing to see him cut in pieces, and that jealousy alone had driven her claim. He realized that the child belonged to the younger woman when she recoiled at the idea of him being harmed and immediately yielded her claim. Solomon therefore awarded the child to the younger.

There is no doubt that discovering the truth in legal disputes through evidence, circumstantial indicators, and prevailing conditions is a kind of insight that Allah grants to whomever He wills.