by universal agreement among all creatures that Solomon never had the godhead united with him. It is therefore clear that statements of this sort do not prove any fusion of the divine nature with him. Rather, Muslims speak with equity: they interpret Allah’s words in His Books by reference to one another, allowing one passage to corroborate another and never to contradict it.

Those who have gone astray—Christians and others—prefer the inferior to one who surpasses him, deprive the superior of his rightful due, go to extremes concerning the lesser figure, and withhold the prophets’ rights, just as they belittle Solomon; indeed, many Jews and Christians impugn him.
Some of them say, “He was a sorcerer who enchanted the jinn with his magic.”
Others say, “He fell from the rank of prophethood,” and so they make him a mere sage, not a prophet. For this reason Allah mentioned in the Quran Solomon’s acquittal of such charges. Solomon had asked Allah for a dominion that would not belong to anyone after him, so Allah subjected to him the wind, which blew gently at his command wherever he wished, and the devils—every skilled builder and diver, and others bound together in chains. He placed the wind at his service: its morning course covered a month’s journey and its evening course a month. And when he asked the council to bring him the throne of Bilqīs, the queen of Yemen, while he himself was in al-Shām