appearance will come my death and the destruction of the Holy House!” So he pulled it up and planted it in one of his gardens. Then he said, “O Allah, conceal my death from the jinn, so that mankind may know that the jinn do not know the unseen.” The jinn had been telling people that they knew certain matters of the unseen and knew what would happen tomorrow. He then entered the prayer chamber and stood praying, leaning upon his staff. He died while standing. The prayer chamber had openings before him and behind him, and the jinn continued performing the arduous tasks they had performed during his lifetime. They would look at him, thinking that he was alive. Nor did they find it unusual that he remained secluded from going out to the people, due to the length of his prayers before that. Thus, after his death, they continued laboring for him diligently for a full year, until the termite ate away Solomon’s staff; then he fell down dead, and they learned of his death. (1)

Ibn Abbas said: The jinn thanked the termite, and so they bring it water and clay within the cavities of wood. (2) This is the meaning of His saying: “Nothing indicated his death to them except a creature of the earth”—namely, the termite—“eating away at his staff,” meaning, his walking stick. The people of Medina and Abu Amr recited it as minsātahu, without a hamzah, while the rest recited it with a hamzah. Both are linguistic variants. Ibn Amir renders the hamzah quiescent. Its root is the expression nasa’tu al-ghanam, meaning: “I urged and drove the sheep onward.” From the same root comes the expression: “Allah deferred his appointed term,” meaning, He postponed it.

“Then, when he fell down,” that is, when he fell to the ground, “the jinn realized,” meaning, the jinn came to know and became certain, “that, had they known the unseen, they would not have remained in the humiliating punishment”—that is, in toil and hardship, subjected to Solomon while he was dead, thinking him to be alive. By this Allah intended to make the jinn know that they did not know the unseen, since they had thought that they knew the unseen, due to the prevalence of ignorance.

Al-Azhari stated that the meaning of “the jinn realized” is that the jinn became exposed and evident to mankind; that is, it became apparent that they did not know the unseen, because they had caused people to think otherwise. In the recitation of Ibn Masud and Ibn Abbas: “Mankind came to know that, had the jinn known the unseen, they would not have remained in the humiliating punishment,” meaning that mankind came to know and became certain of this.

Yaqub recited it as tubayyanat, with the ta vowelled with dammah and the ya with kasrah—that is, mankind informed the jinn; it is expressed in the passive voice. The verb tabayyana may be both intransitive and transitive. (3)

The historians mentioned that Solomon was fifty-three years old, that the duration of his reign was forty years, and that he became king at the age of thirteen. He began building the Holy House after four years of his reign had passed.