Where is Sheba, the wealthy land of that legendary Biblical and Quranic Queen? In certainty, we don’t actually know, and since there are many motivated reasons for people to take or be given that legacy, it’s hard to find researched facts confirming any specific place as that location. We do have records of a civilization self-identified as Sabaa’, generally accepted to be what the Bible intended by the name “Sheba”, and that thrived in the southern Arabian Penninsula that we today called Yemen. Of course, Ethiopia claims its own civilization is the continuation of Sheba.
Again, there’s a lot of motivated cognition at work in identifying Sheba.
The Quran’s mention of Saba’ in today’s eponymous surah is completely divorced from that ancient, mystical lore. The event it records was much more contemporary and verifiable. However, the story read earlier in an-Naml links Saba’ to Sheba explicitly, so today’s surah title likewise gets translated as “Sheba.”
Continue reading “Surah 34: Sheba”
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