--- page_title: "Asif bin Barkhiya in the Quran: Who Was Asif ibn Barkhiya?" summary: "Who was Asif bin Barkhiya (آصف بن برخيا)? Solomon's vizier in Quran 27:40, Asaph ben Berechiah, what the name Asif means, and how Bilqis's throne was moved." html_url: https://johnfriendpublishing.com/articles/solomons-vizier-asif-ibn-barkhiya-throne-bilqis.html text_url: https://johnfriendpublishing.com/articles/solomons-vizier-asif-ibn-barkhiya-throne-bilqis.md revised: 2026-10-17 publisher: John Friend Publishing --- An Essay from the Library # Asif bin Barkhiya in the Quran: Solomon's Vizier Who Crossed Continents in the Blink of an Eye April 27, 2026 · 11 min read Āṣif ibn Barkhiyā (آصف بن برخيا; also: Asif bin Barkhiya, Asaf ibn Barkhiya, Asif Barkhiya, Asif bin Barkhia, Asif bin Barkiya; Asaph ben Berechiah in Hebrew tradition) — the vizier of Prophet Sulaymān who transported the throne of Bilqīs. The Quran tells of one “who had knowledge of the Book” bringing the Queen of Sheba’s throne to Solomon in less than a blink; the commentators name him Asif bin Barkhiya. Arabic occult tradition says the divine Name he used has been preserved. **[The Book of the Races](https://johnfriendpublishing.com/books/arabic-islamicate-occult-manuscripts/kitab-al-ajnas-the-book-of-the-races.html)** · Kitab al-Ajnas · Vol. IV — Arabic Islamicate Occult Manuscripts · 362 pages · Kindle, paperback and hardcover Formats: - [Kindle — $69.95 · Free with Kindle Unlimited](https://urlgeni.us/amazon/Vjm54K) - [Paperback — $79.95](https://urlgeni.us/amazon/fjnitl) - [Hardcover — $99.95](https://urlgeni.us/amazon/jhw7JV) **Asif bin Barkhiya** (Āṣif ibn Barkhiyā, آصف بن برخيا) is the man Islamic tradition identifies as the one “who had knowledge of the Book” in Quran 27:40: Solomon’s vizier, who brought the Queen of Sheba’s throne before Solomon’s gaze returned to him. The Quran itself does not name him; his name is supplied by the hadith and tafsir literature, and later magical books circulated under it, among them [Kitab al-Ajnas](https://johnfriendpublishing.com/books/arabic-islamicate-occult-manuscripts/kitab-al-ajnas-the-book-of-the-races.html). The Quran contains one of the most extraordinary claims in any sacred text: that a man transported an enormous throne across continents — from Yemen to Jerusalem — before Solomon could blink. Not the jinn who volunteered to do it in the time it would take Solomon to rise from his seat. The man. A human being. The feat was accomplished, according to the classical commentators, by means of a single divine Name — *al-Ism al-A’zam*, the Greatest Name of God. And the Arabic occult tradition spent the next thousand years building operational systems around that Name. --- ## The Quranic Scene: Surat al-Naml, Verses 38–40 The episode appears in the 27th chapter of the Quran, *Surat al-Naml* (The Ant), at verses 38 through 40. The context: Solomon has received a letter from Bilqis, the Queen of Sheba, and has determined that she should come to him in Jerusalem. The question arises of how to bring her magnificent throne there before she arrives — an act designed, in the classical reading, to demonstrate the power of Solomon’s kingdom and perhaps to test her. An *ifrit* (a powerful class of jinn) offers to bring the throne “before you rise from your place” — that is, in hours. Solomon’s response is recorded in verse 38-39, and then in verse 40 comes the event itself: *“Said one who had knowledge of the Scripture: ‘I will bring it to you before your gaze returns to you.’”* And the throne was brought. Instantly. Before Solomon’s gaze — that is, before a single eyeblink completed. The identity of “one who had knowledge of the Scripture” (*alladhī ʿindahu ʿilm min al-kitāb*) is not given in the Quran directly. This is precisely the kind of interpretive gap that the classical tafsir (Quranic commentary) tradition was designed to fill, and fill it did. --- ## Who Was Asif ibn Barkhiya? The dominant identification in classical Islamic scholarship is Asif ibn Barkhiya — *Āṣif ibn Barkhiyā* in Arabic — who is identified as Solomon’s vizier and secretary, and as the one who possessed sufficient knowledge of the divine names to accomplish the throne-transport. This identification is not Quranic. It emerges from the hadith and tafsir tradition, particularly from the reports attributed to early authorities like Ibn Abbas, one of the companions of the Prophet Muhammad who is cited extensively in classical Quranic commentary. The medieval commentators — al-Tabari (839–923 CE), al-Zamakhshari (1075–1144 CE), and Ibn Kathir (1301–1373 CE), among others — all engage with this identification and debate what exactly the “knowledge of the Scripture” consisted of. The majority view settled on: Asif knew *al-Ism al-A’zam* — the Greatest Name. By uttering it, he was able to accomplish what the most powerful jinn could not accomplish quickly enough to satisfy Solomon. --- ## Asif bin Barkhiya in the Quran and Hadith Anyone looking for Asif bin Barkhiya in the Quran will not find the name there. The Quran speaks only of “one who had knowledge of the Book” (27:40). Everything that attaches the name Asif ibn Barkhiya to that figure comes afterward, from the hadith and tafsir literature — the reports attributed to early authorities such as Ibn Abbas that the classical commentators collected and debated. When people ask about an “Asif bin Barkhiya hadith,” this is the material they mean: reports that explain a Quranic verse, rather than a verse that names him. That distinction matters for how the figure is understood. The Quran establishes the event and the kind of person who accomplished it — a human being with knowledge of the Book who outpaced the jinn. The name, the office of vizier, and the identification of his knowledge with the Greatest Name come from the commentators, and it is their Asif ibn Barkhiya whom the later grimoires inherit. --- ## Asaph ben Berechiah: The Jewish Parallel The figure of Asif ibn Barkhiya does not appear from nowhere in the Islamic tradition. He has a direct counterpart in the Hebrew Bible and the Jewish textual tradition: Asaph ben Berechiah (*Āsāf ben Berekhyāhū*), who appears in 1 Chronicles 6:39 as a Levite appointed by David and Solomon as a chief musician and keeper of sacred song. The Psalms associated with Asaph (Psalms 50 and 73–83 in the Hebrew numbering) are among the most theologically sophisticated in the entire Psalter. In the Jewish mystical tradition — particularly in the *Talmud Yerushalmi* and later kabbalistic literature — Asaph ben Berechiah acquired a reputation for supernatural knowledge. The parallel with the Islamic Asif is not coincidental: both traditions draw on a shared fund of Solomonic legend that predates both Islam and the rabbinic canonization of the Hebrew Bible. The Solomonic material circulated across the ancient Near East as a kind of common cultural inheritance, and both the Islamic and Jewish traditions shaped their Asif/Asaph figures from this shared substrate. This is one of the most compelling aspects of the Arabic occult tradition for the historically curious reader: it preserves, in Arabic dress, materials that connect directly to late antique Jewish and Christian textual traditions, and through those traditions, to even older strata of Near Eastern lore. --- ## What Does “Asif” Mean? Translating the Name from Arabic In Arabic the name is written آصف (*Āṣif*), with the emphatic letter *ṣād*, and the full name آصف بن برخيا means “Asif son of Barkhiya.” It is the Arabic form of the Hebrew Asaph, a name built on the Hebrew root meaning “to gather”; his father’s name, Barkhiya, corresponds to the Hebrew Berechiah, “the Lord has blessed.” Spellings such as Asaf ibn Barkhiya, Asif bin Barkhia, and Asif bin Barkiya, or the shortened Asif Barkhiya, all render the same Arabic name. Anyone who tries to translate “Asif” from Arabic by sound alone can be misled. The ordinary Arabic word *asif* (أسف), spelled with *sīn* instead of *ṣād*, means “grieved” or “sorry,” and it is this word, not the name, that appears in the Quran: Moses returns to his people “angry and grieved” (*ghaḍbān asifan*) in 7:150 and 20:86. So the short answer to the question of Asif’s meaning in the Quran is that the Quran uses *asif* for grief, while the name of Solomon’s vizier comes from Hebrew and is never spoken in the text. Barkhiya itself — also written Barkhia or Burkhiya — is the father’s name in the patronymic. The Quran names no “prophet Burkhiya”; in the sources discussed here, Barkhiya appears only as the father of Solomon’s vizier. --- ## What *al-Ism al-A’zam* Actually Is — And Isn’t *Al-Ism al-A’zam* — “the Greatest Name of God” — is one of the most contested concepts in the entire history of Islamic esotericism. The tradition holds that God possesses a name of such comprehensive power that whoever invokes it correctly is granted whatever they ask. This is not a marginal folk belief: it appears in authenticated hadith collections, and it is discussed seriously by mainstream scholars from the earliest centuries of Islam. The disagreement — sustained, unresolved, and genuinely interesting — is about which of God’s names is the Greatest. The theological mainstream holds that the Greatest Name is among the 99 Beautiful Names (*al-asma al-husna*) but that its specific identity has been hidden from ordinary knowledge. Candidates proposed in the classical literature include *Allah* itself (as the comprehensive divine name), *al-Hayy al-Qayyum* (“the Living, the Self-Subsisting”), and *al-Rahman* (“the All-Merciful”). Different scholarly lineages have argued for different candidates on the basis of Quranic and hadith evidence. The Arabic occult tradition takes a different approach. Rather than resolving the theological debate, it preserves multiple candidate formulas — extended, compound divine names, sometimes including Quranic phrases, sometimes including names in non-Arabic languages identified as Hebrew or Syriac, sometimes appearing as letter-combinations whose full linguistic meaning is deliberately obscure. The operational texts do not claim certainty about which formula is definitively the Greatest Name. They claim that certain formulas have been transmitted through chains of practitioners going back to Asif himself, and that these formulas are operative. --- ## How the Arabic Grimoire Tradition Built on This Story The story of Asif and the throne of Bilqis functions as a kind of authorization myth for the entire Arabic Solomonic grimoire tradition. If a human being — not an angel, not a jinn, but a man with knowledge — could accomplish the instantaneous transport of a massive physical object across a thousand miles of geography, then human beings are capable of extraordinary things when they possess and correctly apply the right knowledge. The operational logic follows: Solomon was the supreme practitioner of this knowledge in his own right, governing jinn and birds and wind by divine gift. But his vizier Asif accessed something even Solomon did not use for the throne-transport — Asif used the Greatest Name, which operates on a different register than Solomon’s prophetic authority over created beings. The grimoire tradition therefore constructs a two-tier system: Solomonic authority over spiritual beings (invoked through names, sigils, and protocols), and beyond that, the direct address to God through the Greatest Name (accessible only to those with genuine spiritual qualification). The [*Kitab al-Ajnas*](https://urlgeni.us/amazon/Vjm54K) — the Solomonic Grimoire of Asif ibn Barkhiya himself — is organized precisely around this framework. Asif is not merely a historical figure in this text; he is the attributed author, the person whose authority legitimizes the operational content. The text claims to transmit, through a chain of tradition, the actual knowledge that Asif possessed. --- ## Asif ibn Barkhiya and the Magic Books Under the Throne of Solomon A second story ties Asif to books. In one version preserved in the classical commentaries on Quran 2:102, Asif was Solomon’s scribe: he wrote down what Solomon commanded and buried it beneath the throne. After Solomon’s death the devils brought the writings out, added sorcery to them, and told people that this was how Solomon had ruled. The verse itself rejects the charge: “Solomon did not disbelieve, but the devils disbelieved, teaching people magic.” The legend helps explain why later magical literature could circulate under Asif’s name, and why the attribution was always contested. One [Asif ibn Barkhiya book](https://johnfriendpublishing.com/books/arabic-islamicate-occult-manuscripts/kitab-al-ajnas-the-book-of-the-races.html) that survives in manuscript, *Kitab al-Ajnas*, makes its claim openly: its title page names Asif, its passages open in his voice (“Āṣif ibn Barkhiyā said”), and its English edition lists the author as pseudo-Āṣif — a medieval text written under his authority, not a document from Solomon’s court. --- ## What Asif Says in the Grimoire Written Under His Name The grimoire that carries his name gives Asif a voice. In its chapter on the helper Ḥāmnah: “Āṣif ibn Barkhiyā ibn Shamūʾīl ibn Samīʿā said: If you wish speed of service, you must employ Ḥāmnah” (p. 146). Elsewhere he speaks of Solomon’s court: “Ṭabrīn, king of India, was the first to pledge allegiance to Sulaymān ibn Dāwūd” (p. 104). He introduces the seizure of the Slab as the finest of the seizures dictated to Solomon, when “each king dictated to him his covenant, his seal” (p. 184). A later chapter on the seals of the seven days is framed as his answer to Muʿādīyūs, who asked him about them (p. 224). The “blink of an eye” of the throne story returns in the book as a working promise. Of its Crown Names it says that the spirit called “cannot delay from you for the blink of an eye, even if he were in the farthest East and you in the farthest West” (p. 7). [Kitab al-Ajnas in English](https://johnfriendpublishing.com/books/arabic-islamicate-occult-manuscripts/kitab-al-ajnas-the-book-of-the-races.html) runs to 362 pages in eight parts, in Kindle, paperback and hardcover editions. --- ## Bilqis and the Throne: The Deeper Symbolism The Queen of Sheba — *Bilqis* in the Arabic tradition, unnamed in the Hebrew Bible — is a figure of considerable symbolic weight in both the Quran and the broader literary tradition. She arrives in Jerusalem expecting to deal with an ordinary king and instead encounters someone operating on an entirely different plane of reality. Her throne has been transported there before she arrives. She is tested; she submits; in the Islamic telling, she ultimately accepts the monotheism of Solomon and his God. For the Arabic occult tradition, this episode is not simply a miracle story. It is a demonstration of what theurgic knowledge — knowledge of divine names and their application — can accomplish in the hands of someone properly qualified to use it. Asif ibn Barkhiya becomes the model practitioner: a human being who, through the right knowledge applied at the right moment, accomplished something that outstripped the most powerful of the non-human spiritual beings. The throne itself is significant. In classical Islamic cosmology, the *Arsh* — the divine Throne — is the supreme symbol of God’s sovereignty over creation. A human throne transported through the application of divine names is a theological statement in narrative form: human knowledge, when properly oriented toward the divine, participates in the divine governance of creation. --- ## كيف نقل عرش بلقيس: How Was the Throne of Bilqis Moved? The question Arabic readers ask most directly — كيف نقل عرش بلقيس, “how was the throne of Bilqis moved?” — has a two-part answer. The Quran gives the sequence: an *ʿifrīt* offers to bring the throne before Solomon can rise from his place, and then “one who had knowledge of the Book” brings it before Solomon’s gaze returns to him (27:39–40). The commentators supply the means: the one with knowledge was Asif ibn Barkhiya, and what he knew was the Greatest Name, *al-Ism al-A’zam* — the name that mainstream theology holds is hidden among the [99 Names of Allah](https://johnfriendpublishing.com/articles/99-names-of-god-what-al-buni-actually-wrote.html). The grimoire tradition keeps returning to the same chapter of the Quran. In *Kitab al-Ajnas*, the verses of Solomon’s letter to the Queen of Sheba — “Indeed it is from Sulaymān, and indeed it is: In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Do not exalt yourselves against me, and come to me in submission” (27:30–31) — are written into its adjurations, and the book includes an inscription it calls the Greatest Name. Whether the story is met in the Quran, in the Malay and Indonesian *kisah Asif bin Barkhiya* (“the story of Asif bin Barkhiya”), or in the grimoires, the throne of Bilqis is the episode on which Asif’s reputation chiefly rests. --- ## The Preserved System: Read It in English The [*Kitab al-Ajnas*](https://urlgeni.us/amazon/Vjm54K) — the text that claims Asif ibn Barkhiya’s own authority and preserves the operational Solomonic system built around his knowledge — is now available in English translation for the first time: **[*Kitab al-Ajnas: Solomonic Grimoire of Asif ibn Barkhiya*](https://urlgeni.us/amazon/Vjm54K)** This is the primary text. It contains the names, the protocols, and the cosmological framework that the Arabic tradition attributed to the man who moved a throne across continents before Solomon could blink. For a detailed chapter-by-chapter walkthrough, see [Kitab al-Ajnas: A Chapter-by-Chapter Guide](https://johnfriendpublishing.com/articles/asif-barkhiya-grimoire-readers-walkthrough.html). For the broader Solomonic tradition in Islam, see [Solomonic Magic in the Islamic Tradition](https://johnfriendpublishing.com/articles/solomonic-magic-islamic-tradition-asif-ibn-barkhiya.html). For a comparison with the Western Goetia, see [Arabic Solomonic Magic vs. the Goetia](https://johnfriendpublishing.com/articles/arabic-solomonic-vs-western-goetia-names-of-power.html). For the broader context of how this Solomonic tradition intersects with the planetary and letter-magic systems inherited from al-Buni’s lineage, **[*Suns of Lights & Treasures of Secrets*](https://urlgeni.us/amazon/uxBVGB)** (1327 CE, Ibn al-Hajj al-Tilmsani) provides essential background. For how Asif appears in Islamic art and manuscript illustration — and why the images in his grimoire are seals and diagrams rather than portraits — see [Asif bin Barkhiya in Islamic art](https://johnfriendpublishing.com/articles/solomonic-magic-islamic-tradition-asif-ibn-barkhiya.html). --- *The Quranic passage discussed here is Surat al-Naml (27):38-40. The relevant biblical parallel for Asaph appears in 1 Chronicles 6:39 and the superscriptions of the Asaphite Psalms. For the scholarly treatment of Solomonic literature across the Jewish-Christian-Islamic traditions, see the work of Pablo Torijano on Solomon in Jewish, Christian, and Gnostic tradition, and the relevant entries in the [Encyclopaedia of the Quran](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopaedia_of_the_Qur%27an) on Solomon and the jinn.* ### Related Topics in This Article - [Asif ibn Barkhiya, Surat al-Naml (27:40) and the Seal of Solomon](https://johnfriendpublishing.com/articles/seal-of-solomon-arabic-manuscripts-real-story.html) - [Asif ibn Barkhiya in Islamic art and illustration](https://johnfriendpublishing.com/articles/solomonic-magic-islamic-tradition-asif-ibn-barkhiya.html) - [Kitab al-Ajnas, the magic book attributed to Asif ibn Barkhiya](https://johnfriendpublishing.com/books/arabic-islamicate-occult-manuscripts/kitab-al-ajnas-the-book-of-the-races.html) ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Who is Asif ibn Barkhiya in the Quran? Asif ibn Barkhiya is identified in Islamic tradition as the one 'who had knowledge of the Book' (Quran 27:40) — Solomon's vizier who transported the throne of the Queen of Sheba (Bilqis) in the blink of an eye. Arabic grimoires attribute magical books and talismanic knowledge to him. ### Is Asif bin Barkhiya mentioned in the Quran or hadith? Not by name in the Quran, which refers only to 'one who had knowledge of the Book' who brought the Queen of Sheba's throne to Solomon (27:40). The name Asif ibn Barkhiya comes from the hadith and tafsir literature, especially reports attributed to Ibn Abbas, which classical commentators such as al-Tabari, al-Zamakhshari and Ibn Kathir discuss. ### What does the name Asif mean? Asif (آصف) is the Arabic form of the Hebrew name Asaph, from a root meaning 'to gather', and Barkhiya corresponds to the Hebrew Berechiah. It should not be confused with the Arabic word asif (أسف), spelled with sin, which means 'grieved' and appears in the Quran when Moses returns to his people 'angry and grieved' (7:150, 20:86). ### Who is Asaph ben Berechiah? Asaph ben Berechiah is the Hebrew Bible's counterpart of Asif ibn Barkhiya: a Levite musician named in 1 Chronicles 6:39 and associated with the Psalms of Asaph (Psalms 50 and 73-83). Jewish tradition later credited him with supernatural knowledge, and Islamic tradition made Asif the vizier of Solomon. ### كيف نقل عرش بلقيس؟ How was the throne of Bilqis moved? According to Surat al-Naml (27:38-40), an ifrit offered to bring the Queen of Sheba's throne before Solomon could rise from his place, but one who had knowledge of the Book brought it before Solomon's gaze returned to him. The classical commentators identify him as Asif ibn Barkhiya and say he did it by the Greatest Name of God, al-Ism al-A'zam. ### Did Asif ibn Barkhiya write a book? Arabic grimoires attribute magical books to him. The best known in English is Kitab al-Ajnas, a Solomonic grimoire attributed to Asif ibn Barkhiya; the attribution is traditional and the manuscript is medieval. John Friend Publishing publishes the first complete English translation. ### What are the magic books under the throne of Solomon? In one version preserved in the commentaries on Quran 2:102, Asif was Solomon's scribe and buried what he wrote beneath Solomon's throne; after Solomon's death the devils brought it out, added sorcery and claimed it was the source of Solomon's power. The verse answers that Solomon did not disbelieve, but the devils did, teaching people magic. ### Is the name Asif in the Quran? No. The Quran never names Solomon's vizier; it calls him only 'one who had knowledge of the Book' (27:40). The similar-sounding word asif, spelled with sin and meaning 'grieved', does occur in the Quran, in 7:150 and 20:86, but it is a different word from the name Asif (آصف). ### Was Asif bin Barkhiya a human or a jinn? In Surat al-Naml the offer from the jinn comes from an ifrit, who says he can bring the throne before Solomon rises from his place. The throne is actually brought by someone else, 'one who had knowledge of the Book' (27:40), whom the classical commentators identify as a man: Asif bin Barkhiya, Solomon's vizier. The grimoire tradition treats him as the model of a human being whose knowledge outpaced the jinn. ### What was the Greatest Name (al-Ism al-A'zam) that Asif bin Barkhiya used? The commentators say Asif knew al-Ism al-A'zam, the Greatest Name of God, but they do not agree on which name it is. Mainstream theology holds that it is hidden among the 99 Names; candidates proposed in the classical literature include Allah, al-Hayy al-Qayyum and al-Rahman. The grimoires keep several formulas instead: Kitab al-Ajnas, written under Asif's name, includes an inscription it calls the Greatest Name.