@ Hassan
Hi Debunker,
Thanks for your answers - I appreciate your speculations. I don't think there is anything wrong with speculating, particularly when we are presented with stories like this - it just seems to raise so many questions.
Anyway I'm aware this can go on forever. Me finding it unbelievable there is no trace - and you not. So just one last question I would be interested in your opinion.
Why did God do this?
I mean why give Sulayman such an enormous Kingdom, huge and magical armies, power over the wind, big palace and so on... and then after 20 years or so make all trace vanish?
I'd be interested to know what you think the point of it all might be?
Solomon prayed, God answered his prayer. The moral of the story, of course is clear in verses: Saba:13, Naml:19; Naml:40... Solomon was a great example of a man who was given and given, yet he managed to stay very grateful to God. (rich powerful men tend to deify themselves and forget God).
You said about Tafsir:
In fact most of them did avoid 'pure' and totally 'baseless' speculation. Generally they followed these rules:
1. Tafseer of Qur'an by Qur'an
2. Tafseer by Prophetic Hadith
3. Tafseer by narrations from Sahaba.
4. Tafseer by analogy and linguistics.
What do you mean by narrations from Sahaba? How about narrations from Tabi'in? How about narrations totally based on the Bible and non-canonical books? I can give hundreds of such narrations in Tafsir.
For example, the ABSOLUTELY ridiculous claim that God has taken Jesus image and put it on some other man to be crucified is taken from Gnostic writings:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Treatise_of_the_Great_SethAlso, I written somewhere in this forum that the verses that mentioned a town that did not believe despite sending 3 messengers, the idiot Ibn Kathir said that God sent Simon, someone else and Paul! Where did he get this crap from? Didn't he know that there were no prophets between Jesus and Muhammed (according to Quran)? And then he says it might be Jesus who sent them! The Quran says God sent 3 messengers and Ibn Kathir says it is claimed that Jesus might have sent them! What's wrong with taking the verses for what they said? A town won't believe even though they had 3 messengers sent to them! Why open up his big mouth and list these silly obvious mistakes in his Tafsir?
As for the Men of the Heights, why does the idiot Ibn Kathir includes silly opinions that these could be angels or prophets when it's clear from the language of verses that they were worried and hoping they won't end up in Hell...
You say Ibn Kathir included all opinions, but why does he include the opinions that are obviously wrong! There were no prophets between Jesus and Muhammed according to Quran, nor was Jesus a God, so Paul, Simon and the third dude could NOT be the ones referred to as the 3 messengers so why does Ibn Kathir include such obvious stupidies in his book?
And was it the narrations of Sahaba that Bilqis had goat-like feet?