al-Naml 27:41-42

qāla nakkirū lahā ʿarshahā nanẓur a-tahtadī am takūnu mina'lladhīna lā yahtadūn · fa-lammā jāʾat qīla a-hākadhā ʿarshuk, qālat ka-annahū huw, wa ūtīna'l-ʿilma min qablihā wa kunnā muslimīn

"He said: 'Make her throne unrecognisable to her; let us see whether she is guided to it, or is one of those who are not guided.' When she came it was said: 'Was your throne like this?' She said: 'It is as though it were the very one.' 'And we were given the knowledge before this, and we had submitted.'"

The core of the root: to be unrecognised, to be strange. Nakira — he did not recognise it; munkar — what is not accepted, what is found strange; nakira — an indefinite noun. The root was treated in Luqmān at 31/17-19 (al-munkar and ankara'l-aṣwāt). I do not repeat it here.

Here in Form II: nakkirū — "make it unrecognisable."

And the verb that follows in the sentence is from a different root: a-tahtadī (ه-د-ي) — "will she find her way to it." The question is thus framed not as "will she recognise it" but as "will she find her way".

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the choice of verb: throughout the sūra the root ه-د-ي is used for guidance (2, 24, 63, 81, 92). Here the same root is used for a test of recognition, and the two domains are bound together: being able to recognise the familiar in its altered form, and finding what is right, are named by the same verb.

And I do not repeat the analysis of hidāya recorded in al-Fatḥ at 48/25 and in Muḥammad.

The queen's answer is neither "yes" nor "no": ka-annahū huw — "as though it were the very one."

An observation about the word order must be recorded: the sentence is built with a particle of comparison (ka-anna), and both sides of the comparison are the same pronoun: huwa and huwa. That is: "it, as though it."

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the construction of the sentence: the answer conveys recognition and hesitation at once. She gives the right answer without speaking with certainty.

And this agrees with her sentence at verse 32: mā kuntu qāṭiʿatan amran ḥattā tashhadūn — "I never cut a matter short." Both sentences are a deferral of certainty. This is a consistency that can be verified within the narrative.

Whose sentence this is has been debated in the classical commentaries, and the disagreement is not concealed:

Both readings are transmitted; I do not impose a preference.

I record one indication, not a preference: there is a shift between the plural pronouns of the sentence (ūtīnā, kunnā) and the singular of the preceding clause (qālat); this by itself does not settle which of the two readings is right.

What can be verified from the text is this, and I record it: the two words in the sentence — al-ʿilm and muslimīn — are two of the sūra's spines. At this point in the narrative the two occur together.

A point about word order is worth recording, and it is a countable datum:

I record this as an observation; I issue no definite verdict about what the definiteness does here. What I record is that the word occurs twice indefinite and once definite within the sūra.