Dhū al-Kifl — ذو الكفل

In Sūrah al-Anbiyāʾ, immediately after the account of Ayyūb's affliction and relief, the Qur'an says: and Ismāʿīl and Idrīs and Dhū al-Kifl — all were of the patient. He is mentioned in the company of steadfast men, with no further detail given about his trial, his people, or his era.

This placement itself carries meaning: patience (ṣabr) is presented as the defining trait for which he is remembered, set beside Ismāʿīl, known for patience under the trial of sacrifice, and Idrīs, raised to a high station. Whatever specific hardship Dhū al-Kifl bore, the Qur'an chose to preserve only the quality he showed in bearing it.

He appears a second time in Sūrah Ṣād, in a short list following the mention of Ayyūb: and remember Ismāʿīl and al-Yasaʿ and Dhū al-Kifl, and all are among the excellent. Again there is no narrative, only inclusion in a roll of the good and upright.

Scholars of tafsīr have differed on whether Dhū al-Kifl was himself a prophet or a righteous man who was not sent with a message, since the Qur'an does not state this explicitly in either occurrence; some, including a number of commentators, held that his name — meaning roughly "the one who guaranteed" or "took charge of a portion" — describes a quality rather than being his given name, but nothing further is fixed with certainty from the two verses themselves.

It is worth stating clearly: no authentic hadith from the Prophet ﷺ elaborates a detailed story of Dhū al-Kifl, and the popular tales sometimes repeated about him — of a king who judged a hundred disputes a day without ever losing his temper — trace back to reports among the accounts of earlier nations (Isrāʾīliyyāt) rather than to the Qur'an or to verified prophetic narration.

The honest position, followed by careful scholars, is to affirm what the two verses affirm — that he was among the patient and among the excellent — and to withhold judgment on the rest, since Allah has not obligated believers to know more than He revealed.