The figure of King Solomon (Shelomo, Sulaymān) captivated the imagination of Muslims, Christians, and Jews in an unparalleled manner. Legends about him were shared across religious communities in the pre-modern Islamic world and beyond. In folk tradition, Solomon is portrayed as a just and wise judge; a mighty and somewhat arrogant ruler; and a magician, whose signet ring has binding power over demons. In 1873, Jewish scholar Adolph (Aharon) Jellinek published an edition of a Hebrew tale concerning King Solomon. The tale consists of three parts, in each of which the king encounters a coequal who puts him to shame: in the first part, he is humiliated by the wind; in the second, by the queen of the ants; and in the third, he wanders the corridors of an ancient desolate castle, whose original owner, Solomon comes to realize, was a king far greater than himself. Jellinek suggested that the tale may have originated in the Arabic legendary traditions on Solomon and noted that the king’s encounter with the ant was based on the Qurʾānic mention of Solomon’s arrival to the “Valley of the Ants” (wādi ‘l-naml, Q. 27: 18). Unbeknownst to Jellinek, different versions of the same tale are extant in several Arabic manuscripts: among others, it appears in a Christian-Arabic manuscript written in Garshūnī; in another manuscript, the tale is incorporated into a comprehensive collection of Islamic Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ. Traces of the tale are found also in Judeo-Arabic manuscripts in the Genizah. What can be gained by examining parallel tellings of the same legend? How is the same tale presented and interpreted in different religious communities? How does it conform with each community’s canonical tradition and exegetical practices? In this paper, I discuss the tale of “Solomon and the Ant” as part of a shared narrative culture. By tracing the dissemination of the tale and examining its retellings and interpretations among copyists, translators, and readers from different communities, I study the fluidity of narrative tradition across religious and linguistic boundaries.