structural:scholar_edition, information:filtering
Hebrew, Arabic and Persian

While riddles are not numerous in the Bible, they are present, most famously in Samson's riddle in Judges xiv.14, but also in I Kings 10:1–13 (where the Queen of Sheba tests Solomon 's wisdom), and in the Talmud. Sirach also mentions riddles as a popular dinner pastime, while the Aramaic Story of Ahikar contains a long section of proverbial wisdom that in some versions also contains riddles. Otherwise, riddles are sparse in ancient Semitic writing.

In the medieval period, however, verse riddles, alongside other puzzles and conundra, became a significant literary form in the Arabic-speaking world, and accordingly in Islamic Persian culture and in Hebrew — particularly in Al-Andalus. Since early Arabic and Persian poetry often features rich, metaphorical description, and ekphrasis, there is a natural overlap in style and approach between poetry generally and riddles specifically; literary riddles are therefore often a subset of the descriptive poetic form known in both traditions as wasf. Riddles are attested in anthologies of poetry and in prosimetrical portrayals of riddle-contests in Arabic maqāmāt and in Persian epics such as the Shahnameh. Meanwhile, in Hebrew, Dunash ben Labrat (920–990), credited with transposing Arabic metres into Hebrew, composed a number of riddles, mostly apparently inspired by folk-riddles. Other Hebrew-writing exponents included Moses ibn Ezra, Yehuda Alharizi, Judah Halevi, Immanuel the Roman and Israel Onceneyra.

In both Arabic and Persian, riddles seem to have become increasingly scholarly in style over time, increasingly emphasising riddles and puzzles in which the interpreter has to resolve clues to letters and numbers to put together the word which is the riddle's solution.

Riddles have been collected by modern scholars throughout the Arabic-speaking world.