Luqman, 34 Meccan verses, is named for the wise man Luqman, to whom God gave wisdom. Its heart is his fatherly counsel: to associate nothing with God, to honour parents, to be constant in prayer, to bear hardship, and not to walk the earth in arrogance (31:12-19).
Luqman's identity, a wise man rather than a prophet in the majority reading of classical scholarship, distinguishes his counsel from prophetic revelation proper, and exegetes including al-Qurtubi debate whether he was an Egyptian, Nubian or Abyssinian figure, a judge among the Israelites, or a legendary sage whose historical existence cannot be firmly established beyond the Quran's own brief account; some traditions associate him loosely with pre-Islamic Arabian and African wisdom literature without settling the question. His counsel to his son, warning specifically against associating partners with God as 'a great injustice' (31:13) before moving to filial duty, prayer, patience and humility, is read by commentators as modelling the ideal order of religious instruction, doctrine before ethics, and became a frequently cited text in works on Islamic pedagogy and parenting. The image of walking the earth without arrogance and lowering one's voice, since 'the harshest of sounds is the braying of donkeys' (31:18-19), gives Luqman's counsel one of the Quran's more vivid closing images, an unusually direct simile for what is otherwise measured ethical instruction.