Surah 31 of 114 · Makkah
سُورَةُ لُقۡمَانَ
Luqman Luqman
34 verses · revealed in Makkah
The context
Luqman is Makkan, from a period when the community was small and the pressure on it came from inside families as much as from outside them. Its central passage is not a prophet addressing a nation. It is a father speaking privately to his son, and the father is not a prophet either.
That choice is deliberate and is one of the more striking things in the Qur'an. Luqman is described as having been given hikmah, wisdom, and the counsel he gives is preserved in scripture and recited in prayer by people who will never know anything else about him. A short passage of one man's parenting was judged worth keeping for ever.
The name
Named for Luqman, whom the majority of the early commentators regarded as a wise man rather than a prophet, and whom several describe as an Abyssinian. The Qur'an tells us almost nothing about his circumstances and everything about what he said to his child, which is a fair indication of where it wants the reader's attention.
How it moves
- 1-11The Book, and those who trade it awayGuidance and mercy for those who do good, set against the man who buys idle talk to lead others astray without knowledge.
- 12-19The counselGratitude, the warning against shirk, the debt owed to parents including the limit of that debt, and then six short instructions on prayer, patience, the face, the walk and the voice.
- 20-34Signs, and the five that are not knownThe sea and the trees as ink for the words of Allah, and a closing list of five things whose knowledge is with Allah alone.
The themes
Wisdom is gratitude first
The description of Luqman's hikmah opens by defining it as being grateful to Allah, before any of the counsel begins.
Character taught in specifics
The advice is not abstract. Do not turn your cheek away from people. Do not walk in arrogance. Lower your voice. It is small, physical and immediately actionable.
Obedience to parents, and its one limit
The passage commands companionship with parents in kindness in this world and, in the same breath, says that if they strive to make you associate anything with Allah, do not obey them in that.
What is not given to you
The surah closes on five matters known only to Allah, which quietly ends the human appetite to have everything explained.
The heart of it
Recited slowly, this is the surah for a parent, and it is unusually humbling. Everything Luqman says to his son is short. None of it is a lecture. The instruction on modesty is one sentence about how you carry your face; the instruction on humility is one sentence about how you walk. A father who has been trying to hand his child a philosophy is shown a man handing his child six habits.
The passage on parents is the one most readers were not expecting. It is placed inside the father's advice, so a son reading his father's counsel is simultaneously told what he owes his own parents, and told, in the same passage, the single point at which that obedience stops.
Verses worth knowing
- 31:13O my son, do not associate anything with Allah. Indeed, association is a great injustice. The first thing he says, and he says it as a kindness.
- 31:14-15The debt owed to parents, and its limit, stated together so neither can be quoted without the other.
- 31:17Establish prayer, enjoin what is right, forbid what is wrong, and be patient over what befalls you. A whole life in one verse, ending with the acknowledgement that the first three will cost you something.
- 31:19Be moderate in your pace and lower your voice. Character taught at the level of how you actually move through a room.
On reciting it
No authentic report establishes a specific merit for reciting Surah Luqman. Its weight in Muslim practice comes from the counsel itself, which has been used to teach children for fourteen centuries without needing a virtue report to recommend it.
No virtue report
Read beside it
On the shelf
- 31:12Luqman · 31:12
- 31:13Luqman · 31:13
- 31:14Luqman · 31:14
- 31:16Luqman · 31:16
- 31:17Luqman · 31:17
- 31:18-19Luqman · 31:18-19
- 31:22Luqman · 31:22
- 31:26Luqman · 31:26
- 31:27Luqman · 31:27
- 31:29Luqman · 31:29
- 31:34Luqman · 31:34
Surahs it travels with