Surah Ash-Sharh, The Relief

Surah 94 · 8 verses · revealed at Mecca

Ash-Sharh follows immediately from the surah before it, so closely that a number of early scholars held the two to be a single surah. It continues the same conversation, with the same person, in the same period.

It opens by asking whether his chest was not expanded for him, and whether the burden that weighed on his back was not removed, and whether his mention was not raised high. Three questions again, as in Ad-Duha, and again all three describe things already done.

Then comes the line the whole surah is known for, and the reason it is recited by people in difficulty across the world: that with hardship comes ease. It is said, and then said again, in consecutive verses. Commentators have written a great deal about that repetition. The most common reading is that the repetition is itself the message — the statement is not a generality but a promise, restated so it cannot be treated as a figure of speech.

The surah ends with an instruction that reads oddly at first. When you are free, work. When you have finished one thing, stand up to the next, and direct your longing to your Lord. Having just promised relief, the closing verses do not describe rest. They describe what to do with the relief when it arrives.

Eight verses, and a great many people have got through very hard periods on the strength of two of them.

Surah Ash-Sharh on this site

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Surah Ash-Sharh, The Relief

Surah Ash-Sharh on this site

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