Return to LinguisticMiracle Gems
Asalaam
alaikum warahmatulah wabarakatuh.
فَإِنَّ
مَعَ الْعُسْرِ يُسْرًا
So,
verily, with every hardship, there is ease:
إِنَّ
مَعَ الْعُسْرِ يُسْرًا
Verily,
with every hardship there is ease.
[Surah Inshirah 94:
5-6]
The
ال
issue you
mentioned can be explained in one of two ways I know of:
1)
al-Jurjani said that if you say,
إن
مع الفارس سيفاً، إن مع الفارس سيفاً
(Indeed,
the horseman has a sword, indeed the horseman has a sword)
then
it means that there has to be one horseman who has two swords.
So it means there is only one
hardship, but two different eases. This is also the
opinion held by al-Farraa’ regarding the meaning of this verse.
Tha‘lab also mentioned that if the Arabs mentioned a definite noun
and repeated it, then it is for emphasis and it is the same noun, but
if they mentioned an indefinite noun and repeated it then they are
two separate objects.
2) The repetition of the
verse was for the sake of emphasis, and this is common in the Arabic
language, such as when Allaah repeated the phrase in Surah
Mutaffifeen: وَيْلٌ
يَوْمَئِذٍ لّلْمُكَذّبِينَ which
was for the sake of emphasizing the meaning in the souls and
hearts of the reader.
Some of the scholars conjectured on
what the ease refers to – some said it was the conquests that
happened in the days of the Prophet (sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa
sallam) and the Khulafaa’, others said it was the ease of this
life and the Hereafter (as in the reference to Ihdaa al-Husnayan
[Tawba 9:52]). So if it is a definite ease that is intended, the
question is why is it mentioned indefinitely, without the definite
marker ٱلْ
?
The
answer is (Allah knows best) for aggrandizement, and it is as though
Allaah is saying, With the hardships you have gone through, O
Muhammad, [which is in reference to the Mushriks of Makkah
taunting him (sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) and the
believers about their poverty and facing torture/hardships until he
(sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) came to believe that they
were not embracing Islam due to the poverty of the Muslims and their
contempt] will come a great, copious, abundant amount of ease, so
do not despair of My mercy.”
The other beautiful point
with regards the language is the use of إِنّ
مّع (‘indeed
with’) instead of, for example, إِنَّ
بَعد (‘indeed,
after’) because the word مع
is
used to indicate that something accompanies something
else, so how can it be said that ease
accompanies hardship when they are two completely opposite
things? It was mentioned in this way (wallaahu a3lam) as though
Allaah is being merciful to them by telling
them that before they know it, the ease will come to them, as though
they will feel it is such a short time
that it is happening right then, at the exact same time as the
hardship, to increase their strength and hope.
The
"ف"
[ fa ] is just a conjunction used to indicate continuation
(‘due to what has been said then do such and such.’) The "ف"
used in this manner can carry the same meaning as ثُمَّ
but the
difference is that the "ف"
is after a shorter period of time.
With hardship there is ease, SO [really soon] there is (another) ease with that hardship.
Return to LinguisticMiracle Gems