About the Famous Ayaat in the Qur'an: "inna ma'a al 'usri yusran"

Let me tell you something beautiful and amazing about a famous ayaat in the Qur'an: "inna ma'a al 'usri yusran."

It's simply translated: 

"Certainly, with hardship comes ease."

Let's take a deeper analysis about the grammar and the sentence structure. Please, bear with me. It might sounds complicated for you who don't know Arabic, but believe me it's just the very basic. Even though it is, we can see how the knowledge of Arabic can give us a certain nuance, the deeper one, to the meaning of the ayaats of the Qur'an.

 

First, we'll talk about the grammar (Nahw). 

In Arabic, an ism (person, place, thing, idea, adjective, adverb, and more) has 4 properties, i.e.,

1. Status: Raf', Nasb, Jarr

2. Number

3. Gender

4. Type:

a. Proper (specific). 

b. Common (not specific).

 

Back to the sentence:

"inna" means "certainly". It's called Harf of Nasb, and its victim is an ism in Nasb status.

In this sentence, its victim is the word (ism) "yusran", meaning "ease". So, "yusran" is in Nasb status. And, because it has tanween (or simply an "an" sound at its end), its status is common (unknown, not specific) and has magnification meaning. 

"ma'a" means "with". It's called special Mudaf. Let's just skip the detail about what it is. 

"al 'usri" means "the hardship". Its type is proper. So, "the hardship" is specific, known (because it has "al"), and not magnified (because it has no tanween). 

Then, we'll talk about sentence structure. 

In Arabic sentence structure (ism based), we have 3 components, i.e.:

1. Mubtada' (subject/topic),

2. Khabar (predicate/information)

3. Muta'alliq bil khabar (secondary predicate/MBK)

Back to the sentence:

Here, "inna" and its victim "yusran" is the Mubtada' (subject) 

And, "ma'a al usri" is MBK (secondary predicate). 

No khabar (predicate) in this sentence. 

Normally, the sentence starts with Mubtada' and then khabar, MBK, etc. But, here in this sentence, we have MBK first, and then a "delayed Mubtada". This flip/weird order gives a certain meaning, it creates the meaning of "only" to the sentence. 

So, with all the complicated things I just mentioned, here is the summary. 

"inna ma'a al usri yusran", in more complex translation will be:

"Certainly, with every known hardship there is (only comes) an ease that is unknown."

You don't even know what the ease gonna be, it's mysterious, but no doubt about it, for sure it's there. Just because you don't know, it doesn't mean that an ease doesn't exist. The hardship is not magnified. So, as big as you think a problem is, that's not big. And, the ease that is coming has been magnified. 

So, Allah is saying in this beautiful ayaat that hardship is limited and you can see the hardship but what you can't see is the ease. And the ease is so much bigger than the hardship. It's mysterious, unknown, and magnified. Allah is also saying some great mysterious ease is coming, but it would ONLY come with hardship. So, the ONLY reason you have hardship is so Allah can give you ease. 

More than that, Allah even says it twice, not just even once, in ayaat 5 and 6 of Surah Al Inshiraah (94th Surah, 30th juz).

A copy of the Qur'an opened for reading. (Wikipedia, https://www.flickr.com/photos/el7bara/45540389/)