Makkan, by agreement
The first years in Makkah, close after al-Ḍuḥā
There is no difference over it: Ibn al-Jawzī records the agreement of the commentators, and al-Qurṭubī says it is Makkan in the saying of all of them. It follows al-Ḍuḥā in the order of revelation as it does in the muṣḥaf, and continues the same address.
سُورَةُ الِانْشِراحِ مَكِّيَّةٌ كُلُّها بِإجْماعِهِمْمَكِّيَّةٌ فِي قَوْلِ الْجَمِيعِ. وَهِيَ ثَمَانِي آيَاتٍThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ الشَّرْحِ مَكِّيَّةٌ
- al-Suyūṭīal-Durr al-manthūrAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Ibn ʿAbbās: it came down in Makkah — some add: after al-Ḍuḥā. Recorded by Ibn al-Ḍurays, al-Naḥḥās, Ibn Mardawayh and al-Bayhaqī.
أخْرَجَ ابْنُ الضُّرَيْسِ والنَّحّاسُ، وابْنُ مَرْدُويَهَ والبَيْهَقِيُّ عَنِ ابْنِ عَبّاسٍ قالَ: نَزَلَتْ ﴿ألَمْ نَشْرَحْ﴾ بِمَكَّةَ، زادَ بَعْضُهم: بَعْدَ الضُّحى
A report he gathers; its chain is not graded here.
- al-ShawkānīFatḥ al-qadīr→
Makkan, by agreement.
هي مَكِّيَّةٌ بِلا خِلافٍ
- al-RāzīMafātīḥ al-ghaybAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
ثَمانِ آياتٍ مَكِّيَّةٌ
- Abū al-SuʿūdIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmMāturīdī in creedḤanafī in fiqh→
Makkan.
مَكِّيَّةٌ وهي ثَمانِ آياتٍ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
No particular incident is transmitted for it. Its setting is the one al-Ḍuḥā describes: the opening years of the call, with the Prophet ﷺ almost alone, mocked in his own town, and bearing a message that he knew would set him against everyone he had grown up among.
Where al-Ḍuḥā reminded him of what his Lord had done for him as a child and a young man, this surah speaks of what He has done for him as a messenger: opened his chest to hold what was being sent down, taken off him the load that was bending his back, and raised his name — so that, as the early commentators said, Allah is not mentioned in the call to prayer, in the testimony of faith or in the prayer itself without him being mentioned too.
ذكر إتمام منة الله على نبيه ﷺ بزوال الغم والحرج والعسر عنه، وما يوجب ذلك.
To recall how Allah completed His favour to His Prophet ﷺ by removing grief, constraint and hardship from him — and what that calls for in return.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- Consolation
- Ease after hardship
- Devotion
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
احتوت على ذكر عناية الله تعالى لرسوله صلى الله عليه وسلم بلطف الله له وإزالة الغم والحرج عنه، وتفسير ما عسر عليه، وتشريف قدره لينفس عنه، فمضمونها شبيه بأنه حجة على مضمون سورة الضحى تثبيتا له بتذكيره سالف عنايته به وإنارة سبيل الحق وترفيع الدرجة ليعلم أن الذي ابتدأه بنعمته ما كان ليقطع عنه فضله، وكان ذلك بطريقة التقرير بماض يعمله النبيء صلى الله عليه وسلم.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–44 ayat · 48% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
Three favours
Did We not open your chest for you, lift from you the burden that weighed on your back, and raise your mention high? Each is put as a question whose answer he already knows.
- 5–62 ayat · 30% of the surahRead from ayah 5 →
The rule
“For indeed, with hardship comes ease. Indeed, with hardship comes ease.” Said twice. The early scholars pointed out that the hardship is the same one both times — it has the definite article — while the ease is named afresh, and so they said: one hardship will never overcome two eases.
- 7–82 ayat · 22% of the surahRead from ayah 7 →
What to do with it
So when you are free of one task, stand up for the next — and to your Lord alone turn your longing. The answer to relief is not rest but worship.
The division into passages is a reading aid, written for this page; it is not part of the muṣḥaf. Each passage is drawn as long as its words are.
The sound each ayah closes on
Read aloud, every ayah closes on a sound — its fāṣilah — and the closes answer one another for a stretch, then turn. Each sound this surah closes on is a line of the staff below, and the surah is the gold line stepping along them, an ayah at a time: where it steps to another line, the rhyme turns. The dotted lines are where its passages begin.
Its commonest close carries 50% of its ayat, and the rhyme turns 2 times. 2 of those turns come just where a new passage begins, as this page divides the surah.
Move along the staff to see what each ayah closes on.
Computed from the text, each ayah as it is said when the reciter stops on it: the last vowel falls away, tanwīn on alif is said as a long ā, and tāʾ marbūṭah as h. Closes the ear hears as one rhyme share a line — -ūn, -īn and -īm; -ān and -ām — and an ayah that is only the opening letters closes on the name of its last letter.
From the Prophet ﷺ and his Companions
No authenticated report specific to this surah is recorded here.
The names it is known by
From its first ayah. It is as often called al-Inshirāḥ, which is the heading Ibn al-Jawzī gives it.
Its opening words, and the name al-Qurṭubī heads it with.
Its place in the muṣḥaf
Ayat you will hear named
Where this comes from
The figures at the head of the page are counted from the text. The Arabic quotations are taken letter for letter from the copies of the classical works held on this site, and each links to the passage it stands in. The rest was written for Mishkāt from the works below. It is an introduction, not a tafsir: where it matters, read the scholars themselves.
Works quoted on this page
- تفسير الطبريJāmiʿ al-bayānMuḥammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī (d. 310 AH)
- تفسير البغويMaʿālim al-tanzīlal-Ḥusayn al-Baghawī (d. 516 AH)
- تفسير ابن الجوزيZād al-masīrAbū al-Faraj ibn al-Jawzī (d. 597 AH)
- تفسير القرطبيal-Jāmiʿ li-aḥkām al-QurʾānShams al-Dīn al-Qurṭubī (d. 671 AH)
- تفسير ابن كثيرTafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿaẓīmIsmāʿīl ibn Kathīr (d. 774 AH)
- الدر المنثورal-Durr al-manthūrJalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (d. 911 AH)
- فتح القدير للشوكانيFatḥ al-qadīrMuḥammad al-Shawkānī (d. 1250 AH)
- تفسير الرازيMafātīḥ al-ghaybFakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606 AH)
- تفسير أبي السعودIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmAbū al-Suʿūd al-ʿImādī (d. 982 AH)
- التحرير والتنويرal-Taḥrīr wa-l-tanwīrMuḥammad al-Ṭāhir ibn ʿĀshūr (d. 1393 AH)
- المختصر في التفسيرal-Mukhtaṣar fī al-tafsīrMarkaz Tafsīr, a committee of scholars
Beside each scholar quoted stand his creed and his school of fiqh, so that he can be read with discernment. The site’s library holds other commentaries as well; the introductions do not draw on them.
al-Qurṭubī is quoted on these pages only for what he transmits: who said a surah is Makkan or Madinan, and what it has been called. On the attributes of Allah his commentary interprets, in places, in the way of the Ashʿarīs rather than the way of the Salaf, and nothing of that is taken from him here.
al-Rāzī and Abū al-Suʿūd are quoted on these pages only for where a surah came down, and Ibn ʿĀshūr only for the aims of the surah. Nothing on the attributes of Allah is taken from them, and no report comes by way of them. Ibn ʿĀshūr’s statement of the aims is not in the site’s copy of his book: it is read from the Shamela typing as OpenITI holds it, with reports and al-Zamakhsharī’s words left out, and it links to its page there.
Every hadith here says where it is recorded and how it is graded. What is in al-Bukhārī or Muslim is marked ṣaḥīḥ. Outside the two, the grading followed is al-Albānī’s; where none of his was found, the scholar who graded it is named. A report known to be weak or fabricated is not given here at all. A report that is ḥasan, or a Companion’s own saying, or related by the commentators without a graded chain, says so beside it. In the account of what was happening, a small sign after a sentence says the same of the report that sentence tells, and a question mark stands where a date or a figure is not certain, or beside a grading — underlined — that has something to say about its own source: rest on it, or touch it, and it gives the reason. What is drawn from the sīrah — the campaigns, the dates, who was present — is history as its scholars transmit it, and is not graded here.
The order of revelation is the one printed at the head of each surah in the Egyptian muṣḥaf, which rests on lists transmitted from Ibn ʿAbbās and Jābir ibn Zayd. It places a surah by where it began. Many surahs came down in parts, over years, and the scholars treat the list as a guide, not a certainty.