Allahumma la Sahla: Full Dua, Hadith Source and Meaning

The supplication Allahumma la sahla illa ma ja‘altahu sahla is a short, sahih dua taught by the Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) for moments when a task feels too heavy to begin. It admits, in one breath, that ease is not a property of circumstances but a gift Allah grants when He wishes.

This guide gives you the canonical Arabic with full diacritics, the corrected transliteration, the hadith chain (Ibn Hibban 2427, Ibn As-Sunni 351, Hisn al-Muslim 139), three scholarly gradings, a word-by-word breakdown, the classical grammar that gives the dua its force, the Quranic precedent in Surah Ash-Sharh, and the situations where the Sunnah actually invites this dhikr.

The Dua in Arabic, Transliteration, and English

The dua is a single line carried in the Sunnah without abbreviation. The canonical Arabic, transliteration, and English from the standard collection of Prophetic supplications (Hisn al-Muslim entry 139, sourced from Sahih Ibn Hibban no. 2427) read as follows:

Arabic (with full diacritics):

اللَّهُمَّ لاَ سَهْلَ إِلاَّ مَا جَعَلْتَهُ سَهْلاً، وَأَنْتَ تَجْعَلُ الْحَزْنَ إِذَا شِئْتَ سَهْلاً

Arabic (without diacritics, for keyboards):

اللهم لا سهل إلا ما جعلته سهلا وأنت تجعل الحزن إذا شئت سهلا

Transliteration (with macrons):

Allāhumma lā sahla illā mā ja‘altahu sahlā, wa anta taj‘alu l-ḥazna idhā shi’ta sahlā.

English meaning (sunnah.com canonical wording):

“O Allah, there is no ease other than what You make easy. If You please You ease sorrow.”

A small but important note for readers comparing this with other published versions: the second-to-last word in the first clause is ja‘altahu with a damma on the ha’ (جَعَلْتَهُ), referring back to the matter Allah has made easy. Some lower-quality sources print it with a fatha (جَعَلْتَهَ), which changes the grammatical reference and breaks the sentence. The damma form is the correct one preserved in the Sahih chain.

Authentic Hadith Source and Grading

The supplication is preserved through Anas ibn Malik (RA), the long-serving companion who narrated more than two thousand hadiths from the Prophet (ﷺ). Three primary sources carry it: Sahih Ibn Hibban no. 2427, Ibn As-Sunni’s ‘Amal al-Yawm wa-l-Laylah no. 351, and Hisn al-Muslim entry 139 (the standard fortification of the Muslim, compiled by Sa‘id ibn ‘Ali al-Qahtani). Al-Hakim’s al-Mustadrak and ad-Diya’ al-Maqdisi’s al-Mukhtarah also record it through related chains.

It is not in Bukhari or Muslim, which sometimes leads people to ask whether it is authentic at all. The answer is yes, on the authority of three independent chains of scholarship:

• Ibn Hajar al-‘Asqalani graded the hadith sahih in his commentary on An-Nawawi’s Kitab al-Adhkar. Ibn Hajar’s grading is the one most often quoted in modern compilations.
• ‘Abdul-Qadir Al-Arna’ut authenticated it in his tahqiq (verification) of An-Nawawi’s Kitab al-Adhkar, accepting the grade transmitted from Ibn Hajar.
• Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani rated it sahih on the conditions of Imam Muslim in Silsilah al-Ahadith as-Sahihah no. 2886, the strongest of the three gradings.

What this means in practice: a Muslim can recite this dua with full confidence that it is the speech of the Prophet (ﷺ), not a pious invention. The fact that three independent muhaddithin from different centuries reached the same conclusion is the kind of cumulative authentication that hadith science was built to provide.

Word-by-Word Meaning

The dua splits into two clauses: a negation-then-exception that names Allah as the sole source of ease, and an affirmation that He converts hardship into ease at His will. Reading it word by word makes both layers visible.

اللَّهُمَّ — Allahumma: “O Allah.” This is the classical Arabic vocative for Allah, formed by adding an emphatic mim in place of the vocative particle ya. Linguists call it the most reverent form of address in the language, used almost exclusively in supplication.

لاَ سَهْلَ — la sahla: “There is no ease.” La is the absolute negation (la al-nafiyah li-l-jins), denying the existence of an entire category. Sahl means level, smooth, or easily traversed ground, the opposite of rugged terrain. So far the sentence reads: there is, in the absolute sense, no such thing as ease.

إِلاَّ مَا جَعَلْتَهُ سَهْلاً — illa ma ja‘altahu sahla: “except what You have made easy.” Illa is the exception that rescues the sentence from total negation. Ma ja‘altahu means “what You have made it,” with the verb ja‘ala in the past tense and the pronoun hu referring back to the matter at hand. Sahla here is the predicate, in the accusative because it follows ja‘ala (a verb that takes two objects).

وَأَنْتَ تَجْعَلُ الْحَزْنَ — wa anta taj‘alu l-hazna: “And You make the difficult.” Anta (“You”) is added for emphasis, narrowing the agent to Allah alone. Taj‘alu is the present-tense form of ja‘ala, expressing ongoing capability. Al-hazn is the technical noun the Arabs used for rough, stony ground that you cannot walk across without bruising your feet.

إِذَا شِئْتَ سَهْلاً — idha shi’ta sahla: “if You please, easy.” Idha is the conditional (“if/when”) and shi’ta is the past-tense form of sha’a (“to will”), used here for emphasis on the divine decision. Sahla appears for the third time in the dua, this time as the result of the conditional: rough ground becomes smooth ground, when Allah wills it.

Grammatical Structure for Arabic Learners

For students of classical Arabic, this dua is a worked example of two structures the grammarians treat in their first-year textbooks: the istithna’ mufarragh (the “freed” exception) and the jinas (paronomasia, or the deliberate echo of a root within a sentence).

The istithna’ mufarragh works like this: a sentence begins with a negation that has no explicit object (the object slot is “freed”), and the illa clause that follows fills the slot. “There is no ease except what You make easy” follows this exact pattern. The negation la sahla is absolute and unbounded; the exception illa ma ja‘altahu sahla is what fills it. The grammatical effect is to assert by first denying then qualifying, which is rhetorically much stronger than a plain affirmation. Saying “Allah makes things easy” is true. Saying “there is no ease except what Allah makes easy” is the same fact pressed against your chest until you cannot dispute it.

The second device is the contrast between two opposing roots from the Arabic lexicon of terrain: س-ه-ل (s-h-l) and ح-ز-ن (ḥ-z-n).

• Sahl originally describes the smooth, level plain that travelers crossed without trouble. Bedouin Arabic borrowed it for any condition that yields without resistance. From the same root we get sahl (easy person), sahhala (he made easy), and the place name al-Suhul (the Plains).
• &Hazn; describes the opposite: rocky, uneven ground that bruises the feet of anyone who tries to cross it. The Quranic Arabic Corpus root entry preserves this physical sense. Over time the same word came to mean grief and sorrow, the inner equivalent of stony ground. The metaphor in the dua is therefore precise: Allah is the One who can flatten rocky terrain into a smooth path, whether the rocks are the obstacles in front of you or the grief inside you.

The repetition of the word sahla three times in a single sentence is the jinas. It is not a stylistic accident; it is the rhetorical hammer that drives the meaning home. Every clause comes back to ease as the gift, and every clause attributes that gift to Allah alone.

Quranic Precedent: Surah Ash-Sharh 94:5–6

The dua does not appear in a vacuum. It rests on a Quranic foundation laid down in Surah Ash-Sharh (94:5–6), the short Makkan chapter revealed to comfort the Prophet (ﷺ) during the early hardships of his mission:

فَإِنَّ مَعَ الْعُسْرِ يُسْرًا    إِنَّ مَعَ الْعُسْرِ يُسْرًا

“So indeed, with hardship, ease. Indeed, with hardship, ease.” (Surah Ash-Sharh 94:5–6)

The two verses make almost the same statement twice, with one critical change of preposition: ma‘a (“with”) rather than ba‘da (“after”). Ease does not arrive after hardship has finished. Ease accompanies it, walks beside it, and emerges from inside it. That theological move, ease as a companion of hardship rather than a reward at its end, is the spiritual ground on which the Allahumma la sahla dua rests.

The classical mufassirun pressed this further. In Tafsir Maarif-ul-Quran, Mufti Muhammad Shafi‘ records a famous saying attributed to Hassan al-Basri (and others): “One hardship cannot overcome two eases.” The reasoning is grammatical. In Arabic, when a definite noun is repeated with the article al-, it refers to the same instance (“the hardship” and “the hardship” are one). When an indefinite noun is repeated without the article, it refers to two instances (“ease” and “ease” are two distinct eases). In the verses above, al-‘usr (“the hardship”) appears twice as one and the same difficulty, while yusra (“ease”) appears twice as two separate eases that surround it.

So when you raise your hands and say Allahumma la sahla illa ma ja‘altahu sahla, you are not asking Allah to do something foreign to His already-revealed pattern. You are asking Him to deliver, in your specific situation, the manifold ease that He has already promised in His Book.

When to Recite (Sunnah Context vs Cultural Overuse)

The Sunnah context for this dua is moments when something specific in front of you feels too difficult to begin or to push through. Anas ibn Malik (RA) preserved it as a supplication for hardship, not as a generic charm for good outcomes. The standard scholarly examples include:

• Before sitting an exam, viva, or licensing test you have prepared for and now feel anxious about.
• Before a medical procedure, a hospital appointment for a difficult diagnosis, or a surgery, for yourself or a loved one.
• Before a tense conversation: a confrontation about an injustice, a request for forgiveness, an interview for a job your livelihood depends on.
• Before any major decision (a marriage, a move, a career pivot) where the istikhara has been done and only the doing remains.
• At the start of a journey that frightens you, a piece of work you have been avoiding, or a project whose scope feels larger than your strength.
• For grief, illness, or a chronic burden you cannot lift on your own; recite it whenever the weight returns.

What it is not: a generic Instagram caption, a pre-exam ritual recited because a friend told you it works, or a phrase to print on a card and carry in a wallet as a charm. The Sunnah does not prescribe a fixed count, a fixed posture, or a written form to wear. Treating the dua as a talisman is a drift away from how the Prophet (ﷺ) used it, which was as a moment of conscious, hands-up tawakkul (reliance) at a real point of difficulty. The dua earns its strength from the sincerity of the moment, not from repetition for its own sake.

Common Mispronunciations and Practice Errors

Because the dua circulates widely in transliterated form, three small mistakes have become common. Each one changes the grammar or the meaning. Reading the Arabic with the diacritics shown above will fix all three.

• jaʿaltahu vs jaʿaltaha: The pronoun is hu (referring to “the matter”), not ha (which would refer to a feminine noun not present in the sentence). Some printed copies show جَعَلْتَهَ with a fatha; the correct form is جَعَلْتَهُ with a damma.
• sahla vs sahlan: The accusative ending here is fatha + alif (سَهْلاً), pronounced sahlan in classical recitation with full vocalisation. Many transliterations drop the final n and write “sahla”, which is acceptable in colloquial reading but incomplete grammatically. If you can manage sahlan, do so; if you cannot, “sahla” is still understood.
• al-ḥazna vs al-ḥazana: The middle letter zay carries a sukoon (no vowel), so the word is two syllables, al-ḥaz-na, not three. Adding a vowel between z and n turns it into a different word.

The video below walks through the recitation slowly so you can match the diacritics by ear:

Related Authentic Duas for Hardship

The Sunnah preserves several supplications for difficulty that work alongside Allahumma la sahla. Each one foregrounds a different aspect of reliance on Allah, and the four below are well-attested in the canonical collections.

• Hasbunallahu wa ni‘mal wakil: “Allah is sufficient for us, and what an excellent guardian He is.” Said by Ibrahim (AS) in the fire and by the Prophet (ﷺ) at Uhud (Quran 3:173).
• La hawla wa la quwwata illa billah: “There is no power and no strength except with Allah.” Described in Sahih al-Bukhari as a treasure from the treasures of Paradise.
• Dua of Yunus (AS): La ilaha illa anta subhanaka inni kuntu mina z-zalimin (“There is no god but You, glory be to You; I have surely been among the wrongdoers”). Recorded in Quran 21:87 and recommended in Tirmidhi as a dua for any distress.
• Allahumma rahmataka arju: “O Allah, it is Your mercy that I hope for. Do not leave me to myself even for the blink of an eye, and rectify all my affairs. There is no god but You.” Recorded in Sunan Abi Dawud no. 5090.

Pair these with Allahumma la sahla when the moment calls for more than one breath of dhikr. The Prophet (ﷺ) modelled exactly this layering: a different supplication for a different facet of the same need.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does Allahumma la sahla mean in English?

“O Allah, there is no ease other than what You make easy. If You please You ease sorrow.” It is the canonical English wording recorded in Hisn al-Muslim entry 139, sourced from Sahih Ibn Hibban no. 2427. The dua admits, in one breath, that ease is not a property of circumstances but a gift Allah grants when He wills.

Where does this dua come from and is it from a hadith?

Yes. It is a Prophetic supplication narrated by Anas ibn Malik (RA), recorded in Sahih Ibn Hibban no. 2427, Ibn As-Sunni’s ‘Amal al-Yawm wa-l-Laylah no. 351, and Hisn al-Muslim entry 139. Al-Hakim’s al-Mustadrak and ad-Diya’ al-Maqdisi’s al-Mukhtarah also preserve it through related chains.

When should I recite Allahumma la sahla?

Recite it before any specific task that feels too heavy to begin or push through: an exam, a medical procedure, a difficult conversation, a major decision after istikhara, the start of a journey, or whenever grief or chronic burden returns. It is a moment of conscious reliance (tawakkul), not a generic charm for vague good fortune.

Is this dua authentic (sahih)?

Yes. The hadith is graded sahih by Ibn Hajar al-‘Asqalani in his commentary on An-Nawawi’s Kitab al-Adhkar, authenticated by ‘Abdul-Qadir Al-Arna’ut, and graded sahih on the conditions of Imam Muslim by Al-Albani in Silsilah al-Ahadith as-Sahihah no. 2886. Three independent gradings across centuries reach the same conclusion.

Can I recite this dua in English if I don’t know Arabic yet?

Allah understands every language; turning to Him in English when Arabic is still beyond you is fully accepted. That said, the Prophetic dua carries baraka in its exact wording, so memorising the Arabic line by line, even just the first clause to start with, is the goal. Read the transliteration and the English together until the Arabic settles in your memory.

How many times should I repeat this supplication?

The Sunnah does not prescribe a fixed number for this dua. The Prophet (ﷺ) is reported to have said it once at moments of difficulty rather than as a counted dhikr. Recite it once with full presence of heart, repeat it as long as the difficulty is in front of you, and avoid the practice of fixing an arbitrary count (33, 100, etc.) without a Sunnah basis.