One of the important and frequently applied juridical principles in Imami jurisprudence is the well‑known principle of the negation of hardship (nafī al‑ʿusr wa al‑ḥaraj). According to this principle, legal rulings and obligations that are accompanied by hardship (ʿusr or ḥaraj) are negated. In this principle, the two terms ʿusr and ḥaraj are considered synonymous. Various interpretations of the concept of ḥaraj have been proposed; in the present study, it is defined as hardship exceeding the difficulty inherently associated with the nature of legal obligation.



Although this principle is regarded as an established doctrine in Imami jurisprudence, the late Ayatollah Sayyid Mohammad Rouhani denied its validity in principle. According to his view, the purport of the relevant evidences is the negation of hardship with respect to the higher objectives underlying the legislation of legal obligations, rather than with respect to the obligations themselves. He also considers it plausible that the negation of hardship pertains to religion as a whole (al‑dīn bi-mā huwa majmūʿ).



The aim of this study is to provide an analytical and critical examination of his arguments and to substantiate the well‑known view that the negation of hardship applies to the concrete instances of religious obligations. Since the Qurʾanic and narrational evidences related to this issue are examined in order to present, analyze, and critique Ayatollah Rouhani’s view, the research adopts an ijtihād‑based jurisprudential methodology.