The Life of Imam Bediuzzaman Said Nursi

The Life of Imām Bedī‘uzzamān Sa‘īd Nursī

Nursī, known in Turkey as Ustād Bedī‘uzzamān, was a polymath who excelled not only in the classical Islāmic sciences but also in the modern natural sciences. He was a universal thinker of great exactitude, an erudite theologian of tremendous dignity, a brave voluntary commander in the service of freedom, a life-long teacher of millions, a peacemaking hero advocating positive engagement, and a magnetic and vastly successful leader of the Muslim community within our contemporary secular setting. He was born in 1293/1877 in the village of Nurs, in the Bitlis district of eastern Turkey. Nursī was a sayyid, or descendant of the Prophet Muḥammad (‘alayhisṣalātu wassalām), having traced his lineage to Ḥasan (raḍiallāhu anhu) on the side of his father, and Ḥusayn (raḍiallāhu anhu) on the side of his mother, the grandchildren of the Prophet Muḥammad (‘alayhisṣalātu wassalām).

a. His Education

Until the age of nine Nursī lived with his family, receiving his basic education from his eldest brother, Mulla ‘Abdullah, himself a religious scholar. During a short period studying with the ulama in various medreses in eastern Turkey, his photographic memory, intelligence and courage drew attention, and people soon acknowledged his special scholastic talents - he had been able to complete the study of the entire curriculum of the Ottoman ulama of the time in a phenomenally short period of about three months, and was able to pass, with flying colours, all of the examinations given to him by his teachers, and to defend his theses in the scholastic discussions to which they subjected him. As a child, his instructor Mulla Fethullah named him Bedī‘uzzamān, 'the wonder of the age', due to the extraordinary strength of his memory, and his singular intelligence; and this epithet soon came to be deemed appropriate by the rest of the ulama of eastern Turkey. He was able, due to the level of memory and understanding conferred on him by his phenomenal degree of self-motivation and drive, to memorise ninety works in the Islāmic sciences, including many that were highly technical; normally such a course of study would have been completed in fifteen years.

b. His Idea of Renewal in Education

After moving to Van in Eastern Turkey in the late 1800s, Nursī came to believe that the study of the sciences of mainstream modern civilisation was a necessary means to conveying the message of Islām in a way that would enable the predominant spirit of the age to comprehend it. He now put this new realisation into action by driving himself to master those sciences, again in a very short period of time; sciences such as mathematics, geology, physics, chemistry, astronomy, history, geography and philosophy. He was engaged in teaching, guiding and counselling the tribesmen for the entirety of his fifteen year stay in Van, and had been able to open his own medrese there, known as Horhor; amongst other works, during this time Nursī wrote an advanced commentary on Ismail Gelenbevi's Burhān in logic.

In order to realise his new-found ideal of harmonising the contemporary European natural sciences and the traditional Islāmic sciences in a manner taking into account their relationality and the natural hierarchy between them, he decided to establish a university in eastern Turkey, named Medreset-üz Zehrâ. In order to realise this vision, he came to Istanbul to seek imperial support. Nursī had hung a sign on the door of his rooms in the Fatih area of Istanbul where he was staying, which read, 'Here, all problems are solved, and all questions are answered - yet none are asked,' and he did indeed answer the questions of the Istanbul ulama, who eagerly visited him after news of his scholarly renown had spread. In hanging this sign, Nursī had intended to draw the attention of the centre of the Caliphate to the people of Eastern Turkey, and to seek support for Medreset-üz Zehrâ, which he hoped would be based there. However, he was unable to realize his dream. The Istanbul administration of the time were unable to offer their support, deeply distracted as they were by the political concerns and circumstances of the tumultuous beginning of the twentieth century. Later, due to the Russian invasion of the region during the First World War, which had broken out at that time, the project was postponed. It was only in the aftermath of the First World War that Nursī began to author The Risāle-i Nūr, applying the Islāmic sciences to numerous modern questions and thus to a large degree fulfilling the function he had envisaged for Medreset-üz Zehrâ.

For a time, Nursī remained in Istanbul, hoping to serve Islām by attempting to positively impact the political situation. On his return to Van, he strove to guide the tribes of the region; the lessons he gave to the tribesmen are gathered together in his book al-Munāẓarāt. Nursī then visited Damascus, where he delivered his celebrated sermon in the Umayyad Mosque, later published as The Damascus Sermon. Nursī took part in the First World War as a commander of a battalion that he had composed of his own students, and defended the eastern Ottoman lands against the Russian army. During the war, in the trenches, under the rain of gunfire, and in conditions where writing was simply not possible - he dictated Signs of Miraculous Inimitability (Ishārāt’ul-I‘jāz) a book widely regarded as a masterpiece of Qur’ānic exegesis.

During the Russian occupation of Bitlis, a wounded Imām Nursī was taken prisoner and sent to Siberia, where he remained in captivity for two and a half years. During this period, far from languishing in inactivity, he in fact strove to raise the awareness of the prisoners with his religious and spiritual instruction. In the end, he was able to escape, and via St. Petersburg, Warsaw and Vienna, he made his way to Istanbul, arriving on the 25th June, 1918; it was soon after his return that he was appointed a member of Dāru’l-Hikmati’l-Islāmiyya.

The Ottoman Empire was defeated in the First World War, and it was not long before the British, French, Italians and Greeks began to occupy its territories. Correspondingly, the activities of the War of Independence began throughout Turkey. Nursī encouraged and supported the Kuva-i Milliye ‘National Forces’ fighting against the occupiers throughout Turkey, and the government in Ankara, approving of Nursī's activities, invited him to Ankara, where he was given a warm welcome. Yet Nursī was far from impressed by the pervading spiritual state of affairs in Ankara, seeing, amongst many other things, that many of the deputies in the parliament had no interest in religion nor the canonical prayer.

He clarified the great importance of the prayer and of following the sacred ordinances laid down by religion to them in a circular of ten paragraphs, and the number of deputies praying regularly increased dramatically; but his influence in this regard did not impress a certain leader of the time, with whom an ever forthright Nursī became involved in a sharp confrontation. Nonetheless, in an effort to subdue him, Nursī was offered the political position of member of parliament, and the position of head of religious affairs for the whole of Eastern Turkey, both of which he declined (not unlike the manner in which the Prophet Muḥammad (‘alayhisṣalātu wassalām), rejected offers of power and wealth offered by the Meccan polytheists, who hoped to be able to subdue him thereby). Instead, at this worrying and dangerous time, Nursī entered a period of spiritual seclusion. It was not long after the abolishment of the Caliphate in 1924 that the Kurdish "Shaykh Sa‘īd Rebellion" erupted. After much bloodshed, the rebellion was put out. While Nursī played no part in this rebellion, (and in fact disapproved of it), he was exiled to Istanbul in 1925 on the grounds that he had been involved. From Istanbul he was taken to Burdur, and then to Isparta. He was then compelled by the authorities to stay in Barla under house arrest, a small village subordinate to Isparta, wherein they would be able to watch his every movement, and prevent him from mixing with people.

c. The “New Sa‘īd” Period and Service to the True Faith

Sa‘īd Nursī referred to the early period of his life, when he was partially involved with world politics as the ‘Old Sa‘īd’ period, and the rest of his life, from 1921 onwards, as the “New Sa‘īd” period, starting with the authoring of The Risāle-i Nūr, and newly characterised by a disengagement from politics and a unique focus on service to the true faith and the Qur’ān. Nursī was to dedicate the rest of his life to a struggle for the protection of people’s faith, in the face of assaults against the foundations of true faith by currents of atheism that had taken over much of the Muslim world. Due to his ideas and activities in his New Sa‘īd period, he was exiled, imprisoned, poisoned several times and his books were banned - the result of plots set in motion by secret committees that seduced government officials into covert actions against Islām.

In his eight years of exile in Barla, he authored three-fourths of The Risāle-i Nūr. In distributing his writings all throughout Turkey, he adopted an unprecedented method largely responsible for saving Islām in those lands; he would make it a rule that anyone wishing to be a student of his would have to copy out some of The Risāle-i Nūr in Qur’ānic Arabic letters, and also enlist another person to copy it. The small group of his students in Isparta and Barla copied The Risāle-i Nūr, and strove to increase the number of copiers; thus was The Risāle-i Nūr distributed in secret, and in a short time, throughout the whole of Turkey.

Later, the authorities moved Nursī to Isparta, and then to Eskişehir Prison alongside one hundred and twenty of his students, accusing him of "founding a secret organisation, opposing the regime, and endeavoring to overthrow it." After his release from Eskişehir Prison, he was exiled to the Kastamonu province, where he spent eight years in exile. Despite these extreme attempts to silence Nursī, new parts of The Risāle-i Nūr were always being composed. Newly written epistles and letters were sent to Isparta. Students within Isparta would make clean copies so that they could be easily distributed throughout the villages of Anatolia, to even the most remote of areas. Every day, his circle of students widened.

In 1943, Nursī was sent to the High Court of Denizli, along with one hundred and twenty-six of his students. At the High Court, The Risāle-i Nūr was scrutinised by an expert committee made up of high-ranking scholars and judges in Ankara. In 1944 he was acquitted and his incrimination was proved to be unfounded, due to the efforts of the defence during the trial, as well as the report affirming both his lack of interest in political activity, and the politically neutral character of The Risāle-i Nūr. Nursī stayed in prison for nine months during the trial, in which time he was prevented from seeing his students, exposed to a great number of hardships, and indeed poisoned multiple times. Nursī was again moved to Emirdag, then to Afyon. Nevertheless, neither exile, imprisonment nor attempted murder were able to force him to give up his cause. In the latter years of his life, the bans on all of his books were lifted, at the conclusions of long processes of examination and investigation. In 1950 in Turkey, the multi-party period commenced, and the election was won by the Democratic Party. The changes that had taken place as a result of their coming into power allowed Nursi and his students some partial freedom and breathing space.

At the end of a life devoted to the service of true faith and the Qur’ān, and one filled with pain and hardship, Imām Nursī passed away late at night on the 23rd of March, 1960, which was the 25th of Ramadan, 1379.

The next day, a vast crowd of people performed the funeral prayer of this Imām of the age, in the Ulu Mosque. He was carried by the masses to the Mosque of Halilurrahman where he was buried in what would prove a temporary abode, for only two months later, on the 27th of May 1960, a military coup took place, and another dark age ensued for the country. So severe was the darkness of this period that the grave of the noble Imām was attacked by officials on the 12th of July 1960. Those who had, out of their fear, persecuted him for his entire life, had become even more frightened of what would now occur after his death; and they moved his blessed body to an unknown place.

d. The Risāle-i Nūr Service after Bedī‘uzzamān Sa‘īd Nursī

Before his demise, both in his works and his words Bedī‘uzzamān Sa‘īd Nursī appointed his closest student and the arch-scribe of the Risāle Nūr Epistles, Sayyid Ahmed Husrev Efendi, to direct and lead the service of The Risāle-i Nūr after himself.

While Nursī was still alive, Husrev Efendi was already known to the Students of Light as al-Ustād al-Thānī - The Second Master. This is well documented and supported by numerous texts in the Risāle, letters between senior students and his contemporary witnesses, and even court records as well as by Imām Bedī‘uzzamān Sa‘īd Nursī’s own verbal confirmations.

Husrev Efendi is the calligrapher of the most famous script in Turkey. He is the Serkâtib - the arch-scribe of The Risāle-i Nūr Corpus and bears an honorary title given by Bedī‘uzzamān: "Diamond-Penned Husrev."

During the lifetime of Bedī‘uzzamān Sa‘īd Nursī, Husrev Efendi was placed in charge of the duplication and distribution of the Epistles. In The Risāle-i Nūr, Husrev Efendi is the most frequently mentioned of Nursī’s students. Moreover, he was the only student to be given direct authorisation by Bedī‘uzzamān Sa‘īd Nursī to amend, modify and correct the Epistles, and he carried out this duty meticulously. Furthermore, during the periods Bedī‘uzzamān spent in prison, Husrev Efendi directed and led The Risāle-i Nūr service on his behalf.