struggles in the way of the Qur'an and belief through the Risale-i Nur, although the personal qualities and virtues of the Old Said were exceptional and of the highest order and his life and activities had all been in the cause of Islam and Ottoman Empire. For this reason there are many blank spots in the early period of his life. He himself never illuminated them and it is largely due to the researches of Necmeddin Şahiner and his indefatigable tracking down and interviewing of anyone who met, saw, or heard of Bediuzzaman in this period and later, that a fuller picture of these years has emerged. The two main sources in addition to these are Bediuzzaman's own works and his official biography. His early years in this work are taken from the biography written by his nephew, Abdurrahman, which was first published in 1919. The official archives and other material relating to this period remain largely unexplored.

A further point that should be borne in mind while reading the first part of this biography concerns the Old Said's insistence that in apparent contradiction to the dire situation into which the Ottoman Empire and Islamic world had fallen, the Qur'an and Islamic civilization would dominate the near future. In later years he explained that these repeated and insistent predictions of the Old Said were not in error, but in need of closer interpretation. He wrote that "in order to dispel despair" at that time, the Old Said frequently stated that "he saw a light in the future", and along with others he had striven for its achievement in the field of politics and social life. This light had proved to be the Risale-i Nur. That is to say, his predictions of a turn in the fortunes of the Islamic world and that Islam's future was bright not gloomy had been correct, but his interpretation of them had been incorrect. And in the 1950's he wrote that "the certain good tidings" he had given in his sermon in Damascus in 1911 of the supremacy of Islam, which he had said would occur in the near future, had been "delayed by the two World Wars and twenty-five years of despotism"; there were then signs of them being realized. Thus, through reasoning and "premonition", the Old Said had foretold the resurgence of Islam and rise of the Islamic world that began in the 1950's and continues at the present time and in which the Risale-i Nur plays an increasingly important part, but had sought their achievement through active involvement in politics and social life.

All Bediuzzaman's endeavour throughout his long life was for the advancement and prosperity of Muslims and the Islamic world, and their happiness in this world and the next, and that of all humanity. These he believed to lie in the Qur'an. In his search to find a way of relating its truths to modern man, he was inspired by it to write the Risale-i Nur, which expounds and explains in a unique way the Qur'an's teachings con-