The treatment I have received this seven years has been purely arbitrary and outside the law. For the laws concerning exiles and prisoners are clear. By law, they can meet with their relations and they are not prevented from mixing with others. In every nation and state worship and prayer are immune from interference. People like me stayed together with their friends and relations in towns. They were prevented neither from mixing with others, nor from communicating, nor from moving about freely. I was prevented. Then my mosque even was raided. And while it is Sunna to repeat the words, There is no god but God in the prayers following the prescribed prayers according to the Shafi'i school, they tried to make me give them up. Even, one of the old exiles in Burdur, an illiterate called Şebab and his mother-in-law, came here for a change of air. They came to me because we come from the same place. They were summoned from the mosque by three armed gendarmes. The official then tried to hide that he had made a mistake and acted unlawfully, and apologized, saying: "Don't be angry, it was my duty." Then he gave them permission and told them to go. If other things and treatment are compared to this event, it is understood that the treatment accorded to me is purely arbitrary, and that they inflict vipers and curs on me. But I don't condescend to bother with them. I refer it to Almighty God to ward off their evil. In fact, those who instigated the event that was the cause of the exile are now back in their own lands, and powerful chiefs are back at the heads of their tribes. Everyone has been discharged, but they put me in a village and set those with the least conscience on me. And just as I have only been able to go to another village twenty minutes away twice in six years, so they did not give me permission to go there for a few days' change of air, crushing me even more under their tyranny. Whereas whatever the government, the law is the same for all. There cannot be different laws for villages and for individuals. That is to say, the law as far as I am concerned is unlawfulness. The officials here utilize the government influence for their own personal interests. But I offer a hundred thousand thanks to Almighty God, and by way of making known His bounties, I say this: "All this oppression and tyranny of theirs is like pieces of wood for the fire of ardour and endeavour which illuminates the lights of the Qur'an; it makes them flare up and shine. And those lights of the Qur'an, which have suffered that persecution of theirs and have spread with the heat of endeavour, have made this province, indeed, most of the country, like a medrese in place of Barla. They supposed me to be a prisoner in a village. On the contrary, in spite of the atheists, Barla has become the teaching desk, and many places, like Isparta, have become like the medrese." [^93]

[^93]:Mektûbat, 337-8 (Eng. tr.: Letters, 426-7).