"My brother, the torments of the teacher and Chief District Officer here have made my situation unbearable. They discomfort me incredibly. I can't even go out into the countryside. I live in my damp room as though living in the grave."

The student took the letter immediately to the governor, Mehmed Fevzi Daldal, and the next day, 25 July, Bediuzzaman was collected and taken to Isparta. He was to remain there till the following April, staying first in the medrese he had used before being sent to Barla, He moved then to a two-storey house set amid gardens where his student Re'fet Barutçu was staying, and afterwards rented a wooden house belonging to another student, Şükrü İçhan. [^98]

[^98]:Şahiner, Son Şahitler, i, 83.

These months in Isparta Bediuzzaman was held under very close surveillance. There were police permanently posted on his door and in the vicinity. One particularly obnoxious police officer has found his place in history, called Dündar. He used to make whatever trouble he could for Bediuzzaman and his students. Often Bediuzzaman's students could not approach him, he was kept under such strict surveillance. For a time just one, called Mehmed Gülirmak, was permitted to remain with him to attend to his needs. He also acted as 'Nur Postman', collecting or distributing the Risale-i Nur as required. In Isparta, Bediuzzaman wrote several more parts of Lem'alar, The Flashes, the third collection of the Risale-i Nur. When completed, The Flashes numbered thirty treatises, and the complete Risale-i Nur, one hundred and thirty. He loved the province of Isparta, as the centre from which the Risale-i Nur irradiated by means of his numerous students. He expressed this to a number of them sometime later: "...Because of you, I love Isparta and the surrounding country together with its very stones and soil. I can even say that if the Isparta authorities were to impose a prison sentence on me and another province was to acquit me, I would still choose Isparta." [^99]

[^99]:Nursi, Şualar, 248 (Eng. tr.: Rays, 320).

Some of Bediuzzaman's closest students such as Hüsrev and Re'fet Bey were in the town of Isparta. They remained with him as far as they were able now that he had been moved there, principally acting as his scribes and writing out copies of the Risale-i Nur. Among Re'fet Bey's reminiscences of this time were these:

Hüsrev and I were writing out copies of the Risale. Ustad was in the upstair's room. Suddenly the door clicked and opened, and what did we see