Chapter Four - Kastamonu

CHAPTER FOUR

Kastamonu

#### Life in Kastamonu

Life in Kastamonu

Bediuzzaman was released from Eskisehir Prison in March 1936 and was sent to Kastamonu in the Ilgaz Mountains to the south of the Black Sea. His enforced residence in this the major town of the province of Kastamonu was to last seven and a half years. Under constant surveillance, his movements were more restricted than in Barla, and the harassment and persecution continued. He wrote further additions to the Risale-i Nur while here, including one of its most important treatises, The Supreme Sign. He attracted new students and Kastamonu and particularly the town of İnebolu on the Black Sea earned the name of "the second Isparta" as a centre from which the Risale-i Nur spread. Bediuzzaman kept up a continual correspondence with his students in Isparta and elsewhere and these letters were gathered together to form the Kastamonu Lahikası, or Kastamonu Letters. They are an important source of information about the matters with which Bediuzzaman was concerned at this time, and most of the subjects they discuss will be touched on in the course of this chapter. They were a source of great enlightenment, instruction, and encouragement for Bediuzzaman's students, now parted from him, and were conveyed secretly from town to town and village to village by Nur Postmen with copies being made of them on the way, since it was very often not possible for them to be sent by post.

For the first three months he was in Kastamonu Bediuzzaman stayed "as a guest" in the police station. He describes what a trying time this was for him as someone who preferred a life of solitude, and also could not abide the compulsory changes in dress. [^139] His refusal to abandon his Islamic jubba and turban were doubtless made the pretext for the harassment he received there. Following this he was moved to a rented house immediately

[^139]:Nursi, Lem'alar, 251 (Eng. tr.: Flashes, 333).