Chapter Six - Emirdağ

CHAPTER SIX

Emirdağ

#### Introduction

Introduction

Bediuzzaman had been a month a half in the Şehir Hotel in Denizli when the order came from Ankara that he was to reside in the province of Afyon, still in western Anatolia, to the north-east of Denizli. A letter dated 31 July 1944 written by the Denizli businessman, Hafız Mustafa Kocayaka to Sadık Demirelli, who had sent Bediuzzaman some Kastamonu rice, states that Bediuzzaman had left that day in the company of a police inspector. He was in good health and content at the prospect of the move. The government had ordered that he be given the generous travelling allowance of four hundred liras. [^264] Bediuzzaman was put up in the Ankara Hotel in Afyon for two to three weeks and then ordered to settle in Emirdağ. Thus, he arrived in this small provincial town set in high rolling hills in the second half of August 1944. It was to be his place of residence for the next seven years, till October 1951, with the break of twenty months in Afyon Prison from January 1948 to September 1949. Since it was in the month of Sha'ban that he arrived in Emirdağ, it was before the 21 August, on which the month of Ramadan began that year.

[^264]:Sadık Demirelli, in Son Şahitler, ii, 143-4.

#### Introduction

Introduction

The first three and a half years of Bediuzzaman's stay in Emirdağ saw an intensification of his struggle with the forces of irreligion, which up to this time had felt themselves to be in an unassailable position in Turkey. The acquittal in Denizli had taken them entirely by surprise, in the words of one writer, exploding like a bomb-shell so that they did not know what had hit them. It was a clear victory for the Risale-i Nur and religion, and a forerunner of its future victories. The fruits of Bediuzzaman's twenty years of silent struggle were starting to show,