a good state of repair, with cast-iron stove and hot water. Its inmates were a young man serving a life-sentence for communism, a doctor convicted of rape, and a political prisoner. They received every sort of privilege, the communist even being allowed out into the town in the company of a guard.

The Risale-i Nur Students sent petitions to the prison authorities for coal and a proper stove for Bediuzzaman, but as a consequence they forcibly moved him to the Fifth Ward, the ward for pickpockets, thieves, and vagrants. It was as though they had taken pity on him, but alas, more in keeping with them, they knew he could not abide the crowded, filthy conditions and the noise, and that it would be even greater torment for him. However, the prisoners turned out to be more sympathetic: they divided off a portion of the ward with blankets, set up a stove in it, placed Bediuzzaman in it, and themselves did not make a sound outside. It became the warmest place in the prison, and it was here that Bediuzzaman wrote Elhüccetü'z-Zehra. [^317]

[^317]:İbrahim Fakazlı, Son Şahitler, v, 35-6.

The seriously ill and extremely weak Bediuzzaman wrote that it occurred to him there that since there were Risale-i Nur Students in all the other wards, it was only in this Fifth Ward that the inmates were deprived of the lessons of the Risale-i Nur, so saying "Bismillah" he began to teach the youths there in particular, explaining eleven brief proofs of the Divine existence and unity. [^318] As for the prisoners, they began to compete with each other as to who could do the most to assist Bediuzzaman and many of them began to perform the five daily prayers.

[^318]:Nursi, Şualar, 502-3 (Eng. tr.: Rays, 570).

Bediuzzaman was at first distressed at being moved to the crowd and din of the fifth ward, although "it later turned into a mercy", and said by way of a warning to the prison authorities that they would suffer for it and that the cold would become even more intense. One of the prisoners who did much to assist him in the prison, a bookseller by profession, described how following this the temperature plummeted even further so that all the drains also became completely frozen. And the people in the town said that "they must have done something to the Hoja again." At that point he and some others set up a stove in Bediuzzaman's old ward and made it more inhabitable, and Bediuzzaman moved back there. A while later, a warm wind began to blow and the temperature rose and the ice began to thaw, whereupon the drain pipes began to split and burst and the whole town, including the prison, was flooded by filth and water from the drains. It took