and dress are strange, they are different. Through the tongue of this title, I am requesting that the opinions and customs generally held and practised are not made the criteria for judging mine. [^59]

[^59]:Şahiner, Said Nursi, 68-9; Nursi, Hutbe-i Şamiye, 90.

And in a later work he stated that he used the name "in order to make known a divine bounty." He wrote:

"I now realize that the name Bediuzzaman, which was given to me many years ago although I was not worthy of it, was not mine anyway. It was a name of the Risale-i Nur and had been given to the Risale-i Nur's apparent translator temporarily and as a trust." [^60]

[^60]:Şahiner, Said Nursi, 69; Nursi, Şualar, 629.

Bediuzzaman had his own medrese in Van, at the foot of the citadel, called the Horhor medrese, with sometimes as many as sixty students, [^61] and it was during his stay in Van that Bediuzzaman developed his ideas on educational reform and created his own particular method of teaching. He developed this through examining the principles of all he had studied together with his experience of teaching religious and scientific subjects, then considering them in relation to the needs of the times. The basis of this method was to "combine" the religious sciences and modern sciences, with the result that the positive sciences would corroborate and strengthen the truths of religion. Bediuzzaman now followed this method when teaching his students. [^62]

[^61]:Nursi, Emirdağ Lahikası, ii, 187.

[^62]:Tarihçe, 45.

Bediuzzaman's greatest aim at this time was to establish a university in eastern Anatolia where this method would be practised; that is, where modern science would be taught side by side with the religious sciences and his other ideas put into practice. This university he called the Medresetü'z-Zehra after the Azhar University in Cairo, as it was to be its sister university in the centre of the eastern Islamic world. Having travelled throughout eastern Anatolia, Bediuzzaman had seen that such an educational establishment was essential not only for combating the widespread ignorance and backwardness of the region, but also as a solution for its other social and political problems. Bediuzzaman's ideas concerning education are discussed in greater detail in a subsequent chapter.

As a patron of learning, Tahir Pasha's residence was the scene of learned discussions in all fields. On one such occasion, Tahir Pasha said with the intention of slighting the Maliki school of law, "Dogs (kalb) are considered unclean the same as pigs, aren't they?" Molla Said replied: