invective and abuse said nothing. Everyone left the theatre thoroughly subdued and contrite. [^156]

[^156]:Münir Süleyman Çapanoğlu, Türkiye'de Sosyalizm Hareketleri ve Sosyalist Hilmi, as in Şahiner, Said Nursi, 110-111.

The writer of the work from which the description of the above event is taken, Münir Süleyman Çapanoğlu, had further memories from that time, which he told Necmeddin Şahiner in an interview in 1972. He said:

… Certainly, he [Bediuzzaman] was someone who knew his theories well and could defend them well. He began way back at that time, in the Constitutional Period. He went at the same tempo, at the same speed, in the same direction, and defended the same ideas... They were frightened of him at that time the same as in this period, because whenever he came out onto the street, he was immediately surrounded by a crowd.

On being asked if these were his own students who flocked round him, Münir Çapanoğlu continued:

Both his students and the ordinary people, but mostly the people; they wanted to see him, they wanted to hear him speak. I myself witnessed this many times. He spoke beautifully. He spoke persuasively. [^157]

[^157]:N. Şahiner, Nurs Yolu, 131.

We learn from one of his works that on the Constitution being proclaimed, Bediuzzaman sent fifty to sixty telegrams to the Eastern Provinces through the Grand Vizier's Office urging all the tribes to accept it, saying: "Constitutionalism and the Constitution about which you have heard consists of true justice and the consultation enjoined by the Shari'a. Consider it favourably and work to preserve it, for our worldly happiness lies in constitutionalism. And we have suffered more than anyone from despotism." [^158]

[^158]:Nursi, Divan-ı Harb-i Örfî, 12-13.

The Constitution was not without opponents, particularly in the East where those whose interests were threatened were seeking to turn all the tribes against it with negative propaganda. While Bediuzzaman spent several months in the summer of 1910 travelling among them explaining its vital importance both for the Kurds and the Empire and Islamic world, as we shall see, at this point his efforts were confined to the written word.

In Istanbul, too, profiting from their ignorance and naivity, opponents of constitutionalism were trying to provoke the Kurdish porters against the Constitution. In response, Bediuzzaman took every opportunity to combat this negative propaganda and illuminate them concerning it. The text of