scholars from all over the Islamic world, but he also commanded and led in person a volunteer regiment against the invading Russians in eastern Turkey in 1914 for nearly two years until taken prisoner. Furthermore, up to that time he sought to further the interests of Islam by actively engaging in public life. However, the years that saw the transition from empire to republic also saw the transition from the ‘Old Said’ to the ‘New Said’. The ‘New Said’ was characterized by his withdrawal from public life and concentration on study, prayer and thought for what was required now was a struggle of a different sort.

After a period of some two years, in 1925, Bediuzzaman was sent into exile in western Anatolia although he had committed no crime or misdemeanour. For the next twenty-five years, and to a lesser extent for the last ten years of his life, he suffered exile, imprisonment, and isolation, but these years saw the writing of the Risale-i Nur, the Treatise of Light, and its dissemination throughout Turkey. To quote Bediuzzaman himself, “Now I see clearly that most of my life has been directed in such a way, outside my own free-will, ability, comprehension and foresight, that it might produce these treatises to serve the cause of the Qur’an. It is as if all my life as a scholar has been spent in preliminaries to these writings, which demonstrate the miraculousness of the Qur’an.”