Halil İbrahim, one of our brothers from Milas, received the letter describing the kuddûs bird and opened a locked room, in the same extraordinary way a kuddûs bird flew in and tried to fly round the room, thus coinciding with our bird. Then when the students of the Nur School read the letter, two grasshoppers appeared and perched on the letter. And just as these miniature birds corroborated and coincided with the coincidences of the former birds, so, as endorsed by our loyal brothers in İnebolu, when they were reading that same letter, they were frightened out of their wits by an owl alighting at the window and beating the panes with its wings as though saying: "I'm taking an interest in that letter too; don't imagine that I'm not concerned!" The large bird was fully confirming the interest shown by the other birds and was coinciding with them. If an imaginary wide-thinking and intuitive person who dwelt on the relationships between the events of the book of the universe from the viewpoint of humanity's situation this century were to endorse so many coincidences looking to the same matter [^40] and the importance of the questions discussed briefly in the letters, would he not be right? For it is as though with their very numerous aeroplanes and human birds, men have frightened the birds of the air, which is their world, and in consequence, with a terrible excitement in that world, the birds show serious concern in the face of men's actions and ask if there is no one to respond to those tyrannous, destructive, savage birds, so as to force them to give up their destruction and to work for the profit of humankind and for their prosperity and happiness. Wouldn't it be apt to say they are showing an interest in the questions of the Risale-i Nur? Wouldn't such a thing be possible? Could one way it is a meaningless fancy?

[^40]:We had just received this letter from our Master. I, that is, Husrev, was reading it and my friend Tahirî was writing it out. A bird came and perched on our window, then seeing Husrev's head, flew off. Husrev, Tahirî

T h i r d   M a t t e r

Recently I read the Hizb-i Nuriye, a summary of The Supreme Sign (Âyet-ül-Kübrâ), which was composed three years ago in Ramadan and published freely this Ramadan. It took me over an hour. Then again in Ramadan, a ten or fifteen-minute summary of that summary occurred to me. When I read it, I experience on reading two or three pages of Arabic an unfolding of belief and of what is denoted by, "An hour's reflection is better than a year's supererogatory worship" [^41] as though I were reading the whole of The Supreme Sign. I can't find the time to write to you with my

[^41]:al-'Ajlūnī, Kashf al-Khafā', i, 310; al-Ghazālī, Iḥyā' 'Ulūm al-Dīn, iv, 409 (Kitāb al-Tafakkur); al-Haythamī, Majma' al-Zawā'id, i, 78. [Tr.]