Also, the climate here abrades my nerves and irks me terribly. One winter day here weighs on me and distresses me more than the whole winter I spent in Denizli Prison.
However, I can tell you in all certainty that just as the eye cannot endure the weight of a hair; so too, although my spirit is pained by a hair's weight, it takes on itself and endures gratefully and patiently mountains' weight of oppression and difficulties for the well-being of the Risale-i Nur and its students and in their place. But since my powerlessness and weakness and sorrow are excessive, instead of increasing my load with their praising me, my select brothers should lighten it with their prayers and compassion, and help me with their saintly influence and pity. It is a manifestation of divine grace that this severe sickness of unsociability that I suffer reduces to nothing the solitary confinement the tyrants inflict on me; it pleases me in a way, rather than tormenting me. ∗∗∗
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My Dear Loyal Brothers and Efficacious Consolation and Heirs in this Dreadful Age !
Evidence that your superhuman efforts and enterprise have transformed Isparta and its environs into an extensive Medresetü'z-Zehrâ and al-Azhar University is your sending to this semi-literate brother of yours more than twenty perfect copies of The Staff of Moses which show the coincidences (tevâfuk) and left even the printers in astonishment. May the Most Merciful of the Merciful bestow a thousand instances of His mercy on you, on those who write out copies, and on those who help them, for each word, and thousands of fruits of Paradise, and have written in the books of your good deeds hundreds of merits. Amen! Amen! Amen!
I considered them and this occurred to my heart: Can it be that these champions have no present recompense? Then it suddenly came to me that by writing out this collection, first and foremost they read attentively its powerful lesson in belief, which silences the philosophers and induces them to believe, and so gain a spiritual treasury.
Moreover, the copies they write will save the belief of many other people or they will come to believe. There is a Hadith which says: "A single person coming to believe through you is better than a plain-full of red sheep." [^52] Also, with their blessed pens, they perform the sacred duties of
[^52]:Bukhārī, Jihād, 102, 143; Muslim, Faḍā'il al-Ṣaḥāba, 34; Dārimī, 'Ilm, 10; al-Munāwī, Fayḍ al-Qadīr, vi, 359 no. 9606. [Tr.]