helped, with some sort of return in the future, or from the Risale-i Nur, or in any other way if he so wants. ∗∗∗

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The Eight Symbols (Rumûzat-i Semâniye) was composed and written very hastily. Relying on what remained in my memory from earlier days, I used two approximate criteria: I wrote down the mysteries of the Qur'an's letters in respect of its miraculousness (i'jaz), basing it on what I remembered of the reckoning of ulema of former times. Then I looked at the explanations about the merits of the Qur'an's letters and words in the famous tafsir called al-Miqyāṣ of Majd al-Dīn al-Firuzabadi, [^65] the famous author of the Qāmūs, and ninety per cent coincided with our reckoning; they differed in only four or five places. Then we calculated them again to verify them, and ours turned out to be correct and his, typographical errors. Saying, small differences and errors are not detrimental in such huge totals, I did not find the time to count the whole Qur'an with all its letters, words, and phrases and verify them exactly, and to corroborate the subtleties of its miraculousness. The tyrants did not allow me the time. I made do with those approximate calculations, what I remembered, the reckoning of the old ulema, and my figures in the Kanz al-'Arsh supplication. [^66]

[^65]:Abū al-Ṭāhir Muḥammad b. Ya'qūb Majd al-Dīn al-Firūzābādī (d. 817/1415), see, Tanwīr al-Miqyāṣ, Kashf al-Ẓunūn No: 3706. [Tr.]

[^66]:There is no definite information concerning the author of the supplication Kanz al-'Arsh, which is included in the three-volume compendium of invocations of figures associated with Sufism, Majmū'āt al-Aḥzāb (Istanbul: 1311), compiled by Gümüşhaneli Shaykh Ahmed Ziya'üddin, which also contains the Jaushan al-Kabir and other supplications, and with which Bediuzzaman was familiar. [Tr.]

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I have received the festival congratulations sent by Nazif Çelebi in the name of our devoted brothers in İnebolu, and his letter saying that the important work on Zülfikar continues meticulously and circumspectly; that he has completed the text of The Miracles of the Qur'an and some of its addenda; that Abdurrahman Salâhaddin has sent The Staff of Moses and Miracles of Muhammad as a gift in our name to al-Azhar University by reliable means, and that he has been reading them to the American missionaries for four or five months; and that the valuable Nur student, Ahmed Kureysi, has given a hundred liras to meet the expenses of their duplicating machine.