me while I performed my scholarly duties in the Darü'l-Hikmet, which at that time I spent on printing the treatises I had written and with which I intended to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, and for twenty to thirty years has been my reserve fund. For me it has the value of a thousand liras. The price of these new lessons should be seven and a half liras, the same as The Shining Lamp and The Ratifying Stamp of the Unseen, for I am obliged to give many people copies as presents, Nevertheless, I look on every single lesson and copy as a thousand gifts from the leading members of the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ.

Secondly: The Risale-i Nur is spreading through the Islamic world by means of people making the Hajj, and is conveying itself to the worthy. The committee of scholars who studied the handwritten copies of The Staff of Moses and Zülfikar that we sent to Damascus decided that they should print the collections section by section, a sign that they thought highly of them. It would be very expensive to print them in their entirety. Also, it would take a long time to translate them into Arabic, which is not possible. Due to this, my old student who is there and the student I have just sent tried to get the copies off them and did not print them so that they might earn the money. Those brothers are now reading them to people who are eager. Anyway, I am not giving permission for them to be printed. Now is not the time. A group of prominent scholars is needed, with the co-operation of Egyptian ulema. This matter was carried out too hastily.

Thirdly: The reason the copies we were going to send to Istanbul to send abroad have not yet been sent is that not many people were keen to go on the Hajj , and a person who was going to go and had with him something on trust, said that too much notice was being given to the hajis at the borders and they were being turned back on false pretexts. He wrote to me advising that it would be better to send them by post directly to Mehmed Ali Mâliki at Vaziye, Mahalle-i Shamiyya in Mecca. He did not take them lest he was turned back at the frontier. It was indeed judicious. For to send these collections now in my name and in that of the Nur students might have given Islamic unity — which is anyway now starting to gain strength and its politics, the idea of trying to use the Risale-i Nur as a source of power for itself and to exploit it, which would have compelled us to consider Islamic politics. Whereas the meaning of true sincerity in the Risale-i Nur's way does not permit it to be made the tool of anything other than belief and the truths of the Qur'an, nor to follow them. Also, the Risale-i Nur does not hunt for customers; rather, feeling their true need, its customers have to seek out the Risale-i Nur so that it may heal their wounds. Whereas the blessed centres it was going to be sent to should be thinking