► (136) ◄ An Addendum to the Last Will and Testament

In His Name, be He glorified!

An Addendum to the Last Will and Testament

A seventh characteristic of Said, following the six listed on page 30 of the biography published by Eşref Edip, is his lifelong rule of not accepting unreciprocated gifts, and, with the idea of contentment and frugal living, his for sixty or seventy years paying for his students' livelihoods himself. Now the time has come to record at the end of his last will and testament a present example of this, the reason for which has for several years been understood.

Notwithstanding the fact that with his independence our Master does not accept gifts despite his extreme penury, all thanks be to God, the capital the Risale-i Nur produces by being copied out by typewriter, which is not prohibited, is extraordinarily plentiful and sufficient for the livelihoods of the devoted Nur students in four or five provinces who have dedicated their lives to the Risale-i Nur and cannot find the time to work to support themselves. These provinces may be deemed the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ. I enjoin as my will that after my death the blessed capital which accrues from the sale of copies of the Risale-i Nur be allotted to those sincere, dedicated students of mine and that they apply scrupulously the sixty-to- seventy-year-old rule of mine to my present principles, seventy years later. If, God willing, the Risale-i Nur is printed freely, the principle will be enacted more effectively. It is astonishing but the Old Said in Van in the former era received from Ministry of Pious Foundations the subsistence for five students, and although the numbers of students sometimes rose to twenty, thirty, or even sixty, he provided for them all himself. Through the plenty arising from frugality and contentment, he did not break his rule even when he bought five or six Mauser rifles. He never at that time broke this rule although there were many people to help him like the famous Tahir Pasha. In accordance with a hidden sign, one fruit of that frugality and contentment — his rule of sixty to seventy years — was bestowed through divine providence, which is that for several years now the Risale-i Nur has itself given the dedicated students of the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ their subsistence, despite there being so many court cases, prohibitions, and confiscations, and the lack of permission to print in the old letters. I am absolutely certain that although a large proportion of those copies have been distributed gratis as gifts and have been sent to the Islamic world and to