A Brief Look at Bediuzzaman Said Nursi's Life, the Risale-i Nur, and Letters

A Brief Look at Bediuzzaman Said Nursi's

Life, the Risale-i Nur, and Letters

The present work forms the second volume of the Risale-i Nur Collection and consists of letters written by Bediuzzaman Said Nursi to his students mostly between 1928 and 1932, while in exile in Barla, an isolated village in the province of Isparta in South-Western Anatolia. Its original title is Mektûbat. Other letters belonging to this period are included in one of the collections of additional letters, also volumes of the Risale-i Nur, called Barla Lahikası (Barla Letters). The letters in the present volume cover many subjects and were set in order and numberered, not chronologically, by the author. They were largely written in reply to questions put by his students, and to offer proofs of matters related to belief and Islam at a time of rapid change. In order to enable readers unfamiliar with Bediuzzaman and his life and works to see the letters in clearer perspective, included here is a brief outline of his life, the background to the writing of the Risale-i Nur and Letters, and a description of their main characteristics.

Bediuzzaman’s Life

Bediuzzaman’s Life

Bediuzzaman Said Nursi was born in 1877 in eastern Turkey and died in 1960 in Urfa, also in eastern Turkey. Readers may refer to his biography for details of his long and exemplary life, which spanned the last decades of the Ottoman Empire, its collapse after the First World War and the setting up of the Republic, then the twenty-five years of single-party rule, followed by the ten years of Democrat rule, when conditions eased a little.

From an early age Bediuzzaman displayed an extraordinary intelligence and ability to learn, completing the normal course of medrese (religious school) education at the early age of fourteen, when he obtained his diploma. He became famous for both his prodigious memory and his unbeaten record in debating with other religious scholars. Another characteristic Bediuzzaman displayed from an early age was an instinctive dissatisfaction with the existing education system, which when older he formulated into comprehensive proposals for its reform. The heart of these proposals was the bringing together and joint teaching of the traditional