SA‘ĪD NŪRSI AND RISĀLE-I NŪR

Contents

1. The Life of Imām Bedī‘uzzamān Sa‘īd Nursī

a. His Education

b. His Idea of Renewal in Education

c. The “New Sa‘īd” Period and Service to the True Faith

d. The Risāle-i Nūr Service after Imām Bedī‘uzzamān Sa‘īd Nursī

e. The Successor of Imām Nursī, Husrev Efendi’s Services

2. A Brief Look at The Book of Light Corpus

3. The Nature of The Risāle-i Nūr and Its Place in Islāmic History

a. What type of book is The Risāle-i Nūr?

b. When writing The Book of Light, what objective did Imām Bedī‘uzzamān Sa‘īd Nursī have in mind?

c. Does The Book of Light belong to an identifiable genre in Islāmic literature?

d. The Book of Light and its place in the history of the Islāmic sciences

e. Imām Bedī‘uzzamān Sa‘īd Nursī’s place in Islāmic history: Nursī’s Ottoman context

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1. The Life of Imām Bedī‘uzzamān Sa‘īd Nursī

Nursī, known in Turkey as Ustād Bedī‘uzzamān, was a polymath who excelled not only in the classical Islāmic sciences but also in the modern natural sciences. He was a universal thinker of great exactitude, an erudite theologian of tremendous dignity, a brave voluntary commander in the service of freedom, a life-long teacher of millions, a peacemaking hero advocating positive engagement, and a magnetic and vastly successful leader of the Muslim community within our contemporary secular setting. He was born in 1293/1877 in the village of Nurs, in the Bitlis district of eastern Turkey. Nursī was a sayyid, or descendant of the Prophet Muḥammad (‘alayhisṣalātu wassalām), having traced his lineage to Ḥasan (raḍiallāhu anhu) on the side of his father, and Ḥusayn (raḍiallāhu anhu) on the side of his mother, the grandchildren of the Prophet Muḥammad (‘alayhisṣalātu wassalām).

a. His Education

Until the age of nine Nursī lived with his family, receiving his basic education from his eldest brother, Mulla ‘Abdullah, himself a religious scholar. During a short period studying with the ulama in various medreses in eastern Turkey, his photographic memory, intelligence and courage drew attention, and people soon acknowledged his special scholastic talents - he had been able to complete the study of the entire curriculum of the Ottoman ulama of the time in a phenomenally short period of about three months, and was able to pass, with flying colours, all of the examinations given to him by his teachers, and to defend his theses in the scholastic discussions to which they subjected him. As a child, his instructor Mulla Fethullah named him Bedī‘uzzamān, 'the wonder of the age', due to the extraordinary strength of his memory, and his singular intelligence; and this epithet soon came to be deemed appropriate by the rest of the ulama of eastern Turkey. He was able, due to the level of memory and understanding conferred on him by his phenomenal degree of self-motivation and drive, to memorise ninety works in the Islāmic sciences, including many that were highly technical; normally such a course of study would have been completed in fifteen years.

b. His Idea of Renewal in Education

After moving to Van in Eastern Turkey in the late 1800s, Nursī came to believe that the study of the sciences of mainstream modern civilisation was a necessary means to conveying the message of Islām in a way that would enable the predominant spirit of the age to comprehend it. He now put this new realisation into action by driving himself to master those sciences, again in a very short period of time; sciences such as mathematics, geology, physics, chemistry, astronomy, history, geography and philosophy. He was engaged in teaching, guiding and counselling the tribesmen for the entirety of his fifteen year stay in Van, and had been able to open his own medrese there, known as Horhor; amongst other works, during this time Nursī wrote an advanced commentary on Ismail Gelenbevi's Burhān in logic.

In order to realise his new-found ideal of harmonising the contemporary European natural sciences and the traditional Islāmic sciences in a manner taking into account their relationality and the natural hierarchy between them, he decided to establish a university in eastern Turkey, named Medreset-üz Zehrâ. In order to realise this vision, he came to Istanbul to seek imperial support. Nursī had hung a sign on the door of his rooms in the Fatih area of Istanbul where he was staying, which read, 'Here, all problems are solved, and all questions are answered - yet none are asked,' and he did indeed answer the questions of the Istanbul ulama, who eagerly visited him after news of his scholarly renown had spread. In hanging this sign, Nursī had intended to draw the attention of the centre of the Caliphate to the people of Eastern Turkey, and to seek support for Medreset-üz Zehrâ, which he hoped would be based there. However, he was unable to realize his dream. The Istanbul administration of the time were unable to offer their support, deeply distracted as they were by the political concerns and circumstances of the tumultuous beginning of the twentieth century. Later, due to the Russian invasion of the region during the First World War, which had broken out at that time, the project was postponed. It was only in the aftermath of the First World War that Nursī began to author The Risāle-i Nūr, applying the Islāmic sciences to numerous modern questions and thus to a large degree fulfilling the function he had envisaged for Medreset-üz Zehrâ.

For a time, Nursī remained in Istanbul, hoping to serve Islām by attempting to positively impact the political situation. On his return to Van, he strove to guide the tribes of the region; the lessons he gave to the tribesmen are gathered together in his book al-Munāẓarāt. Nursī then visited Damascus, where he delivered his celebrated sermon in the Umayyad Mosque, later published as The Damascus Sermon. Nursī took part in the First World War as a commander of a battalion that he had composed of his own students, and defended the eastern Ottoman lands against the Russian army. During the war, in the trenches, under the rain of gunfire, and in conditions where writing was simply not possible - he dictated Signs of Miraculous Inimitability (Ishārāt’ul-I‘ jāz) a book widely regarded as a masterpiece of Qur’ānic exegesis.

During the Russian occupation of Bitlis, a wounded Imām Nursī was taken prisoner and sent to Siberia, where he remained in captivity for two and a half years. During this period, far from languishing in inactivity, he in fact strove to raise the awareness of the prisoners with his religious and spiritual instruction. In the end, he was able to escape, and via St. Petersburg, Warsaw and Vienna, he made his way to Istanbul, arriving on the 25th June, 1918; it was soon after his return that he was appointed a member of Dāru’l-Hikmati’l-Islāmiyya.

The Ottoman Empire was defeated in the First World War, and it was not long before the British, French, Italians and Greeks began to occupy its territories. Correspondingly, the activities of the War of Independence began throughout Turkey. Nursī encouraged and supported the Kuva-i Milliye ‘National Forces’ fighting against the occupiers throughout Turkey, and the government in Ankara, approving of Nursī's activities, invited him to Ankara, where he was given a warm welcome. Yet Nursī was far from impressed by the pervading spiritual state of affairs in Ankara, seeing, amongst many other things, that many of the deputies in the parliament had no interest in religion nor the canonical prayer.

He clarified the great importance of the prayer and of following the sacred ordinances laid down by religion to them in a circular of ten paragraphs, and the number of deputies praying regularly increased dramatically; but his influence in this regard did not impress a certain leader of the time, with whom an ever forthright Nursī became involved in a sharp confrontation. Nonetheless, in an effort to subdue him, Nursī was offered the political position of member of parliament, and the position of head of religious affairs for the whole of Eastern Turkey, both of which he declined (not unlike the manner in which the Prophet Muḥammad (‘alayhisṣalātu wassalām), rejected offers of power and wealth offered by the Meccan polytheists, who hoped to be able to subdue him thereby). Instead, at this worrying and dangerous time, Nursī entered a period of spiritual seclusion. It was not long after the abolishment of the Caliphate in 1924 that the Kurdish "Shaykh Sa‘īd Rebellion" erupted. After much bloodshed, the rebellion was put out. While Nursī played no part in this rebellion, (and in fact disapproved of it), he was exiled to Istanbul in 1925 on the grounds that he had been involved. From Istanbul he was taken to Burdur, and then to Isparta. He was then compelled by the authorities to stay in Barla under house arrest, a small village subordinate to Isparta, wherein they would be able to watch his every movement, and prevent him from mixing with people.

c. The “New Sa‘īd” Period and Service to the True Faith

Sa‘īd Nursī referred to the early period of his life, when he was partially involved with world politics as the ‘Old Sa‘īd’ period, and the rest of his life, from 1921 onwards, as the “New Sa‘īd” period, starting with the authoring of The Risāle-i Nūr, and newly characterised by a disengagement from politics and a unique focus on service to the true faith and the Qur’ān. Nursī was to dedicate the rest of his life to a struggle for the protection of people’s faith, in the face of assaults against the foundations of true faith by currents of atheism that had taken over much of the Muslim world. Due to his ideas and activities in his New Sa‘īd period, he was exiled, imprisoned, poisoned several times and his books were banned - the result of plots set in motion by secret committees that seduced government officials into covert actions against Islām.

In his eight years of exile in Barla, he authored three-fourths of The Risāle-i Nūr. In distributing his writings all throughout Turkey, he adopted an unprecedented method largely responsible for saving Islām in those lands; he would make it a rule that anyone wishing to be a student of his would have to copy out some of The Risāle-i Nūr in Qur’ānic Arabic letters, and also enlist another person to copy it. The small group of his students in Isparta and Barla copied The Risāle-i Nūr, and strove to increase the number of copiers; thus was The Risāle-i Nūr distributed in secret, and in a short time, throughout the whole of Turkey.

Later, the authorities moved Nursī to Isparta, and then to Eskişehir Prison alongside one hundred and twenty of his students, accusing him of "founding a secret organisation, opposing the regime, and endeavoring to overthrow it." After his release from Eskişehir Prison, he was exiled to the Kastamonu province, where he spent eight years in exile. Despite these extreme attempts to silence Nursī, new parts of The Risāle-i Nūr were always being composed. Newly written epistles and letters were sent to Isparta. Students within Isparta would make clean copies so that they could be easily distributed throughout the villages of Anatolia, to even the most remote of areas. Every day, his circle of students widened.

In 1943, Nursī was sent to the High Court of Denizli, along with one hundred and twenty-six of his students. At the High Court, The Risāle-i Nūr was scrutinised by an expert committee made up of high-ranking scholars and judges in Ankara. In 1944 he was acquitted and his incrimination was proved to be unfounded, due to the efforts of the defence during the trial, as well as the report affirming both his lack of interest in political activity, and the politically neutral character of The Risāle-i Nūr. Nursī stayed in prison for nine months during the trial, in which time he was prevented from seeing his students, exposed to a great number of hardships, and indeed poisoned multiple times. Nursī was again moved to Emirdag, then to Afyon. Nevertheless, neither exile, imprisonment nor attempted murder were able to force him to give up his cause. In the latter years of his life, the bans on all of his books were lifted, at the conclusions of long processes of examination and investigation. In 1950 in Turkey, the multi-party period commenced, and the election was won by the Democratic Party. The changes that had taken place as a result of their coming into power allowed Nursi and his students some partial freedom and breathing space.

At the end of a life devoted to the service of true faith and the Qur’ān, and one filled with pain and hardship, Imām Nursī passed away late at night on the 23rd of March, 1960, which was the 25th of Ramadan, 1379.

The next day, a vast crowd of people performed the funeral prayer of this Imām of the age, in the Ulu Mosque. He was carried by the masses to the Mosque of Halilurrahman where he was buried in what would prove a temporary abode, for only two months later, on the 27th of May 1960, a military coup took place, and another dark age ensued for the country. So severe was the darkness of this period that the grave of the noble Imām was attacked by officials on the 12th of July 1960. Those who had, out of their fear, persecuted him for his entire life, had become even more frightened of what would now occur after his death; and they moved his blessed body to an unknown place.

d. The Risāle-i Nūr Service after Bedī‘uzzamān Sa‘īd Nursī

Before his demise, both in his works and his words Bedī‘uzzamān Sa‘īd Nursī appointed his closest student and the arch-scribe of the Risāle Nūr Epistles, Sayyid Ahmed Husrev Efendi, to direct and lead the service of The Risāle-i Nūr after himself.

While Nursī was still alive, Husrev Efendi was already known to the Students of Light as al-Ustād al-Thānī - The Second Master. This is well documented and supported by numerous texts in the Risāle, letters between senior students and his contemporary witnesses, and even court records as well as by Imām Bedī‘uzzamān Sa‘īd Nursī’s own verbal confirmations.

Husrev Efendi is the calligrapher of the most famous script in Turkey. He is the Serkâtib - the arch-scribe of The Risāle-i Nūr Corpus and bears an honorary title given by Bedī‘uzzamān: "Diamond-Penned Husrev."

During the lifetime of Bedī‘uzzamān Sa‘īd Nursī, Husrev Efendi was placed in charge of the duplication and distribution of the Epistles. In The Risāle-i Nūr, Husrev Efendi is the most frequently mentioned of Nursī’s students. Moreover, he was the only student to be given direct authorisation by Bedī‘uzzamān Sa‘īd Nursī to amend, modify and correct the Epistles, and he carried out this duty meticulously. Furthermore, during the periods Bedī‘uzzamān spent in prison, Husrev Efendi directed and led The Risāle-i Nūr service on his behalf.

e. The Successor of Imām Nursī, Husrev Efendi’s Services

After the demise of Bedī‘uzzamān Sa‘īd Nursī, Husrev Efendi (Ahmed Husrev Altınbaşak) faithfully fulfilled his duty of direction and leadership, without compromising the principles of The Risāle-i Nūr service. In this period, he undertook many important services, including his endeavours to continue spreading The Risāle-i Nūr, ensuring that the notion of service to the Qur’ān and īmān became deeply rooted all throughout Turkey, and his many projects to facilitate the education of students. He was also able to finalise the copy of the Qur’ān that he wrote under the instructions of Bedī‘uzzamān Sa‘īd Nursī. This copy is known as Tevâfuklu Kur’ân-ı Kerîm “The Qur’ān in Congruous Alignment”. (In this Qur’ān, excluding very few exceptions, all of the names of Allāh, Rabb and Qur’ān, as well as words of the same root, are aligned with one another, either on the same page beneath one another, or side by side on corresponding pages, or back to back across two pages. This special characteristic of the Qur’ān was recognised by Bedī‘uzzamān Sa‘īd Nursī - a wondrous miracle of the Qur’ān pertaining to the eyes for an empirically-minded people “in this age who say ‘we don’t believe what we cannot see’”.

In order to publish The Qur’ān in Congruous Alignment and continue his educational activities, Husrev Efendi founded The Hayrat Foundation in 1974. Since this date, all the services and activities that Husrev Efendi inherited from Bedī‘uzzamān Sa‘īd Nursī have been undertaken under the umbrella of The Hayrat Foundation.

Husrev Efendi, who dedicated his entire life to the service of īmān and the Qur’ān, passed away in 1977. Since then, The Hayrat Foundation has been fulfilling the mission of The Risāle-i Nūr service.

2. A Brief Look at The Book of Light Corpus

As this is the first major translation of the series of The Book of Light Corpus, it would be befitting to present the corpus shortly so that our readers would know what to expect in general.

First of all, The Book of Light is a corpus composed of 130 pieces all of which collectively make the first four major books of the Corpus - The Words, The Letters, The Flashes and The Rays. The Words has 33 epistles, The Letters has 33, The Flashes has 33, and The Rays 15 epistles. The Twenty-eighth Letter has 8 epistles, and The Twenty-ninth Letter has 9 epistles included. Together they make 130 epistles, some of which are small in size, maybe just two or three pages long whereas others are as long as 80 or 90 pages.

Another major piece of the Corpus, The Signs of Miraculous Inimitability of the Qur’ān (Ishārātu’l-I‘jāz) is the tafsīr of the opening chapter of the Qur’ān, Sūrat al-Fātiḥa and the first 31 verses of the second chapter, Sūrat al-Baqarah. The next piece, Mesnevî-i Nûriye or The Mesnevi of The Book of Light (Al-Mathnawī al-Nūriyyah), is written in Arabic in the period called Old Sa‘īd. Al-Mathanawī, known as the seedbed of the Corpus, is also a book similar to an index of almost all the topics covered in the entire corpus and translated later into Turkish and included in the Corpus.

The last major pieces added to the Corpus are The Addenda (Lâhikalar) or the Appendices, or as we call them, the Letters of Barla, the Letters of Kastamonu, and the Letters of Emirdagh which are separate books comprised of correspondences between the author and his disciples regarding the answers to many questions on faith and religion as well as the running of the Service of the Qur’ān in various cities, towns and villages across Turkey. These were the letters that served as a means of consulting, guiding, directing and managing the students from afar. The totality of all letters are named The Twenty-seventh Letter.

Other than these major books of the Corpus, there are other major pieces such as The Staff of Moses (‘Asâ-yı Mûsâ), Dhu’l-fiqār, The Lamp of the Light (Sirāju’n-Nūr), The Confirming Stamp from the Unseen (Sikke-i Tasdik-i Ğaybī), The Mysteries (Tılsımlar) as well as minor books like A Guide for Youth (Gençlik Rehberi), A Guide for Women (Hanımlar Rehberi), Compassion and Mercy Remedies (Şefkat ve Rahmet İlaçları). The contents of those books are chosen from amongst the very epistles of previously mentioned major books.

One might wonder why the totality of the teachings of Nursi is called “The Book of Light Corpus”. Imam al-Nursi explains this in The Rays (Şu‘â‘lar):

“The wisdom behind the fact that the thirty three words and thirty three letters are all together named Risāle-i Nūr is that the name of “Nūr (Light)” has always came on my way [related with me in many perspectives].

1. The name of my village is Nurs.

2. The name of my late mother is Nūriya.

3. My Naqshi ustād (master) is Sayyid Nūr Muḥammad.

4. One of my Qādiri ustāds is Nūr ad-Dīn

5. One of my Qur’ān ustāds is Nūri.

6. Of my disciples are those with the name Nūr who are interested in my service.

7. The very example which enlightens my books rather than others is the example of Nūr.

8. The first and foremost appealing verse in the Qur’ān to my mind (‘aql), the one which illuminates my heart (qalb) and occupies my intellect (fikr) is “Allāh is the Nūr (Light) of the heavens and earth” (Qur’ān: an-Nūr, 24:35)

9. It is the divine name Nūr which solves most of my difficulties (issues in the Divine truths).

10. For my intense desire for the Qur’ān and focus on my service, my special imām is Zinnūrayn.”

“[Thus], I named the collection of all epistles together as “The Risāle-i Nūr”.

Inspired by this explanation by the author, in this translation, we have worked to find the best name in English to do justice to the original. Such a high calibre book as this must definitely have a similar effect in English, thus the title needed as great attention as it did for its rigorous translation process. We were caught between multiple choices - very strong, valid and possible names for the Corpus.

One alternative was to transfer the phrase as is - which we still prefer to keep in the title, yet as a universal book name pronounced in a Turkish way, the name “Risāle-ī Nūr” is not so easy to read for those who are not accustomed to the Turkish language. Another alternative was to go with the Arabic name. If we were to take the Arabic form of the name, that is “Rasāil an-Nūr”, it would possibly be translated as The Epistles of Light which was quite a good choice which we could have preferred to use as well. However this is the translation of “Nûr Risâleleri” in Turkish and this is not the most frequently used name of the book. In Nursian terms, the entire corpus is called as the Epistle of Light (Nûr Risâlesi, that is the Risāle-ī Nūr). The last alternative was to take this frequent Turkish name in Farisi tarkīb or noun phrase style which may roughly mean The Epistle of Light or The Book of Light. Henceforth, we have chosen The Book of Light.

Those who are already familiar with the book would recall the word “Külliyat” appearing together with the Risāle-ī Nūr. A great word choice for külliyat is “Corpus”, “the collection of written texts, esp. the entire works of a particular author or a body of writing on a particular subject.” Thus, it is the equivalence of “külliyat” in Turkish. In an attempt to be utterly faithful to the original and to keep an easy wording for all, we have come to the conclusion that we name this book as “The Book of Light Corpus.” We think this could make it easier for speakers of English. The Book of Light Corpus and The Risāle-i Nūr Corpus have been used interchangeably.

3. The Nature of The Risāle-i Nūr and Its Place in Islāmic History

a. What type of book is The Risāle-i Nūr?

Many new readers of The Book of Light, especially in translation, note that it is not easy to place in a single genre. It variously embodies aspects of theology and Qur’ānic exegesis, sometimes in the form of allegorical narrative, at other times in the more conventional form of scholarly treatise. At first glance, some parts of The Risāle-i Nūr seem similar to a Sufi litany, and even philosophy and poetry. However, for Nursī, it is neither; the direct source of The Risāle-i Nūr is the Qur’ān. Nursī was certainly highly familiar with the great Greek and Islāmic philosophers, such as Plato and Avicenna, and even occasionally cites some of them. What is more, we know that Nursī had studied al-Abḥarī's Hidāyat al-Ḥikma and al-Kātibī's Ḥikmat al-‘Ayn, both advanced works of Avicenna and Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī-influenced philosophy.

However, Nursī explicitly disavowed the notion that The Book of Light was a work of philosophy - indeed, he provides numerous analyses of the weakness of certain philosophical methodologies as means of arriving at truth, especially when compared with the powerful and direct methodology of the Qur’ān.

Likewise, Nursī was on intimate terms with the great Sufi poetry of the likes of Rumi, Hafiz, Yunus Emre, Erzurumlu Ibrahim Hakkı, Niyāzī-i Misrī and others, and quotes them quite frequently in The Book of Light. However, although he loves and respects the great Sufis of the past and often expounds aspects of Sufi doctrine and practice, he deemed institutional Sufism unsuitable for the times. In an age in which attacks on religious faith and especially Islām have become so widespread, one’s primary duty is to defend and preserve faith, by strengthening one’s own understanding of the realities and truths of religion, as well as that of others. Nursī thus devised an alternative rooted in the Qur’ān, exemplified by The Book of Light and the movement surrounding it.

In the Twenty-first Flash, Nursī affirms that his way is not Sufism, but a way of absolute brotherhood and service (elsewhere, Nursī explains that this methodology is the Prophetic wont or sunna, and that of the Companions of the Prophet (‘alayhisṣalātu wassalām):

“Our way is that of brotherhood, and it is not possible for a brother to be his brother's father, nor can he take on the stance of a spiritual guide, for in brotherhood, the positions of standing are spacious and broad, so they cannot be the locus of envious competitiveness. A brother is only the helper and backer of his brother and strengthens his service.” (1)

However, the two disciplines that Nursī was content to broadly characterise The Book of Light by were kalām, and especially Qur’ānic exegesis (tafsīr).

Risāle-i Nūr is an immensely potent, authentic exegesis of the Noble Qur’ān. Since certain inattentive persons have not been able to understand this completely, I will explain this reality. There are two types of exegesis. The first is the familiar exegesis that expounds, clarifies and establishes the meanings of the expressions, words and sentences of the Qur’ān. The second is the type of exegesis that expounds, clarifies and establishes the truths of faith of the Qur’ān with conclusive proofs and evidence. This type is of crucial importance - the first type of exegesis treats of these matters only briefly. The Risāle-i Nūr however is directly rooted in the second type; it is an exegesis that can silence even the very most obstinate of philosophers.” (2)

Moreover, replying to a letter to Nursī from a student asking to study kalām with him, Nursī replied:

In your letter you ask me to teach you kalām, yet you are already learning it from The Risāle-i Nūr, for all of the Words [epistles] that you copy out are lessons in the true, illuminated [type] of kalām. (3)

Although in our day the study of kalām has declined, Nursī grew up in an Ottoman milieu in which the study of advanced works of kalām such as al-Sayyid al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī’s Sharḥ al-Mawāqif was very widespread. Today, one would be hard put to find more than a few teachers of these works in each Islāmic country, bearing traditional chains of transmission. Blessed with a prodigious memory, we know that (amongst around ninety other books) Nursī had memorised the Mawāqif, which, since the earliest days of the empire, has been the single most important advanced work of kalām in the Ottoman curriculum.

The names of the books that Nursī studied are common knowledge; but what was the nature of the kalām that Nursī imbibed, and how did he employ it and change it in his The Book of Light? Sharḥ al-Mawāqif, which enjoys supercommentaries by such Ottoman luminaries as Mulla Fenari, Hocazade, Mulla Kestelli, Hatibzade, Hasan Çelebi Fenari and many others, set the seal on Fakhruddīn al-Rāzī's 13th century transformation of kalām. Rāzī and the generation after him imported the vast majority of the questions of general ontology (al-umūr al-‘amma) into kalām, and as a result, when the Mawāqif was written it standardised the detailed, highly technical discussions of being (al-wujūd), quiddity (māhiyya), individuation (al-ta‘ayyun), causality (al-‘illiyya), possibility and necessity (al-imkān wa al-wujūb) and many other topics that were seen as principles grounding the special topics of kalām, such as the existence of God and the nature of the soul, in the firmest possible foundations. After all, if we are to understand whatit means for God to be the Necessary Being, we must be able to understand exactly what both necessity and existence are in the first place. Although Nursī respects this tradition of kalām, and often utilises its terminology, to meet the needs of his time he ultimately advocated a significantly different approach.

Although the scholars of kalām theology are students of the Qur’ān and each wrote tens of books, [which if added together] amount to thousands of books on the articles of faith, they were unable to explain as clearly, prove with such certainty, nor persuade with as much seriousness as even ten verses of Qur’ān, because of their partiality for reason over tradition. (4)

The Book of Light, then, is a "kalāmī tafsīr" that is, a Qur’ānic exegesis with theological aims, yet one that follows the Qur’ānic method of setting forth proofs of the creed and themes for contemplation by way of analogies and illustrations pertaining to the created cosmos.

b. When writing The Book of Light, what objective did Sa‘īd Nursī have in mind?

Nursī perceived that two alarming states of affairs were becoming widespread in the Muslim world of his time. The first was the adoption amongst the new Westernised intelligentsia of currents of atheism arising from certain varieties of natural science and philosophy. Throughout the 19th century, materialists and naturalists had gained popularity and power, and had started to systematically oppose religion, both institutionally and within groups and associations.

In these contexts, articles of faith as fundamental as the existence of God and life after death were being challenged and denied, in a manner that threatened terrible social consequences for the Muslim world should they trickle down to the layman. In the face of these challenges, Nursī later wrote works like The Epistle on Nature, a rebuttal to the claims of naturalism, The Supreme Sign, an extended, Qur’ānic proof of the existence and unity of God, and The Resurrection Epistle, an extended proof of the reality of life after death. The second, and related “alarming state of affairs” is the ubiquitous contemporary domination of the senses over minds, and preference for trivial advantages over the “diamonds” of spiritual advancement. This godless culture encourages an emotional landscape that is the source of hedonism and sensualism’s overwhelming control over human rationality, which in turn threatens the likelihood that truly Islāmic and indeed human modes of life can be realised.

Nursī envisaged The Book of Light as an urgent remedy for the unprecedented trauma of the time he lived in, as well as for those to come; indeed, in a way, the only possible remedy. The world that he knew was being turned upside down. The new anti-Islāmic government in Turkey abolished the Ottoman institutional structures meant to preserve both the outward and inward aspects of Islām, namely the tekkes, the Sufi lodges, and the medreses, the traditional colleges. He realised that in this situation, designed to destroy the systematic production of the Islāmic scholars and elites, it would no longer be possible to train ulama; nor would the institutions responsible for instilling a deep faith in the hearts of the masses, the tekkes, be able any longer to fulfil this important function. The solution Nursī produced was as remarkable as it was brave and audacious. Secretly taken and conveyed epistle by epistle by loyal students visiting Nursī in his exile and imprisonment (some of whom had themselves been educated by Nursī while accompanying him in prison) hand-copied and then distributed to nearby towns and villages and throughout the whole of Turkey, The Book of Light was to fulfil the function of medrese and tekke. In the epistles that make up The Book of Light, Nursī attempted to summarise all of the Islāmic sciences, and to make them accessible to non-specialists, that is, ordinary Muslim laypeople; indeed, he said:

Whoever reads the entirety of these epistles and lessons with comprehension and approval within a single year, can be an important, true scholar [of the realities of true faith] of this time. (5)

Moreover, for Nursī, The Risāle-i Nūr was also to fulfil the function of the mekteb (that is, the Western-model schools of the late-Ottoman Empire), in acknowledging and in a certain manner celebrating the new scientific information about the natural world brought to light in the West. However, Nursī clearly stipulated the crucial condition that this information could only be deemed valuable in so far as it is shown to point to the wisdom and creativity of God.

Through its allusive language, repeated phrases and devotional tone, The Book of Light often takes on a prayerful, litany-like quality. Although its content is often highly technical and theologically rich, it is at heart a devotional work, and this is how it is approached by its readers. The Book of Light thus became both a new Qur’ānic path of self-purification, and a new Qur’ānic path of knowledge, keeping the profundities of Islāmic knowledge and practice alive in a time in which they were in danger of extinction due to the deliberate elimination of the institutional structures supporting them.

c. Does The Book of Light belong to an identifiable genre in Islāmic literature?

The Book of Light can be credibly viewed as a successor to the works of the great renewers of true faith that came before Nursī, for example the Iḥyā' ‘Ulūm al-Dīn ("Revival of the Religious Sciences") of Imām al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111), and to some degree the Maktūbāt of Aḥmad al-Sirhindi (971–1034/1564–1625) (referred to as Imām-ı Rabbâni in The Book of Light and throughout Turkey). All are comprehensive works in that they provide answers to the majority of general questions related to the Islāmic sciences (for example creed, law, ethics and spirituality), as well as many more specific topics. However, with its exposition of abstruse spiritual doctrines the Maktūbāt was written with more advanced audiences in mind, and the Iḥyā' is primarily meant to chart out a detailed path of practical spiritual wayfaring (sulūk) and an ethical programme. While The Book of Light contains both ethics (e.g. The Epistle on Sincerity, The Epistle on Frugality) and the exposition of abstruse doctrines (for example, discussion of the subtle spiritual centres (al-laṭā'if) in the Sixteenth Flash and the intricate discussion of predetermination in the Twenty-sixth Word or “Epistle on Destiny”), its overwhelming focus is on deeply inculcating in its readers the truths of the Islāmic creed, as contained within the verses of the Qur’ān, especially the four most basic themes of the Qur’ān, namely, the affirmation of Divine unity (tawḥīd) prophethood (nubuwwah), servanthood and worship (‘ubūdiyya) and the Resurrection (ḥashr).

d. The Book of Light and its place in the history of the Islāmic sciences

There is a real sense in which The Book of Light encapsulates more than a thousand years of the development of the Islāmic sciences. Like al-Ghazālī’s Iḥyā', Ibn ‘Arabī’s al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, Jāmī’s al-Durra al-Fākhira and Ibn Bahā'uddīn’s al-Qawl al-Faṣl, it also constitutes a type of synthesis of the Islāmic sciences and Islāmic spirituality, that is, a marrying of the data of rational deduction (naẓar) with the data of spiritual unveiling (kashf). Nursī’s advanced education gave him access to the same intellectual (‘aqlī) and traditional (naqlī) resources that generations of Ottoman scholars before him shared. He was familiar with the classical exegeses of the Qur’ān, those of Zamakhshari, Bayḍāwī and others, and as we have said, with the most advanced books in kalām, like Taftāzānī’s Sharḥ al-Maqāṣid and Sharḥ al-Mawāqif. In The Book of Light, he aimed to make something of the high culture of the Islāmic sciences, of rhetoric, theology, logic and scriptural exegesis, accessible to the believing masses. Thus, although it is written primarily for a popular audience, The Book of Light is full of references to the terminology, conceptual apparatuses and questions of the Islāmic sciences.

Due to the phenomenal depth of Nursī’s traditional studies, The Book of Light in many ways constitutes a type of resolution and final "critical verification" (taḥqīq) of many questions that had concerned Islāmic scholar-sages for centuries, despite the fact that it was mostly written with a popular audience in mind. Furthermore, unlike earlier works, it takes into account the radically changed modern context in which it appeared, and so contains numerous discussions of modern sciences and technology, as well as the challenges of modern atheism and naturalism.

e. Sa‘īd Nursī’s place in Islāmic history: Nursī’s Ottoman context

From the earliest days of the Ottoman Empire, scholar-sage and Sultan were intimately intertwined. The saintly sage Muhlis Baba kept company with Osman Gazi (656-727 /1258-1326) on his military campaigns. His son, Sultan Orhan (d. 764/1362), was to build the first Ottoman medrese in history, and place the famous Akbarian mystic and scholar Dawūd al-Qayṣarī (d. 752/1350) in charge. The synthetical character of Qayṣarī’s Prolegomena to the Ringstones of Wisdom was immensely influential, in its marrying of scripture, the data of spiritual experience and rational deduction into a single, harmonious whole. Not much later, one of Ottoman history's most revered scholar-sages, the logician, theologian and mystic Mulla Fenari (751-834/1350–1431), took this genre forward in his The Pool of Intimacy Between the Intelligible and the Mystically Witnessed, a highly innovative commentary on Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī’s Key to the Unseen. Soon after Fenari’s demise, Constantinople was liberated by the True Faith, and its liberator, Muḥammad al-Fātiḥ (widely known as Fatih Sultan Mehmed in Turkey) who would prove to be one of the greatest patrons of the arts and sciences in Islāmic history. The theologian, physicist and astronomer Ali Qūshjī (806-879/1403-1474), and the activities of the great metaphysicians and scientists ‘Alā'uddīn al-Ṭūsī (d. 877/1473), Mulla Kestelli (d. 901/1496) and Hocazade (838-893/1434-1488) all took place under the auspices of Mehmet Fatih’s great cultural project; several great works were specially commissioned by the Sultan, including ‘Abd al-Raḥmān Jāmī’s (d. 897/1494) famous The Precious Pearl (al-Durra al-Fākhira), (which adjudicated between and to some degree synthesised kalām, Avicennan philosophy and Akbarian metaphysics) Hocazade and al-Ṭūsī’s adjudications between Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī and the philosophers, as well as a new commentary on Key to the Unseen, alongside many other works. It is clear, then, that the notion of synthesis, the reconciliation of the various scriptural, philosophical, theological and mystical intellectual currents of Islām, was a distinguishing mark of Ottoman intellectual activity in its formative period.

For a thousand years until after the Battle of Vienna in 1683, Islām (later in the guise of the Ottomans) was almost always viewed as a much greater threat to European civilisation than contrariwise. During the Middle Ages, before this pivotal battle, faithful Christians bemoaned the cultural “Islāmisation” of their co-religionists, whether because of the employment of Arabic as a literary language, or because of the fact that after the conquest of Toledo it was impossible to disassociate with Islām the new forms of science and philosophy appearing in Europe, thanks to the discovery there of the oeuvres of figures like Avicenna, whose original works would be central to the development of the Medieval universities.

For the Muslims to come to perceive the Christian West as a major threat, then, would take a major shift in attitude on their part, because by the time the West had its post-Medieval “awakening”, the Muslims had certainly had the upper hand both culturally and politically for the best part of a millennium. One has only to look at a famous work like al-Shaqā'iq al-Nu‘māniyya, by Taşköprüzade, which is a history of the Ottoman “learned establishment” (ilmiye) and of its relationship with the Ottoman sultans, from the beginning of the existence of the Ottoman State in the 1300s, right up to the very end of the 16th century, to find that there is absolutely no discernable Western influence whatever to be seen in the cultural life of the period. In the 18th century, the huzur dersleri, or “seminars in the Imperial presence” were inaugurated formally for the first time by Mustafa III, in which traditional scholars would gather at the Topkapi Palace, one of whom would deliver a lesson in Qur’ān exegesis to the Caliph. The 18th and 19th centuries were moreover witnesses to a new mass Sufi and scholastic movement, that of the Naqshbandi “renewer” Mawlānā Khālid (1190-1243/1776-1827), that significantly strengthened medrese-based religious life. Mawlānā Khālid himself was more than a contemplative and mystic, but was also a celebrated theologian who wrote a number of intensely technical works in the tradition, such as his supercommentary of Siyalakoti’s advanced supercommentary (ḥāshiya) on Khayālī’s classic supercommentary on Taftāzānī’s Sharḥ al-‘Aqā'id, and his original Taḥqīq al-Irāda al-Juz'iyya, a treatise on the true meaning of particular volition, in the context of the reality of Divine predestination.

When they came, the Tanzimat reforms would only touch political, administrative and “secular” educational policy, but not the ulama, the learned traditions of whom had continued to be held sacred. Of course, many ulama had opposed the Tanzimat altogether; but it is a historical reality that even those who did not oppose it ensured that the full integrity of traditional learning would be safeguarded. Ulama who opposed the Tanzimat altogether were able to put a temporary stop to the Westernising reforms by force in 1807, with the help of the Janissaries. They condemned the reforms as reprehensible innovations (bid‘a), and imitation of the disbelievers. The ulama objected to the new Western dress, and staunchly refused to replace their turbans with the red fez (just as Nursī would later refuse to replace his turban with the European flat-cap). They objected to the sultans' new habit of having their portraits painted, and forbade that they be hung in public places. A famous account even exists of a well-known Sufi, Şeyh Saçlı, who sought out Mahmud II and publically denounced him for “destroying the religion of Islām.” The dervish was subsequently executed, but became a hero of the traditionalist movement in the process.

The Ottoman world of the turn of the century was at a crossroads. We now know that Turkey and the possessions of the former Ottoman State would storm in the direction of unrelenting secularisation; yet in 1907, towards the end of Sultan Abdulhamid’s reign, this eventuality would have seemed far from a foregone conclusion, for the muhafazakarlık (“conservatism”) movement had strong support at the Palace and amongst the ulama. The reformists finally won over when the Committee of Union and Progress (İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti) came into power after the 1913 coup. The very next year the long-debated "Reform of the Medreses" bill was signed into the law. Medrese students were now to sit on chairs behind desks and study Western natural sciences, sociology (one of the new teachers of whom was none other than the architect of Turkish nationalism Ziya Gökalp) and Western languages amongst other subjects. This was no synthesis of the Islāmic sciences and the modern natural sciences as envisaged by Nursī, in which the latter are subordinated to and placed into the service of the former; rather, it was an imposition of an alien curriculum that provided no means of harmonising the two, or of putting the modern sciences in their proper places relative to the Islāmic sciences. Despite Mustafa Sabri Efendi's attempt to cancel some of the changes when he became Şeyhülislām in 1919, it was the end of 600 years of the medrese as a truly indigenous Ottoman institution.

Nonetheless, until the very end of the Ottoman State, there were still certain substantial efforts on the part of the traditionally-minded, including certain individuals in the administration, to continue the struggle against modernist and reformist thought. When the Dāru’l-Hikmati’l-Islāmiyya was set up in 1918, an official and prominent think-tank, it gathered together the most renowned scholarly and cultural figures of the empire in an effort to hold modernism at bay: Şeyhülislām Mustafa Sabri (d. 1954) (the author of Mawqif al-‘Aql and staunchly traditionalist mutakallim), Elmalılı Hamdi Yazır (d. 1942) (who incisively critiqued Western philosophy according to the principles of traditional ‘ilmu’ l-Kalām in his notes to his own translation from the French of Paul Janet’s Histoire de la philosophie, and later wrote a renowned exegesis of the Qur’ān in Turkish), İzmirli İsmail Hakkı (d. 1946) (the author of Yeni Kalam), the celebrated poet Mehmet Akif Ersoy (d. 1936), and Sa‘īd Nursī himself.

When the Ottoman Caliphate came crashing down with the advent of the anti-Islāmic, militantly secular republic, the traditional spiritual and cultural symbols of religion that had so deeply permeated Ottoman public life were replaced by symbols of European civilisation. In 1926, the Sacred Law that had held sway in Ottoman lands for six hundred years was replaced by the Swiss civil code and the Italian penal code. Traditional religious clothing and the turban were banned, and martyrs such as the traditional scholar İskilipli Atıf Hoca, were killed because of their refusal to abide by the new laws. The tekkes and institutional Sufism were banned, and the medrese colleges were closed, and replaced by forms of education imported from the West, based on positivist and scientist methodologies. The Western calendar was adopted, as were Western-style surnames; the Islāmic holy day, Friday, was replaced by Sunday as the national day of rest. The Qur’ānic, Arabic script in which Ottoman Turkish had been written was replaced by the Latin script. Arabic and Persian roots were as far as possible extracted from Turkish, and replaced by invented, "pure" Turkish words. Not content with effecting these radical and traumatic changes, champions of the new anti-religious secularism would regularly enter schools in order to indoctrinate school children in their atheistic propaganda.

The beginnings of Westernisation during the Tanzimat period did not affect ordinary people at all until a very, very late stage; and by the time it was imposed upon them in any real way, it was already too late. That is, it was only able to take real hold and be implemented when the traditional system had been defeated and dismantled. At least in the Ottoman State, by the time the magnitude of the danger had become fully manifest, the traditional system was already embargoed, on pain of no less than death. As a member of Dāru’l-Hikmati’l-Islāmiyya, Sa‘īd Nursī had been cognizant of the danger posed by Westernisation from an early stage.

It had already become clear before the fall of the Ottoman caliphate that the great challenge of the times was the polarity of a society divided down the middle, into believers in the continuing viability of Islāmic civilisation on the one hand, and proponents of liberalising, secularising Westernisation on the other. When the secular government took power and began his reforms, it became clear that secularising Westernisation was to be forced upon Turkey and its people, and that an attempt was going to be made to completely destroy Islāmic civilisation in Turkey.

This was the momentous task and responsibility that Nursī faced at the beginning of the Republican period; to save Islāmic civilisation, against enormous odds and overwhelming state opposition, by saving that which gave rise to its splendours and beauties: real faith in the truth of Islām. 

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1 Bedī‘uzzamān Sa‘īd Nursī, Lem‘alar ("The Flashes"), Altınbaşak Neşriyat, Istanbul, 2013, p. 170 (Unless otherwise stated, all references refer to the Ottoman Turkish editions of The Risāle-i Nūr.)

2 Bedī‘uzzamān Sa‘īd Nursī, Şu‘â‘lar ("The Rays"), Altınbaşak Neşriyat, Istanbul, 2013, vol. 2, p. 284

3 Bedī‘uzzamān Sa‘īd Nursī, Barla Lahikası ("Barla Letters"), Altınbaşak Neşriyat, Istanbul, 2013, p. 362

4 Bedī‘uzzamān Sa‘īd Nursī , Zülfikar, Altınbaşak Neşriyat, Istanbul, 2013, p. 145

5 Bedī‘uzzamān Sa‘īd Nursī , Lem‘alar ("The Flashes"), Altınbaşak Neşriyat, Istanbul, 2013, p. 175