Said Nursi

Said Nursi (1294 AH / 1877 – 23 March 1960), known among his followers by the honorifics Bediüzzaman ("wonder of the age") and Üstad ("the teacher"), was a Kurdish scholar from the Ottoman Empire and the author of the Risale-i Nur, a body of Qur'anic commentary exceeding six thousand pages. ¹

Nursi divided his own life into periods: the "Old Said", active in politics; the "New Said", devoted to writing the Risale after the fall of the Ottoman Empire; and a third period from 1949 until his death. ¹

His writings inspired the Nur movement (Nurcu), which played a vital role in the revival of Islam in Turkey. A 2008 publication estimated its adherents at five to six million worldwide, with around 5,500 dershanes (study halls) where his writings are read. ¹

He was born Sait Okur in the Kurdish village of Nurs near Hizan in the Bitlis Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire, to Mirza and Nuriye, a modest family of seven children; his name "Nursi" comes from his village. ^{1 2}

As a young man he moved briefly between madrasas and local sheikhs without earning a traditional diploma (icazetname). The sources report that at thirteen or fourteen he completed the entire madrasa curriculum — normally ten to fifteen years of study — in three months. ¹

They also report that he read a page of al-Hariri's Maqamat once, memorised it and repeated it by heart before Mullah Fathullah, after which the scholars of Siirt gave him the title Bediuzzaman, "wonder of the age". ¹

The Arabic article says he memorised close to ninety major books and debated the scholars of his region, surpassing them all, so that his fame spread. ²

From 1897 to 1907 he lived in Van under the patronage of its governor, Tahir Pasha, and in the governor's library gained access to works of history, geography, mathematics, geology, physics, chemistry, astronomy and philosophy besides the Islamic sciences. ¹

In this period he developed his plan for a university in the eastern Ottoman provinces, which he named Madrasat-uz Zahra — modelled on al-Azhar, as the Arabic article puts it — combining religious and modern scientific education. He secured funding from Sultan Mehmed V and construction began in 1913, but the First World War voided the project. ^{1 2}

He arrived in Istanbul in late 1907, and after the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 became an enthusiastic supporter of the constitutional regime, publishing articles on the sharia, consultation (shura), education and the needs of the Kurds. After the counter-revolution of 1909 he was arrested and tried, and acquitted of all charges. ¹

In 1911 he delivered his famous Damascus Sermon (al-Khutba al-Shamiyya) at the Umayyad Mosque before thousands of worshippers; his students regard it as a complete political and social programme for the umma. ²

When the Ottoman Empire entered the First World War, Nursi formed a volunteer brigade of his students and served as its commander in the 3rd Army on the Caucasus front. During the fighting he dictated his Qur'anic commentary İşârâtü'l-İ'câz to a scribe, on horseback or in the trenches. ^{1 2}

He broke his leg in combat and was captured, spending about two and a half years in the Kostroma prisoner camp north-east of Moscow (the Arabic article says two years and four months). He escaped after the Russian February Revolution and returned to Istanbul in June 1918, welcomed as a hero and appointed to the Dar al-Hikma al-Islamiyya. ^{1 2}

The English article records his testimony that he tried to save Armenian women and children in Bitlis from massacre in 1915–1917, and notes that how far he succeeded, and his attitude towards Armenian civilians generally, remain a "matter of debate" among researchers. ¹

After the war, with Istanbul under foreign occupation, he publicly challenged as invalid the fatwa the Ottoman government had issued under British pressure against the National Independence Movement in Anatolia. ¹

He went to Ankara in 1922 and was welcomed by the parliament, but his vision of an Islamic republic contradicted Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's plans for a secular republic, and he did not stay. In 1924 he returned to Van and withdrew from public and political life. ¹

He rejected Sheikh Said's invitation to join his 1926 rebellion and criticised it; nevertheless he was exiled afterwards to Burdur, and the governor of Isparta then sent him to the village of Barla, where he wrote two-thirds of the Risale-i Nur. ^{1 2}

The manuscripts were sent to the village of Sav, where people copied them by hand in the Arabic script — officially replaced by the Latin alphabet in 1928 — and the finished books were distributed to his disciples across Turkey through the "Nurcu postal system". ¹

The collection grew to more than 130 treatises on the meanings of the Qur'an in a modern, rational style: demonstrating the existence of God, the nature of the soul and the purpose of life by reason and analogy rather than blind imitation, and arguing that the Qur'an encompasses knowledge compatible with modern science. ^{2 1}

He lived more than twenty years in prison and exile for his religious revival work under the secularist state, and his books could not be printed in presses until 1956 (the Arabic article says printing began after 1954 under his own supervision). ^{1 2}

He held that the Muslim world had three enemies — ignorance, poverty and division — and three weapons against them: education, industry and unity. ¹

He considered materialism and atheism, and their source, materialist philosophy, his true enemies in this age, and fought them with what he believed were reasoned proofs in the Risale. His method is summarised in two phrases: mânevî jihad, "spiritual jihad", and "positive action" — his students were to avoid all force and disruptive action, and to repair through the truths of the Qur'an the damage he attributed to unbelief, while maintaining public order and security. ¹

In his second period he abandoned politics under his famous motto, "I seek refuge in God from Satan and from politics", and made his project "saving faith and serving the Qur'an": turning people's faith from inherited, imitative belief into verified, witnessed belief. ²

He advocated teaching religious sciences in secular schools and modern sciences in religious schools. ¹

He was acquitted of the charges against him in 1956 and spent the last decade of his life settled in Isparta. He advised his followers to vote for Adnan Menderes's Democratic Party, which had restored some religious freedom, and he was a staunch anti-Communist, denouncing Communism as the greatest danger of the time. ¹

He died on 25 Ramadan 1379 AH / 23 March 1960 in Urfa, of exhaustion after travelling there, and was buried opposite the cave where Ibrahim (Abraham) is widely believed to have been born. ^{2 1}

Four months later, after the 1960 military coup, soldiers opened his grave and reburied him at an unknown place near Isparta to prevent popular veneration; his grave remains unknown. ^{1 2}

This section sets out different positions as reported in the sources. It is not a verdict by the museum. The Arabic article reports criticisms directed at the Risale-i Nur movement by some Muslim scholars, especially Salafis: that the movement's abandonment of politics, and its shaykh's motto, left some followers prey to secular parties; and that he did not support Sheikh Said's Kurdish revolt of 1925. The article links his position to his doctrine of beginning with the jihad of the soul, peaceful preaching and gradual reform, and of not entering internal conflicts with fellow Muslims. ²

The Nur movement that grew from his books later produced several movements, among them the Gülen movement, the Okuyucular (Readers), the Yeni Asya movement and the Yazıcılar (Publishers). ¹

A Turkish film, Free Man, based on his biography was made in 2011, as was an animated film about his Barla years. ¹

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