Risalatun noor of Sheikh Sayeed nursi

[1] Shaykhh Said Nursi Rahimahullah (1873 -1960) was born in Nuras, a Turkish village in the Bitlis Vilayet (province) of the Ottoman Empire, in eastern Anatolia. He acquired his initial education in his hometown. Due to his Islamic knowledge and astounding intelligence he was nicknamed “Bediuzzaman”, meaning “The most unique and superior person of the time”.

He was active during the late Ottoman Empire as an educational reformer and supporter of the unity of the peoples of the Caliphate. He proposed educational reforms to the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid aiming to put the traditional Madrasah (seminary) training, Sufism and the modern sciences in dialogue with each other.

Sheikh Saeed was a worrying-enough influence for the incipient leader of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Sheikh Said Nursi was exiled to the Isparta Province for, amongst other things, performing the call to prayer in the Arabic language. After his teachings attracted people in the area, the governor of Isparta sent him to a village named Barla where he wrote two-thirds of his Risale-i Nur.

He considered materialism and atheism and their source materialist philosophy to be his true enemies in this age of science, reason, and civilization He combated them with reasoned proofs in the Risale-i Nur, considering the Risale-i Nur as the most effective barrier against the corruption of society caused by these enemies.

The way the Risale-i Nur was written and disseminated was unique, like the work itself. Bediuzzaman would dictate at speed to a scribe, who would write down the piece in question with equal speed; the actual writing was very quick. Bediuzzaman had no books for reference and the writing of religious works was of course forbidden (due to government restrictions). They were all written therefore in the mountains and out in the countryside. Handwritten copies were then made, these were secretly copied out in the houses of the Risale-i Nur ‘Students’, as they were called, and passed from village to village, and then from town to town, till they spread throughout Turkey. Only in 1946 were Risale-i Nur Students able to obtain duplicating machines, while it was not till 1956 that Risalae- Nur and other collections were printed on modern presses in the new, Latin, script. The figure given for hand-written copies is 600,000.

He died of exhaustion after travelling to Urfa. He was buried in a tomb which according to some Muslims is the shrine of  Ibrahim Alihis Salam. After the military coup in Turkey in 1960, a group of soldiers led by the later right-wing politician Alparslan Turkes opened his grave and buried him at an unknown place near Isparta during July 1960 in order to prevent popular adoration. His followers are reported to have found his grave after years of searching in the area, and took his remains to a secret place in an effort to protect his body from further disturbance.