Badiuzzeman Said Nursi (1877-1960)

Badiuzzam Said Nursi was born in 1877 in eastern Turkey and died in 1960 in
Urfa (Turkey). During his long life, he saw the last days of the Ottoman Empire, its
collapse after the First World War and the emergence of modern Turkish Republic.
He also witnessed the twenty-five years of Republican Peoples Partys harsh and
authoritarian rule and ten years of Democratic rule during which conditions
became a little easier for Bediuzzam.
A remarkable child endowed with a prodigious memory, Bediuzzam completed a
traditional madrasah education at the early age of fourteen and then studies
physical sciences, mathematics and philosophy. In the course of the second decade
of his life, he became extremely convinced that the Turkish madrasah education
was inadequate and his own interest in natural sciences led him to construct a new
curriculum for the Islamic educational system. He prepared a blue print for the
establishment of a university, Medrestuz Zehra, (the Resplendent Madrasah) in
the Eastern Provinces. In 1917, he arrived in Istanbul and met Sultan Abdul
Hamid. Subsequently, he received some funding for the construction of the
university and its foundations were laid in 1913. But the beginning of World War I
and the subsequent events made it impossible for this project to materialize.
The end of World War I and that of the Ottoman Empire culminated the first phase
of Bediuzzams life, the period of the Old Said, as he would later call it. During
the War, he had led the militia forces on the Caucasian Front against the invading
Russians for which he was later awarded a War Medal. He was taken prisoner in
March 1916 and was held in Russia for two years. In early 1918, he escaped from
the prison and made his way back to Istanbul via Warsaw, Berlin and Vienna.
It was during the first two years of War that he composed his first works on the
Quran. Spoken while sitting on horseback, and dictated hese commentaries on
various chapters of the Quran attempted to combine the religious knowledge with
natural sciences. This was the beginning of his major work, Risale-i Nur. But the
work was interrupted when Bediuzzaman was captured and imprisoned by the
Russians.
The defeat of the Ottomans, the occupation of Istanbul and parts of Turkey by
foreign forces and the bitter internal struggle that emerged after the War led to a
profound change in Nursi. Despite his active involvement in public life, his

association with Darul Hikmetil Islamiye, the learned body attached to the office
of the Shauk ul-Islam, and his War services, Beddiuzzaman became increasingly
dissatisfied with the world. He started to see the limits of human endeavor and
concentrated on his spiritual training. Recognized for his services, he was invited
to Ankara by Mustafa Kemal, who had emerged as the victorious General, to take
part in the reconstruction of the New Turkey.
Beddiuzzaman spent almost eight months in Ankara during which he realized that
the new Turkish military elite was attempting to establish a secular republic in
which Islam was to be shunned. He was offered various posts in this new set up but
he declined to be part of an establishment founded on materialistic and secular
philosophy. He left Ankara for Van where he sought solace in spiritual practices
and isolation.
But early in 1925, he was arrested on charges of taking part in a rebellion in
eastern provinces although he had taken no part in it. He was sent into exile in
western Anatolia along with hundreds of other Turksthus began a twenty-five
year period of oppression, imprisonment and privation. It was during this time, in
the remote village of Barla in the mountains of Isparta province where
Bediuzzaman had been sent, that Bediuzzaman resumed his work on Risale-i Nur.
Risale-i Nur is not a tafsir (commentary) on the Quran in the usual sense of the
term; rather, it attempts to establish links between the Quranic verses and the
natural world. It also attempts to show that there is no contradiction between
religion and science (See selections for Risal-i Nur in the following section).
While in Barla, Bediuzzaman also wrote a treatise on Resurrection and thirty-three
other pieces which were later collected as Sozler (The Words). This was followed
by Maktubat (Letters), a collection of thirty-three letters of varying length written
to his students. Bediuzzaman wrote two more works, Lemalar (The Flashes) and
Sualar (The Rays), the latter was completed in 1949. In addition, there are three
collections of additional letters, Barla Lahikast, Kastmonu Lahikast, and Emirdag
Lahikast from each of Bediuzzamans three places of exile.
Risale-i Nur is actually a collection of quickly uttered words, dictated to a scribe at
high speed, without consulting any books or references, in the mountains and
countryside places of exile. They were then copied by hand and secretly circulated
because the new secularist regime had banned all religious works. The essays were
then passed on from village to village by the Risale-i Nur students. It was only in
1946, that duplicating machines became available to the Risale-i Nur students and

it was not until 1956 that The Words and other collections were printed in new
Latin script that had been imposed on the Turkish language by the Kemalist
regime. The figure given for hand-written copies is 600,000.1[1]
Nursi thus became the founder of the Nurcu movement. Left without books,
without his home and family, and restricted to a remote region of the country, Said
Nursi was to make a remarkable impact on the lives of millions of Turkish men
and women through his powerful writings and he continues to be a revered figure
in Turkey and other Muslim lands. His works, now collectively called Risale-i Nur,
clandestinely circulated and copied by hand, are now easily available in many
languages. Nursi and his work provide an excellent example of the conditions in
which the discourse on Islam and science progressed in Turkey during the early
decades of the twentieth century and how politics and faith were intertwined in the
discourse. His movement spread quietly until 1950 despite all efforts to crush it
and then entered a new phase in which a great number of young Turks, who had
gone through the state-run secular institutions of the Republic, openly responded to
his call. Toward the end of his life, Nursis influence spread beyond Turkey.
Today, there are several offshoots of this movement, some of which have become
rather profane.
Said Nursi had considerable knowledge of modern science and he attempted to
integrate it within a theistic perspective. For him, the Quran and modern physical
sciences had no dissonance; rather, relating the truth of the Quran to modern men
and women was even easier. Written during his exile, Risale-i Nur was later
described as a manev tefs r, or commentary which expounds the truths of the
Quran.2[2] In the course of his expressive prose, which pulsates with energy,
Nursi substantiates Islamic faith on the basis of the certainties of modern physical
sciences and reads the cosmic verses of the Quran in the light of modern science.
As a religious scholar well grounded in traditional Islamic sciences, Nursi was
aware of the apparent discrepancy between traditional cosmology articulated by
Muslim philosophers and Sufis, and the Newtonian worldview, but instead of
rejecting the mechanistic view of the universe presented by Newtonian science, he
tried to appropriate it by appealing to the classical arguments from design. He saw
1[1]. For

this number and the above information, see, Nursi, Bediuzzaman (1995), The Flashes
Collection (From the Risal-i Nur Collection 3), trans. from Turkish by Sukran Vahide,Sozler
Nesriyat A. S., Istanbul, pp. 480-6).
Nursi, Said Bediuzzaman (1998), The Words, being the English translation of the Turkish
Szler, new revised edition, Szler Neriyat Ticaret ve Sanayi, Istanbul, p. 806.
2[2].

no contradiction between the order and harmony of the universe and Newtonian
determinism. Rather, through a radical recasting of God as the Divine artisan, he
found support for the mechanistic view of the universe. He thought of the universe
as a machine or clock, just like the nineteenth century deists, but he transformed
this enduring symbol of the European tradition to lend support to the theistic
claims of creation. For him, the Quranic themes of the regularity and harmony of
the natural order, when combined with the predictability of Newtonian physics,
disproved the triumph of the secularists and positivists of the nineteenth century
and provided a solid rock on which to construct a new understanding of the
message of the Quran.
Nursis approach to modern science needs to be interpreted with due consideration
of the social and political conditions in which it was written; unlike many other
reformers of the nineteenth century, there is an additional element here: the need to
survive in an environment dominated by state sponsored harassment. Perhaps this
is the reason for the emergence of a number of conflicting ways in which Nursis
work has been judged; some take the work as if it was a scholars commentary on
the Quran; others read it with due regard to the life of the writer and his social and
historical conditions. There are those who take his work to be an attempt to
deconstruct metaphysical claims of modern science by using the language of
Newtonian physics, chemistry, and astronomy. And there are those who
emphasize the influence of modern science and positivism on Nursi. In addition,
the work itself is not a smooth and calm exposition and many additions have been
made to it. Originally, it was not even written; it was dictated at speed to a scribe,
who would write down the piece in question with equal speed and these
handwritten copies would circulate clandestinely. There were no books for
references. The Risale-i Nur collection is, in essence, a collection of dictations of
an inspired mind, secretly written, for all religious teaching was forbidden. As
such, Nursis work does not fall in the category of so-called al-tafsir al-`ilmi
(scientific commentary); rather, in its style and purpose, the collection now known
as Risale-i Nur is a collection of sermonsa title that is used for one of the
Words, The Damascus Sermon, which was delivered at the historic Umayyad
Mosque in early 1911 to a gathering of ten thousand, including one hundred
scholarsthe text was afterwards printed twice in one week,.3[3] The
Damascus Sermon is a sermon on hope, a commentary on Q. 39:53: Do not
As stated in the Publishers Preface to the second revised English translation, see Nursi,
Bediuzzaman Said (1989), The Damascus Sermon, tr. from the Turkish by kran Vahide,
Szler Neriyat ve Sanayi A. , Istanbul.
3[3].

despair of Gods mercy, a diagnosis of the maladies that had afflicted Muslims and
an impassionate appeal to act resolutely to change the conditions.
As we have seen in other cases, a heavy overlay of political and social conditions
defined Nursis discourse. In order to appeal to an audience under the spell of
rationalism, Nursi himself adopts a rationalistic style in many cases, but then the
burden of his arguments makes it totally irrational, bordering on the ridiculous. For
example, the verse and We have created for them similar [vessels] on which they
ride,4[4] points to the railway and the Light Verse alludes to electricity, as well
as to numerous other lights and mysteries.5[5] And the verse: To Solomon [We
made] the wind [obedient]: its early morning [stride] was a months [journey],
and its evening [stride] was a months [journey],6[6]
suggests that the road is open for man to cover such a distance in the air. In which
case, O man! since the road is open to you, reach this level! And in meaning
Almighty God is saying through the tongue of this verse: O man! I mounted one
of my servants on the air because he gave up the desires of his soul. If you too give
up laziness, which comes from the soul, and benefit thoroughly from certain of my
laws in the cosmos, you too may mount it the verse specified final points far
ahead of todays aeroplanes.7[7]
And the miracle of Prophet Moses staff mentioned in the Quran (Q. 2:60),
predicts the development of modern drilling techniques to dig out such
indispensable substances of modern industry as oil, mineral water, and natural gas.
The mention of iron in the Quran (Q. 34:10), which had been softened for
David, becomes a sign of the future significance of iron and steel for modern
industry. In its popular and cruder version, Said Nursis encounter with modern
science has led his followers to establish one-to-one correspondences between new
scientific findings and Quranic verses. His practice of using science as the decoder
of the sacred language of nature has influenced numerous Turkish students,
professionals, and lay persons who are making similar attempts. Nursis followers
try to show the miracle of creation through comparisons between the cosmological
4[4].

Q. 36: 42.

5[5].

Nursi (1998), p. 261.

6[6].

Q. 34:12.

7[7].

Nursi (1998), pp. 262-3.

verses of the Quran and new scientific discoveries. Every new scientific discovery
is quickly adopted as yet another proof for the miraculous nature of the Quran.
This has led to a gross profanation of the text of the Quran and a great injustice to
the scientific data. These trends also gave birth to formal works of Quran
interpretation in which modern science appears as the most important subject
matter.
Nursi was followed by a large number of young people who were seeking spiritual
fulfillment in a society where religion had been under attack. This characteristic
Turkish dilemma has given birth to a society which is divided and at war with
itself. Thus the Islam and science discourse in Turkey is not a calm academic
discourse; it is a matter of life and death.

Muzaffar Iqbal
October 31, 2002