Said Nursi (1877Şükran Vahide, Islam in Modern Turkey: An Intellectual Biography of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, p 3. – 23 March 1960), known also as Said-i Kurdî, was a Kurdish scholar of Islam from Turkey who wrote the Risale-i Nur Collection, a body of Qur'anic commentary exceeding six thousand pages.Gerhard Böwering, Patricia Crone, Mahan Mirza, The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought, p. 482. Ian S. Markham; Suendam Birinci; Suendam Birinci Pirim (2011). An Introduction to Said Nursi: Life, Thought and Writings. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd, p 194. . His focus was on a revival of personal Islamic faith "through study, self-reform and service of others".
Believing that modern science and logic was the way of the future, he advocated teaching religious sciences in secular schools and modern sciences in religious schools.Said Nursi, Munazarat, p. 86 "The religious sciences are the light of the conscience; the modern sciences are the light of the mind; only on the combining of the two does the truth emerge. The students’ aspiration will take flight with those two wings. When they are parted, it gives rise to bigotry in the one, and skepticism and trickery in the other." He is commonly known with the honorifics Bediüzzaman (بدیعالزمان; ) and Üstad (استاد; ) among his followers.
Nursi inspired a religious movementOmer Taspinar, Kurdish Nationalism and Political Islam in Turkey: Kemalist Identity in Transition (Middle East Studies: History, Politics & Law), p. 228. Serif Mardin, Religion and Social Change in Modern Turkey: The Case of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, p. 23. that has played a vital role in the revival of Islam in Turkey and now numbers several millions of followers worldwide.Şükran Vahide, Islam in Modern Turkey: An Intellectual Biography of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, p. 425. His followers are often known as the "Nurcu movement" or the Nurcu cemaati. A 2008 publication estimates Nurcu adherents at 5 to 6 million worldwide, and around 5500 dershanes (halls where adherents study Nursi’s writings).
Originally active in politics on behalf of Islam, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire Nursi abandoned political activity and devoted himself to writing about Islam.
Biography Nursi divided his life into three periods: The "Old Said" where he was actively involved in politics in the belief he could best serve Islam this way. This period lasted from his birth until early 1920's coinciding with the aftermath of World War I The "New Said" period followed the upheaval of the fall of the Ottoman Empire and led Nursi to undergo a deep personal transformation. He abandoned politics and focused on writing his Risale-i Nur collection. In this he claimed to use reasoning to demonstrate truth of Islam. Most of this period was spent in jail and exile. This period ended when he was released from Afyon prison in 1949. The "3rd Said" period lasted from 1949 till his death in 1960. During this time the first democratic elections in Turkey took place, and Nursi experienced relative freedom.
Early life ("Old Said" period) Said Nursi was born Sait Okur in the Kurdish village of Nurs near Hizan in the Bitlis Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire. His father Mirza and his mother Nuriye both were said to be of the Ahl al-Bayt (lineage of the Islamic prophet Muhammad). They had seven children and modest means. As a young man he was affiliated with the Kadiri (Qadiriyya) Sufi order.
Nursi failed to earn an icâzetname (traditional diploma), but continued his education more informally through brief visits to madrasahs and notable local sheikhs.
He left Siirt to stay with his brother but returned after some time and went to the madrasa of Mullah Fathullah. He quickly impressed Fathullah with all the religious books he had read ("Süyûtî", "Mullah Jâmî", etc.) and his comprehension of them.
Said was said to be able to recite many books from memory. and spread news of his talent throughout Siirt to other scholars. After this, scholars of Siirt gave him the title "Bediuzzaman" meaning "Wonder of the Age".
When he was 13–14 years old he was said to have completed the entire madrasa curriculum (of more than one hundred books) in three months, which normally takes 10–15 years to complete. Said’s approach was to rely on the teacher only for understanding of the key ideas of each book, and then to master whatever remained in the book with self-study.
Nursi gained the protection and patronage of the governor of Van, Tahir Pasha (1847-1913) and lived in Van from 1897 to 1907. He was reportedly invited by the governor of the Vilayet of Van to stay within his residency. In the library of the governor, Nursi gained access to an archive of scientific knowledge he had not had access to previously. He is said to have studied the principles of history, geography, mathematics, geology, physics, chemistry, astronomy, and philosophy during his stay, besides Islamic sciences, and to have memorized the 90 books he studied.
Said Nursi is also said to have learned the Ottoman Turkish language there. During this time, he developed a plan to establish a university in the Eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire, which he named as "Madrasat-uz Zahra" which would combine scientific and religious (Islamic) education, and expected to advance overall education of these regions. He was able to secure funding for this project from the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed V and the construction started in 1913, but after the World War I started the project became void.
In late 1907, he arrived in Istanbul where he became associated with the Kurdish community, met Kurdish intellectuals and joined the Kürd Teavün ve Terakki Cemiyeti (Kurdish Society for Mutual Aid and Progress). Following the Young Turk Revolution in 1908, Nursi became an enthusiastic supporter of the constitutional regime, and published articles in a number of newspapers emphasizing the importance of the Shariah and meşveret (consultation/shura) in Islamic tradition, the necessity of education, and the needs of the Kurds. After the counterrevolution of 1909 (31 March incident), Nursi was arrested and tried, but acquitted of all charges. The following year, Nursi returned to Van in the hopes of propagating constitutionalism and legitimizing the new regime’s alliance with the Armenians among the Kurdish population. In 1911 when he was asked what he thought about the idea of appointing Armenians (who were Christians) as Governors in Ottoman States, he reportedly responded that there was no harm of doing this as there was no harm in Armenians being engineers, watchmakers, etc.
During this time his piety was outraged when he read a newspaper report claiming that William Gladstone, the British Secretary for Colonies, had told the British parliament that "so long as the Muslims have the Qur’an we shall be unable to dominate them. We must either take it from them or make them lose their love of it." Nursi allegedly declared: "I shall prove and demonstrate to the world that the Quran is an undying, inexhaustible Sun!", and set out to write his comprehensive Risale-i Nur, a collection of Said Nursi's own commentaries and interpretations of the Quran and Islam, as well as writings about his own life.
World War I
When the Ottoman Empire entered the war, Russia attacked the Eastern part of Turkey. Nursi with his students established a volunteer brigade to resist the invasion, and he served in the 3rd Army as a brigade commander. During the War, Nursi would reportedly enter the trenches himself despite heavy shelling, earning him the admiration of the troops he commanded. It was during these experiences that he allegedly wrote his Quranic commentary, dictating to a scribe while on horseback or when he was back in trenches. During combat, he broke his leg and was forced to surrender to Russian forces. He was taken prisoner by the Russian forces and spent two and a half years in the Kostroma prisoner camp in the North-East of Moscow.
According to legend, one day during his imprisonment, the Russian Commander-in-Chief Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich came to inspect the camp. He walked in front of him but Nursi didn't stand up, unlike the other prisoners. He walked again but Nursi didn't pay any attention to Nicolaevich. Nicolaevich asked him whether he knew who he was. Nursi said that he knew who he was, but because he is a Muslim scholar and a person with faith is superior to a person without, he couldn't stand up, that would be disrespecting his own faith. Russian martial court ordered his execution. He asked to do his last prayer before the execution. After a couple of minutes, they took him and tried to blindfold him, which he refused, claiming that he wants to look at paradise. Nicolaevich admired the brave attitude of him and understood that his intention was not to insult him, his behavior was just self respect. Nicolaevich immediately ordered to stop the execution and asked for forgiveness from him. Later on, he was allowed to stay in a Tatar mosque nearby.
The Russian February Revolution disrupted the Russian war effort and like many other Ottoman prisoners of war, Nursi escaped. He returned to Istanbul in June 1918 and was welcomed as a hero.
Armenian genocide From 1915-1917 approximately one million Armenians died during forced marches in the Syrian Desert. Others, primarily women and children, were forcibly converted to Islam. Nursi was present in four critical cities, namely Erzurum, Van, Muş, and Bitlis, during the spring and summer of 1915, when the killing of Armenians was committed. Nursi has testified that he tried to save Armenian women and children in Bitlis from being massacred. To what extent he was successful in this endeavor remains unclear, similar to his attitude towards other Armenian civilians. What Nursi's attitude was towards Armenian civilians during WWI is still a "matter of debate", according to Abdürrahim Özer.
Opposition to the British invasion of Istanbul In the aftermath of WWI, with Istanbul under foreign occupation, Nursi became a vocal critic. He exposed foreign powers manipulating religious leaders to undermine the nascent National Independence Movement in Anatolia. The Ottoman government, pressured by the British, even issued a fatwa opposing the movement. Undeterred, Nursi publicly challenged this fatwa and called it invalid.
Risale-i Nur and the "Nurcu movement", ("New Said" period) After the abolition of the Ottoman Sultanate in 1922, Nursi went to Ankara where he was welcomed by the parliament. His vision of an Islamic republic contradicted that of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's plans for a secular republic, and he did not stay. In 1924, after a short visit to Istanbul, Nursi returned to Van and retreated from public and political life.
Nursi was known as Said-i Kurdî until the mid-1920s, and was known as such in his writings and official Ottoman records. However, following the tumultuous early period of the new Turkish Republic, and in light of the state-driven systematic marginalization of Kurdish identity, he assumed the name Said Nursi (after his village name of Nurs). In the subsequent years, Nursi gradually transformed himself from a Kurdish Islamic intellectual to the centennial mujaddid (a re-newer of the faith) taking what he believed was hijrah (migration) from Atatürk's new secular world.
Teachings and movement