• Studies

    Academic works on the Risale-i Nur Collection
  • 1

Islam in Modern Turkey

An Intellectual Biography of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi

By Şükran Vahide

Sukran Vahide - Author
Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi' - Edited and with an intro

Abstract

A biography of the prominent Turkish theologian and thinker. Islam in Modern Turkey presents one of the most comprehensive studies in English of the seminal Turkish thinker and theologian, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (1876–1960). A devout Muslim who strongly believed in peacefully coexisting with the West, Nursi inspired a faith movement that has played a vital role in the revival of Islam in Turkey and now numbers several million followers worldwide. While Nursi's ideas have been afforded considerable analysis, this book is the first to situate these ideas and his related activities in their historical contexts. Based on the available sources and Nursi's own works, here is a complete and balanced view of this important theologian's life and thought.

 

 

Reviews:

 

“…a timely contribution to the study of one of the most prominent Islamic thinkers of the twentieth century.” — American Journal of Islamic Studies

“This book is vitally important. Nursi was an authentic Muslim, which even the most conservative of Muslims would recognize. One finds in his writings a warmth and generosity of spirit that is worth celebrating and should be better known.” — Ian S. Markham, author of A Theology of Engagement
 

 

Table of Contents


Author’s Note on the Sources
Note on Spelling and Punctuation
Maps

Introduction by Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi‘

Part I. The Old Said

1. Childhood and Youth

2. Istanbul

3. Bediuzzaman and the Thirty-first of March Incident

4. The Future Shall be Islam’s

5. The Medresetü’z-Zehra

6. War and Captivity

7. The Armistice Years (1): Appointment to the Darü’l-Hikmeti’l-Islamiye and Opposition to the British

8. The Armistice Years (2): The Birth of the New Said, and Departure for Ankara

Part II. The New Said

9. Van

10. Barla

11. Eskis*ehir

12. Kastamonu

13. Denizli

14. Emirdag

15. Afyon

Part III. The Third Said

16. Consolidation of the Nur Movement and “Jihad of the Word”

17. The Last Months

Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

 

 

Author:

 

Sukran Vahide is Resident Scholar at the Istanbul Culture and Science Foundation in Istanbul, Turkey. Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi' is Professor of Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations at the Hartford Seminary. He edited and wrote the introduction for Islam at the Crossroads: On the Life and Thought of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, also published by SUNY Press.

 

Suny Press, 2005

Language: English

Country: USA

Publishing House Tel: +1 518 472 50 00

Publishing House Fax: +1 518 472 50 38

Web: www.sunypress.edu

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

 

Hardcover - 440 pages

Release Date: August 2005

ISBN10: 0-7914-6515-2

ISBN13: 978-0-7914-6515-8

 

Electronic - 440 pages

Release Date: February 2012

ISBN10: N/A

ISBN13: 978-0-7914-8297-1

 

 

Extract

 

 

Islam in Modern Turkey: An Intellectual Biography of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi

 

Islam in Modern Turkey: An Intellectual Biography of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi Edited by Ibrahim Abu-Rabi' Albany: State University of New York 2005

 

Sükran Vahide's Islam in Modern Turkey: An Intellectual Biography of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (Albany: State University of New York, 2005) is, so to speak, many books in one: a stirring history of the transition from the final, terminal days of the Ottoman Empire to the nascent era of the Turkish Republic; a detailed case-study in the relationship

 

Cover

Download PDF (754.9 KB)

Title Page

Download PDF (23.1 KB)
pp. i-iii

Copyright

Download PDF (25.8 KB)
pp. iv-

Contents

Download PDF (45.7 KB)
pp. v-vi

Author’s Note on the Sources

Download PDF (45.9 KB)
pp. vii-viii

Note on Spelling and Pronunciation

Download PDF (41.1 KB)
pp. ix-

Maps

Download PDF (116.0 KB)
pp. x-xi

 

Introduction

Download PDF (54.8 KB)
pp. xiii-xvi

Sükran Vahide’s biography of Ustadh Bediuzzaman Said Nursi may well become a classic in the field of modern Islamic Studies and Comparative Theology. In this work, the author traces Nursi’s life and thought from his birth and childhood in the eastern part of Turkey until his death in 1960. Vahide’s command of the original sources is beyond reproach, and her understanding...

Part I: The Old Said

 

1 Childhood and Youth

Download PDF (136.9 KB)
pp. 3-31

The village of Nurs straggles along the bottom of the south-facing slopes of a range of the massive Taurus Mountains south of Lake Van in the province of Bitlis in eastern Anatolia. Its deep valley is carved through the mountains from Hizan, the nearest township some ten hours away on foot. Until the road was built in the 1980s the only path to the village followed this valley, along...

 

2 Istanbul

Download PDF (138.8 KB)
pp. 33-63

In November 1907 Nursi set off for Istanbul with the intention of obtaining official support and backing for his Islamic university, the Medresetü’z-Zehra. He was now around thirty years of age. From his humble beginnings in the village of Nurs, he had established his reputation among the ulama of Kurdistan and was a figure well known not only for his unbeaten record in debate...

 

3 Bediuzzaman and the Thirty-first of March Incident

Download PDF (107.3 KB)
pp. 65-81

After nine months of CUP rule, increasing discontent found expression in the famous Thirty-first of March Incident.1 Many aspects of this revolt, which started with certain sections of the army in Istanbul mutinying and continued for twelve days, have still not been brought to light. But what is certain is that for whatever reasons, the role in the revolt of the newspaper...

 

4 The Future Shall Be Islam’s

Download PDF (99.8 KB)
pp. 83-99

By the end of May 1909 Nursi was free of prison and the court-martial. Despite his bidding farewell to Istanbul at the end of his defense and declaring that he was returning to the East, there now follows a period of nine or tenth months before he made his return journey to Van, about which to date no clues as to his movements have been found. He set out the following spring...

 

5 The Medresetü’z-Zehra

Download PDF (83.7 KB)
pp. 101-110

...On June 5, 1911, Sultan Mehmed Resad set out on his famous Rumelia journey with a large retinue including two princes, the grand vizier, Hakkı Pasha, and a number of deputies.3 It was to be the last time an Ottoman sultan visited the European provinces, for soon they were to be lost to the empire. The previous year had seen the first Albanian uprising. The purpose of the sultan’s...

 

6 War and Captivity

Download PDF (103.4 KB)
pp. 111-129

...honor of it.” The agreement between the Ottoman government, represented by a small group of Young Turk leaders, and Germany was signed in the greatest secrecy on August 2, 1914. Thereby the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers (Austria-Hungary and Germany) against the Triple Entente (Britain, France, and Russia). Mobilization was announced the following day, and on...

 

7 The Armistice Years (1): Appointment to the Darü’l-Hikmeti’l-ÿslamiye, and Opposition to the British

Download PDF (124.7 KB)
pp. 131-155

There is no detailed account of Nursi’s escape and return journey to Istanbul. He did not permit his nephew, Abdurrahman, to give anything but the briefest facts: that “having escaped from Kosturma, [Nursi] was successful in reaching Petersburg, [then] Warsaw, and finally arriving at Istanbul by way of Vienna, was saved from...

 

8 The Armistice Years (2):The Birth of the New Said,and Departure for Ankara

Download PDF (101.9 KB)
pp. 157-173

...the time greatly distressed at the course of events and was “searching for a light in the dense darkness.” In his dream, Nursi was summoned by “a great assembly” made up of representatives of the leading figures of Islam from each century and called upon to give an account of the present state of Islam. Contrarily to what might be expected, Nursi’s reply pointed out positive...

Part II: The New Said

 

9 Van

Download PDF (85.6 KB)
pp. 177-188

On arriving in Van, Nursi stayed with his younger brother, Abdülmecid, a teacher of Arabic, in the Toprakkale district of the town. But we learn from Abdülmecid’s wife, Rabia, that his well-wishers and visitors were so numerous that he was obliged to move to Nurs*in Mosque. This then became Nursi’s base in Van in place of his medrese, the Horhor, which had been razed in the...

 

10 Barla

Download PDF (127.3 KB)
pp. 189-213

Barla—Ankara had indeed found a remote spot removed from easy contact with the outside world. With its low, red-roofed houses nestling on a hillside among the green-sprinkled mountains to the west of Lake Egirdir, this small village could only be reached on foot, or by horse or donkey; there was no motor road. The road was to come to Barla in later years, as was the telephone...

 

11 Eskisehir

Download PDF (83.6 KB)
pp. 215-225

On April 25, 1935, a number of Nursi’s students were taken from their homes and places of work and held in custody. Two days later, Nursi himself and another group were arrested. It was the start of an event that very often bordered on the ridiculous, despite its seriousness, and was another example of the lengths the government went to reduce the standing of influential religious...

 

12 Kastamonu

Download PDF (141.1 KB)
pp. 227-255

Nursi was released from Eskisehir Prison in March 1936 and was sent to Kastamonu in the Ilgaz Mountains to the south of the Black Sea. He was now fifty-nine years of age. His enforced residence in this the major town of the province of Kastamonu was to last seven and a half years. Under constant surveillance, his movements were more restricted than in Barla, and the harassment...

 

13 Denizli

Download PDF (89.5 KB)
pp. 257-269

Nursi was still ill from the effects of the poison, and weak. It was now the end of Ramadan. He was deeply grieved at this blow to the Risale-i Nur; besides himself, virtually all its leading students had been arrested. The students had been rounded up and taken from their homes and villages in the province of Isparta and elsewhere and their families left without support or protection....

 

14 Emirdag

Download PDF (97.4 KB)
pp. 271-283

Nursi had been a month and a half in the Sehir Hotel in Denizli when the order came from Ankara that he was to reside in the province of Afyon, still in western Anatolia, to the northeast of Denizli. A letter dated July 31, 1944, written by the Denizli businessman Hafız Mustafa Kocayaka to Sadık Demirelli, who had sent Nursi some Kastamonu rice, states that Nursi had left that day in the...

 

15 Afyon

Download PDF (95.2 KB)
pp. 285-301

...The years of Republican People’s Party rule were drawing to an end; in 1946 the Democrat Party had already been founded. As though to have a final strike at religion and Islam, to which they were now having to make concessions, they inflicted on Nursi, who virtually alone of all the leading religious figures in Turkey had persistently defied them, twenty months of the most terrible...

Part III: The Third Said

 

16 Consolidation of the Nur Movement and “Jihad of the Word”

Download PDF (134.6 KB)
pp. 305-331

We come now to the last ten years of Nursi’s life and the last of its three main stages—in Nursi’s own words, that of the Third Said. The Third Said is generally defined in terms of changes Nursi made in the way he had patterned his life over many years, the expansion of his work with the Risale-i Nur, and also in his involving himself more closely with social and political developments...

 

17 The Last Months

Download PDF (95.0 KB)
pp. 333-348

As we approach the end of Nursi’s life, just how baseless and far from the truth were the accusations made against him may be further illustrated by descriptions of his health and state of mind during these last years, both by himself and by the students who were constantly with him. As has been mentioned in other contexts, the basis of the...

 

Conclusion

Download PDF (49.5 KB)
pp. 349-351

The story of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi is the story of a Muslim scholar and teacher who at a time when the fortunes of the Islamic world had declined in the face of rising Western imperialism dedicated his life and learning to demonstrating that the revitalization of the Islamic world, and even the prosperity and happiness of humanity, were to be found in the Qur’an as divine...

Notes

Download PDF (180.1 KB)
pp. 353-402

Bibliography

Download PDF (77.8 KB)
pp. 403-413

Index

 

 

http://muse.jhu.edu/books/9780791482971