Bediuzzaman Said Nursi was a prominent Islamic scholar born in 1877 in Eastern Turkey who dedicated his life to defending and teaching Islam. As a child, he displayed extraordinary intellectual abilities and memorization skills. After World War I, during which he commanded militia forces, he withdrew from politics upon seeing the rise of anti-Islamic ideas. He spent many years in exile, where he wrote the Risale-i Nur Collection to explain the Quran and defend Islam using modern sciences. His goal was to prove the eternal truth of the Quran and renew Islamic theology to respond to modern challenges.

1. A Prominent Islamic Teacher
and Scholar

2. AN OVERVIEW
His early life
WorldWar I
After the war
Risale-i Nur Collection
His main aim
Some of his maxims

3. HIS EARLY LIFE
Bediuzzaman Said Nursi was born in 1877
in Eastern Turkey (the Village of Nurs) and
died in 1960 in Urfa in Turkey.

4. HIS EARLY LIFE
At the age of 9, he left home
to take Religious education.
He changed a lot of
madrasas, because he didn’t
like their education system.

5. HIS EARLY LIFE
From his earliest years he was exceptional. This
showed itself by firstly, his displaying an instinctive
dissatisfaction with the existing educational system.
Secondly, after spending only brief periods in
local madrasas (religious schools), at the age of only
fourteen or fifteen, he was awarded the diploma for
completing the established course of study.

6. HIS EARLY LIFE
That is to say, the young Said had both a
phenomenal power of memory and an
extraordinary ability to absorb knowledge.He
could memorise one page by just reading once.
It was because of his
extraordinary feats of
learning that sometime after
this he was given the name
Bediüzzaman, which means
“Wonder of the Age.”

7. HIS EARLY LIFE
He has a large-scale project for educational reform,
which included the combined teaching of the Islamic
and physical sciences, the democratization of the
educational system, and many other forward-looking
measures in this early period.

8. Therefore, he aimed to found a university in the
VAN of the Eastern Provinces of the Empire. The
Medresetü'z-Zehra, where his proposalswould be
put into practice.

9. HIS EARLY LIFE
In 1907 his endeavours in this field took him
to Istanbul and an audience with Sultan Abdulhamid.
Although subsequently he twice received approval of
the funds for the construction of his university, and its
foundations were laid in 1913, it was never completed
due to war and the vicissitudes of the times.

10. WORLD WAR I
In theWar, he commanded the militia forces on the
Caucasian Front against the invading Russians, for
which he was later awarded a WarMedal.

11. WORLD WAR I
Bediuzzaman was taken
prisoner in March 1916
and held in Russia for
two years before
escaping in early 1918,
and returning
to Istanbul viaWarsaw,
Berlin, and Vienna.

12. AFTER WORLD WAR I
In recognition of his services
to the Independence Struggle,
Bediuzzaman was invited
to Ankara byMustafa
Kemal (Ataturk), but on
arrival there, he found out that
Atheistic ideas were being
propagated among the
Deputies and officials.

13. AFTER WORLD WAR I
He decided that those destructive Anti-Islam Forces
can be defeated only by the Spiritual Diamond Sword
of the Quran. And so, when offered various posts and
benefits byMustafa Kemal, he declined them and
left Ankara for Van, where he withdrew into a life of
worship and contemplation and teaching; he was
seeking the best way to proceed.

14. AFTER WORLD WAR I
In early 1925 there was a
rebellion in the east in
which Bediuzzaman
played no part, but as a
consequence of which was
sent into exile in
western Anatolia along
with many hundreds of
others.

15. AFTER WORLD WAR I
Thus unjustly
began twenty-five
years of exile,
imprisonment, and
unlawful
oppression for
Bediuzzaman. He
was sent to Barla, a
tiny village in the
mountains
of Isparta Province.

16. RISALE-I NUR COLLECTION
In Barla, Bediüzzaman started to
write, the most important parts of
the Risale-i Nur Collection, which
is a name given to the all books of
Bediüzzaman.

18. RISALE-I NUR COLLECTION
Risale-i Nur was written to expound and explain the
truths of the Qur'an and belief to modern man, who
bewildered by the assaults of materialist philosophy,
so that he may attain true and certain belief which will
not be shaken by those assaults. In explaining these
truths, the Risale-i Nur demonstrates the Qur'an's
superiority in every aspect.

19. HIS MAIN AIM
Contrary to the practice of religious scholars
at that time, Bediuzzaman himself studied
and mastered almost all the physical and
mathematical sciences, and later studied
philosophy, for he believed that it was only
in this way that Islamic theology
(Kalâm) could be renewed and answers
successfully could be given to the attacks to
Qur'an and Islam.

20. He vowed: "I shall prove and demonstrate to the world
that the Qur'an is an undying, inextinguishable Sun"

21. HIS MAIN AIM
From that time he strove to employ his
superior knowledge of both the traditional
religious and the modern sciences in the
service of the Qur'an; to prove its
miraculousness, defend it against the
attacks which were largely in the name of
science and progress, and relate its truths in
the light of modern advances in knowledge.

22. SOME OF HIS
MAXIMS