Nurs. Like her husband, she was devout and virtuous. She died during the First World War and was also buried in Nurs. In later years, Said was to say: "From my mother I learnt compassion, and from my father, orderliness and regularity."

Said passed his early years with his family in Nurs. Long winters in the village, short summers in the higher pastures or in the gardens and fields along the river banks in the valley bottom. A short growing season, but sufficient to meet the villagers' needs. A life close to the natural world, in harmony with its rhythms and cycles, full of wonders for an aware and responsive child like Said. He was unusually intelligent, always investigating things, questioning and seeking answers. Years later when explaining how scholarly metaphors may degenerate into superstition "when they fall into the hands of the ignorant", he himself described an occasion which illustrates this.

One night, on hearing tin cans being clashed together and a rifle being fired, the family rushed out of the house to find it was an eclipse of the moon. Said asked his mother: "Why has the moon gone like that?" She replied:

"A snake has swallowed it." So Said asked:

"Then why can it still be seen?"

"The snakes in the sky are like glass; they show what they have inside them."

Said was only to learn the true answer when studying astronomy a few years later.

Whenever the opportunity arose, and especially in the long winter evenings, Said would go and listen to any discussions being held by students and teachers of the medreses, that is, the religious schools, or by religious figures. These discussions, often about the famous scholars, saints, and spiritual leaders of the past, usually took the form of contest and debate. If any of the students or scholars displayed more intelligence than the others, or was victorious in