And when, a couple of hours later, two policemen sent by the Governor brought him back, the Governor rose to his feet when Said entered his office and treated him with great respect, saying: "Everyone has a spiritual guide; you shall be mine and you shall stay with me."

During the next two years, Molla Said was able to greatly extend his knowledge of the Islamic sciences. We are told that until about this time all Said's knowledge had been of the sort called Sunuhat. That is to say, he had understood the subjects he had studied without much thought; understanding had come to him as a sort of inspiration without his exercising his reasoning faculty unduly. Because of this, he had not found it necessary to study the subjects at great length. But whether due to his increasing maturity or because he had become involved in politics, this former ability now slowly began to disappear. And so, in order both to preserve his position among the `ulema, and especially to refute the works of Western orientalists on Islam and answer the doubts they had raised, Molla Said embarked on a comprehensive study of all the Islamic sciences. These included those that can be thought of as `instrumental', such as logic and Arabic grammar and syntax, as well as the main sciences of Qur'anic exegesis (tefsir), traditions of the Prophet (Hadith), and jurisprudence (fikh). He committed to memory around forty books in two years, including works on theology (kelam), like the Metali' and Mevakif, and the work of Hanefi fikih, Mirkat. It used to take him three months to go through them all, reciting a part of each from memory each day.

Molla Said was subject to two conflicting states of mind. The first was one of expansion when there was nothing he could not understand. The second was when his mind contracted; then it was not-only studying, he preferred not to speak even. When he was young, the former state was prevalent. But once he passed the age of twenty, the hours when his mind contracted increased, and the times of its expansion started to decrease until they were about half and half.

During his time in Bitlis, Molla Said began to memorize the