account of a few bandits.”

• The Journey to Exile

Towards the end of the revolt, the authorities started to round up all the influential religious and tribal leaders in the province of Van, although they had not taken part in the revolt, and send them into exile in western Anatolia. Rumours began to circulate that Bediuzzaman also was going to be exiled. There were moves to persuade him to leave the area for Iran or Arabia. But Bediuzzaman declined the offers, saying that should he go to Anatolia, it would be of his own consent. First Seyh Masum, the Mufti of Van, was arrested, then a squad of three gendarmes and a captain were seen climbing the lower slopes of Mount Erek; they were going towards the source of the Zernabad and Bediuzzaman's cave.
Bediuzzaman was uninformed of this squad and its orders, and on being surprised in his retreat and curtly ordered by the captain to accompany them in a most peremptory and overbearing fashion, he responded with the boldness that had always marked his response to arbitrary and tyrannical behaviour. A tense and electric situation was suddenly created. In the meanwhile Bediuzzaman's students and a number of people from the nearest villages had gathered. They awaited his orders to act; it would have been simple for them to get him away from the area and out of the country. However, Bediuzzaman prevented them attempting action of any sort and permitted the gendarmes to take him to Van.
Those arrested and awaiting exile were held in a secondary school in Van. Besides Bediuzzaman and Seyh Masum were Kör Hüseyin Pasa, the Mufti of Gevas, Hasan Efendi, Küfecizade Seyh Abdülbaki Efendi, and Abdullah Efendi, the son of Seyh Hami Pasa, in addition to hundreds of others including the elderly, women, and children. It was the month of Ramazan when they started their long trek, just as it had been in Ramazan that Bediuzzaman had returned to Van almost exactly two years previously. That year, 1925, it began on 25 March. It was still