CHAPTER TWO
BARLA
• Isolation in Barla

Barla, Ankara had indeed found a remote spot removed from easy contact with the outside world. With its low, red-rooved houses nestling on a hillside among the green-sprinkled mountains to the west of Lake Egridir, 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 and electricity. The authorities in Ankara were not to know, however, that in unjustly exiling Bediuzzaman to this distant spot that they were serving the very cause they were intending to extirpate. They were not to know that their injustice in not only exiling him, but in imposing these conditions of isolation on him would be “transformed into a Divine Mercy”. They allowed him only the occasional visitor, and spreading rumours and slander about him in the area of Barla they frightened off the local people and tried to prevent them approaching him; they had him watched, followed and harassed continuously; and when after a time the Government granted an amnesty to those exiled with Bediuzzaman, they denied him this right, too. But these repressive measures were merely serving the purposes of Divine Wisdom. For in this way Bediuzzaman was isolated from all distraction and his mind was kept clear, so that he could "freely receive the effulgence of the Qur'an" and be employed to a greater degree by his "Compassionate Sustainer in its service." Bediuzzaman was to remain nearly eight and a half years in the gardens and mountains of Barla, and during this time he wrote the greater part of the one hundred and thirty parts of the Risale-i Nur. Barla became the centre from which irradiated the lights of the truths of belief at a time when the darkness of absolute