Regenerator of Religion."
It is also recorded that Bediuzzaman's mission as Renewer was foretold in the year of his birth, and this was not by someone in his native East, but by one of the leading figures of the Naksibendi tarikat in the region of Isparta, Beskazalizade Osman Halidi. The Seyh gave certain news in the year of his death, 1293, that is, 1876 or 7, or possibly the previous year, that "A Renewer who will save belief in God will appear, and he was born this year." He added that one of his four sons would have the honour of seeing him. And indeed, some fifty years later Bediuzzaman was exiled to the province of Isparta, and his youngest son, Ahmed Efendi, met him. And it was here that Bediuzzaman wrote the greater part of the Risale-i Nur, and from this centre that it was spread.

• Mevlana Halid-i Bagdadi’ s Cübbe

Probably in 1940, Asiye Hanim, the wife of the Govemor of Kastamonu Prison, brought a hundred-year-old cübbe, that is, the gown worn by religious scholars, to give to Bediuzzaman. Knowing that he would not accept it as a gift, she consulted Mehmed Feyzi, and they decided on presenting it to him as a `trust'. Bediuzzaman however accepted it readily as though receiving his own property.
Asiye Hanim had inherited the cübbe from her father, who in turn had received it from his father, Seyh Muhammed ibn Abdullah el-Hâlidi, wellknown by the name `Küçük Asik'. From Afyonkarahisar, he had made his way to Baghdad when still of tender years to study under the famous founder of the Naksibendi Hâlidi Order, Mevlana Halid Bagdadî. On completing his studies he was sent by the Master as a halife to Anatolia, who gave him the cübbe as a gift. Küçük Asik later went on to Egypt where he died in 1884. His family preserved the cübbe, and even when they were forced to abandon their home in Afyon in the face of the Greek invasion during the War of Independence, the first thing they took with them was this. Finally Asiye Hanim married an official called Tahir Bey. On his being posted to Kastamonu as Govemor of the Prison, Asiye Hanim came to know of Bediuzzaman, and realized