CHAPTER FIVE
DENIZLI

• Introduction

Bediuzzaman was still ill from the effects of the poison, and weak. It was now the end of Ramazan. And he was most grieved and saddened at this blow to the Risale-i Nur. Virtually a11 its leading Students had been arrested in addition to himself. As for the Students, they had been rounded up and taken from their homes and villages in the province of Isparta and elsewhere and their families left without support or protection. What the outcome would be was anything but certain. If conditions had been bad in Eskisehir Prison, in Denizli they were worse. Bediuzzaman said he suffered in one day in Denizli the distress he suffered in a month in Eskisehir. But again it resulted in a victory for right; the truth prevailed over falsehood and the Risale-i Nur over its enemies. While at first it seemed as though a crippling blow had been dealt to the Risale-i Nur and its dissemination, in the event the Denizli trials and imprisonment. like Eskisehir before and Afyon afterwards, served the cause of the Risale-i Nur in ways no one expected.
Firstly was the positive report by the committee of experts in Ankara and the acquittal. Then it was the cause of many officials and others reading The Supreme Sign and other parts of the Risale-i Nur with favourable results. Also the court case and imprisonment publicized the Risale-i Nur and aroused much sympathy towards Bediuzzaman and his students and interest in the Risale-i Nur, which counteracted the propaganda campaign against them orchestrated by members of the Government.
A factor that contributed to their acquittal was also the extraordinary change that came about in the majority of the other prisoners through the influence of Bediuzzaman and his students.