CHAPTER SIX
EMIRDAG

• Emirdag
Bediuzzaman had been a month a half in the Sehir Hotel in Denizli when the order came from Ankara that he was to reside in the province of Afyon, still in western Anatolia, to the north-east of Denizli. A letter written by the Denizli businessman, Hafiz Mustafa Kocayaka to Sadik Demirelli, who had sent Bediuzzaman some Kastamonu rice, dated 31 July, 1944, states that Bediuzzaman had left that day in the company of a police inspector. He was in good health and content at the prospect of the move. The Government had ordered that he be given the generous travelling allowance of four hundred liras. Bediuzzaman was put up in the Ankara Hotel in Afyon for two to three weeks and then ordered to settle in Emirdag. Thus, Bediuzzaman arrived in this small provincial town set in high rolling hills towards the end of August 1944. It was to be his place of residence for the next seven years, till October 1951, with the break of twenty months in Afyon Prison from January 1948 to September 1949. Since it was in the month of Saban that he arrived in Emirdag, it was before the 21 August, on which the month of Ramazan began that year.

• Introduction

The first three and a half years of Bediuzzaman's stay in Emirdag saw an intensification of his struggle with the forces of irreligion, which up to this time had felt themselves to be in an unassailable position in Turkey. The acquittal in Denizli had taken them entirely by surprise, in the words of one writer, exploding like a bomb-shell so that they did not know what had hit them. It was a clear victory for the Risale-i Nur and religion, and a forerunner of its future victories. The fruits of Bediuzzaman's twenty years of