The prison consisted of six wards or dormitories. On arrival Bediuzzaman was put in solitary confinement in a seventy-person ward on an upper floor which was in an advanced state of decay. It had forty small windows of which only fifteen had intact glass. I’ll with fever, he was left entirely alone in this huge, draught room in sub-zero temperatures with no stove or heating. Later, if he was given a stove, we learn from one of his defence speeches that after three and a half months in total isolation, the Public Prosecutor had still not permitted his books to be given to him.
It was the Prosecutor and the Govemor of the prison, whom Selahaddin Çelebi described a Gestapo chief, that prohibited Bediuzzaman's students visiting him,s even penalizing warders that were slack. Nevertheless, his students found ways of circumventing them and would go and assist Bediuzzaman. If caught they were beaten or bastinadoed mercilessly.
Bediuzzaman's students too willingly endured the appalling primitive conditions in the crowded wards in the way of serving the cause of the Qur'an and belief through the Risale-i Nur, facing also with equanimity the abuse and ill-treatment they frequently received. Their Üstad was a perpetual source of strength and consolation for them. Some tell of how the sound of his supplications at night would console them. They all tell of his kindness, even, tenderness towards them in prison. They would see him watching them from his ward on the upper floor when out for their exercise in the yard. He would drop down notes to them to cheer them up and enquire if anything appeared to be wrong.
During this twenty months, Bediuzzaman also wrote numerous letters, mostly short, to his students in the prison, in addition to notes such as those mentioned above. These are about various matters concerning their life in the prison, like his letters in Denizli Prison. Most importantly they urge the students to look on their imprisonment in positive terms in the light of Divine wisdom, as a