trial and test. which presented new possibilities for service to the Qur'an through the Risale-i Nur. Especially when the trial dragged on and they were held for months in those conditions, Bediuzzaman frequently pointed out the benefits in this, since it "expanded the field of the Risale-i Nur", and urged patience on them. Some of the letters concern the trial and direct the writing out of copies of the defence speeches and their being sent to various government offices and departments, and other aspects of the Students' "service". Others warn them of informers and spies, and efforts to sow discord between the Students in order to break their solidarity. Also Bediuzzaman saw an important aspect of their "service" in prison to be the reform of the other prisoners, and a number of his letters address them. Again these showed their effect, for many of the prisoners did reform. These included hardened murderers like the famous `Butcher Tahir’.
As for the Students, they constantly sought ways of visiting Bediuzzaman, and they found various means of exchanging letters. The Students were dispersed Through a number of wards. Each group formed it own `medrese' to study together the Risale-i Nur and give instruction to any of the other prisoners who wished. The Students continuously wrote out various parts of the Risale-i Nur. A Student called Mustafa Acet is a good example of someone who benefited from this Medrese-i Yusufiye. A relative of the Çaliskan’s from Emirdag, his arrest had been a case of mistaken identity. He was arrested in place of someone called Terzi Mustafa. But during the eleven months this entirely innocent person spent in Afyon Prison, he learnt from the Risale-i Nur Students not only how to write the Qur'anic script, so that in subsequent years he was employed as a calligrapher by the Department of Religious Affairs, but also how to recite it, so that for ten years subsequent to being released from the prison he acted as imam in a mosque in Emirdag!
On the ground floor, the stone-floored wards measured twenty to twenty-five metres by eight to ten metres, with three lavatories opening onto the ward. If anyone wanted a bath, they had to find a