After receiving this reminder of the Qur’an, the graveyard became more familiar to me  than Istanbul. Solitude and retirement became more pleasurable to me than conversation and company, and I found a place of seclusion for myself in Sar›yer on the Bosphorus. There,  Ghawth al-A‘zam (May God be pleased with him) became a master, doctor, and guide for me with his Futuh al-Ghayb, while Imam Rabbani (May God be pleased with him) became a companion, sympathetic friend, and teacher with his  Maktubat  (Letters).  Then  I  was  extremely happy  I  had  approached  old  age, withdrawn from civilization, and slipped free of social life. I thanked God.

O respected persons who have entered upon old age and who frequently recall death  through its warnings! In accordance with the light of the teachings of belief taught by the Qur’an, we should look favourably on old age, death, and illness, and even love them in one respect. Since we have an infinitely precious bounty like belief, old  age,  and  illness,  and   death  are  all  agreeable.  If  there  are  things  that  are disagreeable, they are sin, vice, innovations, and misguidance.

ELEVENTH HOPE

After  my  return  from  captivity,  I  was  living  together  with  my  nephew Abdurrahman9  in a villa on the hill at Çamlıca in Istanbul. From the point of view of worldly life, my situation could have been thought to be the most fortunate for people like us. For I had been saved from being a prisoner-of-war and in the Darü’l-Hikmet we were being successful in propagating knowledge in an elevated way suitably to my profession,  the  learned  profession.  The  honour and  esteem  afforded  me were far greater than my due. I was living in  Çamlıca,  the most beautiful place in Istanbul. Everything  was  perfect  for  me.  I  was  together  with  the  late  Abdurrahman,  my nephew, who was extremely intelligent and self-sacrificing, and was both my student, and  servant,  and  scribe,  and  spiritual son.  But  then,  knowing  myself  to  be more fortunate than anyone else in the world, I looked in the mirror and I saw grey hairs in

my hair and beard. Suddenly, the spiritual awakening I had experienced in the mosque in Kosturma while in  captivity recommenced. I began to study the circumstances and causes to which I felt geniune attachment and which I supposed were the source of happiness in this world. But whichever of them I studied, I saw that it was rotten; it was not worth the attachment; it was deceptive.  Around  that  time,  I  suffered  an  unexpected  and  unimaginable  act  of disloyalty and unfaithfulness at the hands of a friend whom I had supposed to be most loyal. I felt disgust at  the world. I said to myself: “Have I been altogether deceived? I see that many people look with envy at our situation, which in reality should be pitied. Are all these people crazy, or is it  me that has gone crazy so that I see all these worldly people as such?”


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9   Abdurrahman was the son of Bediuzzaman’s elder brother, ‘Abdullah. He was born in Nurs in

1903, and was Bediuzzaman’s spiritual son, student, and assistant. He joined his uncle in Istanbul after the First World War, and published a short biography of him at that time. He died in Ankara in 1928, where he is buried. (Tr.)