The Second Letter

In His Name, be He Glorified!

And there is nothing but it glorifies Him with praise.(17:44)

[Part of a letter written in response to a gift from his above-mentioned,  well-known student[1]]

T h i r d l y : You sent me a present and want to break an extremely important rule of mine! Just this time I am not going to say: “I don’t accept presents from you in the same way that I don’t accept them from Abdülmecid[2] and Abdurrahman[3],  my brother and nephew,” because since you are more advanced than them and closer in spirit, I can’t refuse them even if I refuse everyone else’s. But apropos of this, I shall tell you the reason for my rule. It is like this:

The Old Said never accepted favours. He preferred death to becoming obliged to people. He never broke that rule of his despite suffering great hardship and difficulty. This wretched brother of yours inherited this characteristic from the Old Said, and it is not asceticism or artificial self-sufficiency; there are four or five important reasons for it:

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          [2] Abdülmecid (‘Abd al-Majid) was Bediuzzaman’s younger brother. A teacher of the religious sciences, then a Mufti, he translated parts of the Risale-i Nur into Arabic, and Isharat al-I‘jaz and al- Mathnawi al-‘Arabi al-Nuri (Mesnevî-i Nuriye) from Arabic into Turkish. He died in 1967. (Tr.)

          [3] Abdurrahman was the son of Bediuzzaman’s elder brother, Abdullah. He was born in Nurs in 1903. Bediuzzaman called him his spiritual son, student, and assistant. He joined his uncle in Istanbul following First World War, and published a short biography of him at that time. He died in 1928. (Tr.)