Badi al-Zaman al-Nursi
- Died
- 1379 AH
- Born in
- -
Badi al-Zaman Said al-Nursi (1873–1960 CE / 1379 AH) was an Ottoman and Turkish Shafi'i scholar, Ash'ari theologian, and Quranic commentator, best known as the author of the multi-volume theological and exegetical corpus Risale-i Nur.
Early Life and Education
Said al-Nursi ibn Mirza al-Hazzani al-Badlisi was born in 1873 CE into a Kurdish Muslim family in the village of Nurs, situated near Lake Van in the Hizan district of Bitlis province in eastern Anatolia. He completed his early schooling in his native region, memorized the Quran, and acquired mastery over both traditional Islamic disciplines and rational sciences by the age of eighteen. During his youth, he practiced physical arts such as archery, wrestling, and horsemanship while committing himself to an ascetic lifestyle. Due to his exceptional intellect and rapid learning, contemporaries bestowed upon him the titles Badi al-Zaman ("Wonder of the Age") and Sa'idi Mashhur ("the Well-Known Said").
Public Career and World War I
Al-Nursi worked as a teacher for fifteen years in the city of Van, where he inaugurated his educational mission. He later traveled to Istanbul to advocate for the establishment of an eastern Islamic university, named al-Jami'ah al-Zahra, modeled after al-Azhar. During this visit, he met the Egyptian scholar Muhammad Bakhit, who expressed high praise for al-Nursi's insights on the respective trajectories of Europe and the Ottoman world. In 1908, in the political aftermath surrounding Sultan Abdul Hamid II, al-Nursi formed the Ittihad-i Muhammadi (Mohammedan Union) society to counter the secular and Masonic currents associated with the Committee of Union and Progress.
During World War I, al-Nursi enlisted as a volunteer officer in the Ottoman military, commanding student-volunteers and delivering lectures on Quranic exegesis on the battlefields, where he dictated his rhetorical commentary Isharat al-Ijaz. He was captured by the Russian army on the Caucasian front and deported to Siberia. After two years of captivity, he escaped across Germany and Bulgaria, returning to Istanbul where he was appointed a member of Dar al-Hikmah al-Islamiyyah, the Ottoman state's highest scholarly academy.
Transition to the "New Said" and Persecution
Following the collapse of the Ottoman state and the rise of the secular republic under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, al-Nursi was offered official positions and residences by the new administration in Ankara, which he refused. In 1921, he withdrew completely from political engagement, adopting the maxim: "I seek refuge in God from Satan and from politics." This marked the beginning of what he termed the "New Said," an intellectual and spiritual shift in which he resolved a long-standing personal contemplation over the spiritual treatises of Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani and Ahmad Sirhindi by making the Quran alone his sole preceptor and foundation.
Throughout the subsequent decades, al-Nursi was subjected to continuous internal exile, surveillance, and imprisonment across various Anatolian localities. During these banishments, he dictated the treatises comprising the Risale-i Nur, which employed dialectical and rational argumentation to prove monotheism and revive religious belief against state-imposed secularization. He was brought before numerous state tribunals on allegations of undermining the secular state, inciting religious sentiment, establishing a clandestine movement, and denouncing Atatürk. During his trial at the Eskisehir court, when interrogated on whether he was establishing a Sufi order (tariqah), he responded that the present era was one for preserving faith (iman) rather than a Sufi order, arguing that while many enter Paradise without a tariqah, none enter it without faith.
Death
Al-Nursi spent the final phase of his life in isolation in the city of Isparta. Three days before his death, he journeyed without official state authorization to the southeastern city of Urfa, where he resided for two days before dying on 27 Ramadan 1379 AH (1960 CE).
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List of Works
Haqiqat al-Tawhid (The Reality of Monotheism) is a theological treatise on Islamic monotheism compiling several core treatises from the Risale-i Nur collection. It is dedicated to proving God's existence and oneness through rational, cosmological, and spiritual arguments.
Isharat al-Ijaz fi Mazann al-Ijaz (Signs of Inimitability in the Sites of Conciseness) is an Arabic Quranic commentary dedicated to demonstrating the structural and rhetorical inimitability (al-i'jaz al-nazmi) of the Quran.