ABSTRACT
Bediuzzaman Said Nursi was born in 1876 or 18771 in Nurs, a small hamlet of some twenty houses in the province of Bitlis in eastern Anatolia. His father, Mirza, had a small holding of land, and his mother, Nuriye, was from the neighbouring village of Bilkan. On both sides they were a family of Sayyids.2 Said was the fourth of seven children. The first event mentioned in his ‘official’ biography3 is his leaving home at the age of nine to begin his studies. He had been impressed at the way his elder brother, Abdullah, had come to excel over his fellows in the village as a result of his studies, so accompanied him when he returned to the medrese (religious school) of Molla Mehmed Emin Efendi in the nearby village of
1 There are some discrepancies between the dates given for his birth in the available sources, but the majority give it as 1293 according to the Rumi calendar, then in use int he Ottman Empire. 2 Despite there being no explicit claims to being a Sayyid, that is, a direct descendant of the Prophet, in Nursi’s work, there are several first-hand reports of his stating this verbally. See, Salih Ozcan in Necmeddin Çahiner, Son Çahitler BediUzzaman Said Nursi Anlatiyor [hereafter, Son §ahitler] (Istanbul: Yeni Asya Yaymlan, 1986) iii, p. 129; Muhiddin Yürüten, in Son §ahitler, iii, p. 74; Hüseyin Aksu, in Son Çahitler, i (2nd edn.) (Istanbul: 1980) p. 242-3. The two former record that Nursi said both of his parents were from a line of Sayyids. Nursi told Salih Ozcan that his mother was “Husaynî,” and his father, “Hasanî.” It was probably the political implications which deterred Nursi from mentioning the matter in his written works. However, there is no record of his family being known as a Sayyid family. 3 The biography prepared during the last years of Nursi’s life by some of close students. It was first published in 1958 under the title of Risale-i Nur Kiilliyati Miiellifi, Bediiizzaman Said Nursi, Tarihçe-i Hayati, Mesleki, Terciime-i Hâli [hereafter, Tarihçe] (Istanbul: Sôzler Yayinevi, 1976).
