Said Nursi

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The house of Said Nursîs

Said Nursî , until the mid-1920s Said-i Kürdi , (bourgeois Said Okur ; * approx. 1876 in the village of Nurs in the province of Bitlis ; † March 23, 1960 in Şanlıurfa ) was a religious leader of Kurdish ethnicity in the last phase of the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey . He is also the founder of the Nurculuk movement. He is the author of the Risale-i Nur works.

Life

Childhood and youth

He was born to Kurdish parents in 1876 ​​in the village of Nurs in Bitlis Province . His father belonged to a local upper class family. At the age of nine he received his religious training in various madrasas and tekkes in the provinces of Bitlis and Van, such as Norşin , Müküs and Arvas. During an intensive three-month study with Sheikh Mehmet Celali in Beyazıt , he received the title of mullah . At the age of 14 he was nicknamed Bediüzzaman ("the unique of the age") because of his genius and strong memory and was known as Bediüzzaman Said Nursi. In addition to Kurdish , Said also spoke Arabic , Persian and Turkish .

"Earlier Said" in a time of social upheaval

He spent two years with Ömer Pascha in Bitlis and in 1894 went to Van to the local governor of the Van province . In the governor's private library he found access to works of modern science that were not taught as part of the traditional training of an alim .

Based on his reform approach "Science for theologians" (against ignorance and fanaticism) - "Religion for the natural scientists" (against materialism without ethics) he pursued the project of founding a university in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire , in which Islamic-theological branches of knowledge and natural sciences should be taught in parallel. In 1907 he left for Istanbul to solicit support for his project at the court of Sultan Abdülhamid II . He received financial and political support for founding the university, the foundation of which had been laid, but was never completed due to the First World War.

In 1908 he supported the coup d'état of the Young Turks and was a member of the Committee for Unity and Progress . Said Nursî was also active in the first Kurdish society Kürt Teavün ve Terakki Cemiyeti in 1908 , which was founded in Istanbul. He was also a leading member of the "Society of Mohammedan Unity" ( İtthihad-ı Muhammedi ), whose aim was to protect Sharia law . He was charged with participating in the March 31, 1909 incident , the uprising of conservative circles against the Committee on Unity and Progress. The trial ended in an acquittal.

In 1909 he called himself Garip ("stranger") to indicate that his thinking was different from his contemporaries.

In 1910 he published his first book and left Istanbul again for the east. In the spring of 1911 he gave a widely acclaimed speech in the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus . In the summer of that year he accompanied Sultan Resat Mehmet V on a trip to the Balkans as a representative of the eastern provinces . He was promised support for his planned university ( Medresetü'z-Zehra ) in Van.

When the First World War broke out, he led militia troops in combat against Russian troops on the Caucasus front . According to descriptions, in the Armenian genocide he saved the lives of 1,500 Armenians whom he had been ordered to kill. He sent them to safety through the Russian line.

In 1916 he was captured and interned in Kostroma, northeast of Moscow . In the turmoil after the October Revolution he was able to flee in the spring of 1918 and returned to Istanbul via Berlin , Vienna , Hungary and Bulgaria . There he became a member of Dar-ül Hikmet-ül İslamiye , an important Islamic educational institution, and published several books. After the occupation of Istanbul by British troops, he was one of the religious scholars who called for resistance. Said Nursî denied being a member of the Kürdistan Teali Cemiyeti . To an invitation to become a member, Nursî replied that he would support the re-establishment of the Ottoman Empire, but that a Kurdish state would only benefit the "enemies of Islam".

The "late Said" in the Kemalist era

Said Nursî was invited to Ankara in 1922 because of his services as a scholar in order to help establish and shape Turkey. He gave a speech to the Provisional National Assembly, which was received with approval.

However, he fell out with Mustafa Kemal Pascha (Kemal Ataturk since 1934) because Said Nursî's ideas did not match his vision of reforming the Turkish state based on the Western nationalist model. In 1923, Said Nursî retired to Van to devote himself to religious studies.

In 1925, as a result of the Kurdish uprisings , he was exiled like other personalities and tribal leaders. He was taken to Burdur . In 1927 he finally had to settle in the village of Barla in the province of Isparta . He lived there in a wooden house and often retired to the mountains for days to reflect. This is how his writings on the Koran came about, some of which he dictated to a number of students. The notes were copied by hand in Arabic script in the nearby village of Sava and distributed throughout Anatolia. He wrote that Sharia is the way of religion, consists of 99% ethics, prayer, afterlife and virtue ".

In 1935 he was tried in Eskişehir and sentenced to 11 months in prison for religious propaganda and other offenses. After his release he was exiled to Kastamonu . In this provincial capital, his teachings on the compatibility of religion and science aroused the interest of some high school students.

In 1943, another trial was scheduled in Denizli , but it ended with an acquittal, as experts in his writings could not identify a call for riot. Said Nursî then had to settle in Emirdağ near Afyonkarahisar .

The last trial against Said Nursî was brought in 1948: in Afyon he was charged with founding his political association, spreading anti-government ideas and pursuing those political intentions. A number of his students stood with him before the judge . However, the proceedings were suspended and ended in 1956 with an acquittal under changed political conditions .

End of exile and "third said"

In the post-war era from 1946 onwards, Said Nursî supported the call to his supporters to vote for the Democratic Party of Adnan Menderes . He hoped that the country would end the persecution through a democratic and liberal development. The party won an absolute majority in the Turkish Grand National Assembly in 1950 .

In 1951 his exile was lifted. Said Nursî could now move freely in the country and settled in Isparta . He also supported Menderes' policy because he integrated Turkey into the Western alliance system ( NATO , Baghdad Pact , participation in the Korean War ). In his view, the threat to religion posed by atheistic materialism and Marxism required the cooperation of Muslims and Christians . He therefore corresponded with the Pope and the Greek Orthodox Patriarch . He now allowed his followers to have his works printed in Latin script . In 1956 the state allowed the publication of his writings.

Shortly before his death, he traveled to Urfa . There he stayed in a hotel, where he received many hundreds of visitors. He died that night and was laid out in the mosque , where his friends and students recited the Koran until morning prayers. Immediately after morning prayer, his funeral prayer was performed and he was buried. After the military overthrew the authoritarian Adnan Menderes on May 27, 1960 , a troop of soldiers opened Said Nursî's grave in July. His body was buried in an undisclosed location in Isparta Province.

Germany

In Germany, the Risale-i Nur Schüler and the Nurculuk movement are represented by the umbrella organization " Jama'at-un Nur ".

Works

Said Nursi has published some works. The best-known of his books are those from the "Risale-i Nur Complete Works": Words, Letters, Lightning.

literature

  • Cäcilia Demir-Schmitt (Ed.): Islamic Theology of the 21st Century. Enlightened Islam. Emergence - Ideas - Precipitation, the paradigm of Said Nursi. Stuttgart Foundation for Science and Religion, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-931290-14-6
  • Ali Demir & Cäcilia Schmitt: Islam and Enlightenment: an Islamic thinker for our time: Bediuzzaman Said Nursi , Istanbul 2004, ISBN 975-6401-86-9
  • Necmeddin Şahiner: Bilinmeyen taraflarıyla Bediüzzaman Said Nursi , Istanbul 2004
  • Şükran Vahide: Bediuzzaman Said Nursi: The Author of the Risale-i Nur , I.stanbul 2004
  • Cemil Şahinöz : The Nurculuk Movement. Creation, organization and networking. The first sociological and scientific analysis of movement. Nesil Verlag: Istanbul, 2008 ( online ) (a work by a representative of the movement)
  • Ralph Ghadban : The pseudo-modernists Said Nursi and Fethullah Gülen . In: Islam and Islam criticism, Berlin / Tübingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-89930-360-5
  • Davut Korkmaz: Said Nursi: His life and work . VFJH eV (October 29, 2016).
  • Martin Riexinger / Bülent Ucar (eds.): A traditional scholar faces the modern age. Said Nursi 1876–1960 , Göttingen 2017, ISBN 978-3-8471-0695-1

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Kemal Karpat in Encyclopaedia of Islam sv NURSI, Sheykh Badi al-Zaman, Said
  2. Martin van Bruinessen : Agha, Sheikh and State. Berlin 1989, p. 354
  3. Yanlış tanıtılmaya çalışılan dahi: Said Nursi, Ahmet Akgündüz
  4. Mustafa Nezihi Polat, Mülâkat, Erzurum 1964, pp. 30–34
  5. Necmeddin Şahiner: Bilinmeyen Taraflarıyla Bediüzzaman Said Nursi , İstanbul 1979, pp. 214-216.
  6. Recep Çelik, 'Milli Mücadele'de Bediüzzaman Said Nursi', Köprü magazine , 'Bediüzzaman özel sayı' (Spring 2000)
  7. Cäcilia Schmitt (Ed.): Islamic Theology of the 21st Century - The Enlightened Islam, Appearance - Ideas - Precipitation, The Paradigm of Said Nursi. Basis, 2007, p. 47.
  8. http://www.soezler.de