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Nursi was still ill from the effects of the poison, and weak. It was now the end of Ramad≥a\n. He was deeply grieved at this blow to the Risale-i Nur; besides himself, virtually all its leading students had been arrested. The students had been rounded up and taken from their homes and villages in the province of Isparta and elsewhere and their families left without support or protection. What the outcome would be was anything but certain. If conditions had been bad in Eskis*ehir Prison, in Denizli they were worse. Nursi said he suffered in one day in Denizli the distress he suffered in a month in Eskis*ehir. But again it resulted in victory: while at first it seemed as though a crippling blow had been dealt to the Risale-i Nur and its dissemination, in the event the Denizli trials and imprisonment, like Eskis*ehir before and Afyon afterward, served the cause of the Risale-i Nur in ways no one expected. First came the positive report by the committee of experts in Ankara and the acquittal. This led many officials and others to read The Supreme Sign and other parts of the Risale-i Nur with favorable results. The court case and imprisonment publicized the Risale-i Nur and aroused a lot of sympathy toward Nursi and his students and interest in the Risale-i Nur, which counteracted the propaganda campaign against them orchestrated by members of the government. A factor that contributed to their acquittal was the extraordinary change that came about in many of the other prisoners through the influence of Nursi and his students. The same had been true to an extent in Eskis*ehir, but in Denizli Prison even hardened criminals learned how to perform the prayers and recite the Qur’a\n, and some to assist Nursi’s students in writing out copies of the Risale-i Nur. Nursi was kept in solitary confinement in a minute, damp, dark cell. He was again poisoned on several occasions. Undoubtedly, the intention was to do away with him and some of his leading students. Two, in fact, died during the nine months they were held. One of them was Hafız Ali, from the village of ÿslamköy near Isparta. It was widely believed he had been poisoned. Nevertheless, Nursi relentlessly continued his struggle. His students were forbidden to visit or speak with him, so he wrote them numerous notes and letters encouraging and consoling them, guiding them, and directing the writing out and copying of these and the Risale-i Nur. Then he wrote the Eleventh Ray, The Fruits of Belief. He also wrote his petitions and defense 257 C H A P T E R 13 Denizli speeches. Since he and his students were charged with virtually the same “crimes” as in Eskis*ehir and he offered the same defense in Afyon Court some four years later in 1948–49, his trial will be described only briefly in this chapter. Life in Denizli Prison The Nur students who had been gathered together in Isparta were transported to Denizli by train. Handcuffed in pairs, they were packed into windowless coal and straw wagons. Nursi was handcuffed to a ninety-year-old villager named Hasan Dayı from the village of Sav near Isparta who was so weak Nursi virtually had to carry him.1 Their handcuffs were not unfastened during the journey. Of the one hundred and twenty-six Nur students who were taken to Denizli2 from all over Turkey, in all seventy-three entered the prison and the remainder were released.3 The students from Kastamonu, ÿnebolu, and Istanbul were brought some two months later. They were then put in with the longterm and condemned prisoners. The prison was new and outside the town, yet despite this was more cramped and insalubrious than older buildings. It was built of concrete, and was dank and airless. With tiny windows that were heavily barred and high up, the cells and dormitories were in perpetual gloom. The electricity was of a very low voltage, and was on only a few hours out of the twenty-four. It was also infested with lice and mosquitoes. At night bedbugs and mosquitoes descended “like a fine rain” on the prisoners from the ceilings. Nursi was put in a cell so small a bed could scarcely fit in it. According to Selahaddin Çelebi, who was sent by the prison governor on one occasion to write out...

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