Working every day for two or two and a half hours, this work was written in versified form in twenty days during Ramadan while Bediuzzaman was a member of the Darü’l-Hikmet and had numerous preoccupations. Although to write one page of verse is as difficult as writing ten of prose, and it was written in this short period of time, it was dictated ‘extempore’, without study, and was published without being changed or corrected. In our opinion it is a marvel on account of the Risale-i Nur. There has been no other versified collection of poetry that can be read in straighforward manner, as though it was prose, like this one.2 God willing, this work will at some time be a sort of Mathnawi for the Risale-i Nur students. It is also a sort of index of the Risale-i Nur, which appeared ten years subsequently and was completed in twenty-three years; a sort of forerunner of the Risale-i Nur, giving the good tidings of its major parts.
NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION: While attempting to convey the meaning as faithfully as possible, the present translation has not attempted to reflect the versified aspects of the original. It is hoped that since, as was stated above, the work was written primarily to convey the author’s ideas, the readers will benefit, despite the loss of many of the subtleties. [Tr.]