My Dear, Loyal, Magnanimous, Old and New Brother, Yeşil Salih!
The matters you asked about my biography will here be indicated very briefly and succinctly. God willing, at a later date others will reply in more explanatory fashion. But I neither want nor do I deserve to pass into history and to show my unimportant self to coming generations among the religious scholars of this century. I offer unending thanks to Almighty God that He did not make me fond of myself and showed me my awesome faults.
Moreover, it is fame‑seeking to make oneself known to people, and may lead to egotism, self-advertisement, and hypocrisy. This is excessively harmful for the likes of us.
Also, since I have been compelled this age to live on my own both physically and mentally, and to withdraw from social life, certainly I do not have the right to mount history among those who pass their lives in society, or to appear to the people of the future. There is only this, that the superlative benefits for this country and nation of the Risale‑i Nur have been proved true by the unanimous decisions of courts of law and committees of experts. Considering this, I can point out a few matters in reply to your questions, but in the name of the Risale-i Nur, which belongs to the Qur'an alone and bears its meaning; not in the name of my unimportant, wretched, unfortunate, and very faulty self. Later the Risale-i Nur and its students may elucidate these matters.
Firstly: The late Abdurrahman wrote my biography thirty years ago, and had it printed.
Secondly: Your questions would be answered in detail by such parts of the Risale‑i Nur as the Defence Speeches of Eskişehir Prison, which are a sort of biography of the period the Risale-i Nur was emerging and were made the Twenty-Seventh Flash, and the defences of Denizli Prison, which are the Eleventh and Twelfth Rays, together with The Treatise for the Elderly (the Twenty-Sixth Flash), The Fourth Ray, The Sixteenth Letter, The Six Attacks, and The Three Indications (İşarât-ı Selâse—the Twenty-Second Flash), and The Seven Signs (İşârât-ı Seb'a—The Seventh Part of the Twenty-Eighth Letter). I do not now have them with me, although the court returned them to me, but I shall have. God willing, I shall never forget you. Your concern for me in this plight has alleviated my severe difficulties. May God be pleased with you, Amen!