We Say This to the Cabinet and Tevfik İleri
We told our Master about your invaluable service with the University of the East, and he said:
If I had not been ill, I would have gone to the eastern provinces for the university. I congratulate the Minister of Education with my whole life and spirit. Fifty‑five years ago, before the proclamation of the Second Constitution, I went to Istanbul to work for the founding of a university in the east called the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ; there were to be three universities, one in Van, one in Diyarbakır, and one in Bitlis, or at least one in Van. The Constitution was reinstated and the matter was neglected.
Then, when the Unionists were in power, I went to Kosova in connection with Sultan Reşad's visit. The attempt was being made there to found a large Islamic university. I said to both the Unionists and Sultan Reşad that the east had far greater need, for it was like the centre of the Islamic world.
They gave their word concerning it, but then the Balkan Wars broke out and Kosova was invaded. So I requested that the twenty thousand gold liras assigned to it should be given for the university in the east, They accepted.
I went to Van and with a thousand‑lira advance laid the foundations at Artemit on the shores of Lake Van, But then the First World War broke out and again it was abandoned.
Having escaped from captivity during the War, I returned to Istanbul. Later they summoned me to Ankara due to my services for the national movement. I went and told them there: “Throughout my life I have been trying to found a university in the east. Sultan Reşad and the Unionists assigned it twenty thousand gold liras; you add the same amount to that.” They agreed to allot it one hundred and fifty thousand liras and I insisted that the deputies should put their signatures to it.
Some of the deputies pro‑ tested that I intended to found a medrese-style, solely Islamic, institution, while imitation of the West was now needed.
So I told them: “The eastern provinces are a sort of centre of the Islamic world; it is essential that both the modern sciences and the religious sciences are taught. For the fact that most of the prophets have appeared in the east and most of the philosophers in the west shows that the east will progress through religion. Even if only the modern sciences are taught in other provinces, in the east, for the good of the country and nation, the religious sciences should be made the basis. Otherwise, the Muslims who are not Turks will not feel themselves to be true brothers to the Turks. We have to co‑operate in solidarity now in the face of so many enemies.”
Now, due to my extreme incapability arising from illness from poison and old age, I am deprived both of following this, my life's aim of fifty‑ five years, and seeing it, and of going to Ankara to congratulate in heartfelt manner those who are working at the project, which is the key to the east's progress.
Certainly, my works entitled Münâzarat and al‑Ṣaykal al-Islāmiyya, which were printed thirty-five years ago by the Ebüzziya Press, have not escaped the notice of the Education Minister. They should speak in my place. I have just about given up hope for life. But I appoint as deputies, the one hundred and fifty treatises of the Risale-i Nur, which may form the foundations, principles, and sort of curricula for the university's consequential education. I present this to this country and nation's self-sacrificing young university students and Education Ministry, and beseech from divine mercy that Tevfik İleri, who has been granted success in this question, will take on himself the Risale-i Nur in place of this wretched Said.
The Enduring One, He is the Enduring One!Saîd Nursî,who is very ill, very old, and alone in isolatio.