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   CHAPTER ONE
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH
• Birth and Early Childhood Bediuzzaman Said Nursi was born early one spring morning in the village of Nurs, a small hamlet in the province of Bitlis in eastern Turkey. The year was 1293 according to the Rumi calendar then in use in the Ottoman Empire, that is, 1877. The circumstances into which he was born were humble; the house, of sun-dried brick, one of twenty or so built against the south-facing slope of a valley in the towering Taurus Mountains to the south of Lake Van. Even at his birth the child displayed signs of being exceptional. It is said that on coming into the world he peered around attentively, his look fairly frightening those present. It was as if he was going to speak. He did not cry, just clenched his fists. Then they chanted the call to prayer in his ears, and named him SAID.
Said's mother was called Nuriye, and his father, a villager with a small-holding of land, was Mirza. They were a Kurdish family. Said was the fourth of seven children. The two eldest were girls, Dürriye and Hanim, then came his elder brother, Abdullah. Said was followed by two more boys, Mehmed and Abdulmecid, and last was a girl, Mercan.
Mirza's forbears had come originally from Cizre on the Tigris. Also known as ‘Sufi’ Mirza, he died in the 1920's and was buried in the graveyard at Nurs. At the head of his grave stands a rough uncut stone with simply the name `Mirza' etched on it. Nuriye, Said's mother was from the village of Bilkan, three hours distant from Double click for meaning of the world. | |||
