He was born in 1876 in the village of Nurs in the Batlis region of North Kurdistan. He studied the Islamic sciences under his elder brother Mullah Abdullah. Later, he went from village to village and city to city to study Islamic sciences under different teachers.
He has passed very difficult tests under all his teachers. He was very intelligent and is said to have learned the book Jam' al-Jawami' on the principles of jurisprudence within a week.
Because he was more knowledgeable than the scholars of his region in debates, he soon became famous and was called Sa'id al-Mashhoor (Said The Famous). Then he went to the city of Tallu and stayed there for a while. During this time, he memorized Fairuz Abadi's Dictionary of the Moohit. In 1892, Mullah Saeed went to Mardin and taught in the city's mosque. His enemies at the governor of the region accuse him, and the governor decides to expel him. From Mardin, he was taken to Betlis. When the governor of Betlis discovered the truth and expertise of this young man, he insisted that he live with him. He took the opportunity to read about religious and scientific subjects.
In 1894, he went to Van, where he studied mathematics, chemistry, physics, geology, astronomy, philosophy and history. He gained so much expertise in some of these fields that he was able to write about them, so they called him the innovator of the times. At the same time, Turkish newspapers reported that the British colonial minister had said in a speech to parliament that we cannot rule Muslims until the Qur'an is in their hands thus we have no choice we have to take Quran from their hands.
When Nursi heard the news, he was very sad and went to Istanbul. In Istanbul in 1907, he proposed to Sultan Abdul Hamid II the construction of a residence in the style of the Al-Azhar residence called Madrasa al-Zahra for the study of religion and various fields of science in eastern Anatolia.
In 1911, he went to Syria and delivered a sermon in the Umayyad mosque, in which he presented the diseases of the Islamic Ummah and its treatments and called on Muslims to wake up. He then returned to Istanbul and presented the project to Sultan Rashad, who promised to finance it and laid the foundation stone on the banks of Lake Van. However, World War I prevented the project from being completed.
Nursi was against the Ottoman Empire going to war, but when the Russians attacked from the Caucasus, Nursi defended the city of Batlis with his students and was seriously wounded in the battle and sent prisoner to Siberia with 90 officers.
However, nursi eventually fled Siberia and returned to Istanbul via Warsaw, Germany, and Vienna. Upon his arrival in Istanbul, he was warmly welcomed and offered the war medal of Wissam al-Harb and a state rank, but he refused all of them except for membership in Dar al-Hikma al-Islami, which was only for great scholars. During this period, he published most of his Arabic works, including Isharat al-I'jaz and al-Matnawi. After the capture of Istanbul, he was summoned to Ankara in 1922, where he was again warmly welcomed by the state. However, when he saw that the parliament, the Majlis-e-Mab'usan, did not pay attention to religion, he became heartbroken and complained to them. Again he proposed the project of a university to them but again the political situation did not make it possible. In 1923, Nursi returned to Van and hid in a cave on Mount Ark near the city. However, he could not escape the troubles of the time that his opponents planted him and he was exiled to Burdu with a group of people. In 1926, he was exiled to Barla in southwestern Anatolia. There he resumed writing and wrote most of Rasail al-Noor, which was published in handwriting among the people.
Nursi was exiled to many parts of Turkey for 25 years, but he did not stop writing until 1950. He continued to write Rasail al-Noor, which contained more than 150 letters, which was published in 1954 under the title Koolliat Rasail al-Noor collected and published in the year 1954.
He died on March 23, 1960. After his death, the Turkish gendarmerie did not allow him to be buried peacefully. After filling the city of Urfa with gendarmerie, they imposed a curfew on the city and flew his body to an unknown location.[1]