About Said Nursi Sait Okur, better known as Said Nursî, (1878 – March 23, 1960) is an outstanding Islamic scholar who wrote Risale-i Nur Collection, a body of Qur'anic commentary exceeding six thousand pages. He is commonly known as Bediüzzaman, which means "the wonder of the age".The "Early Said" Bediuzzaman Said Nursi was born in eastern Turkey in 1878 and died in 1960 at the age of eighty-three after a life of exemplary struggle and self-sacrifice in the cause of Islam. He was a scholar of the highest standing having studied not only all the traditional religious sciences but also modern science and had earned the name Bediuzzaman, Wonder of the Age, in his youth as a result of his outstanding ability and learning. Bediuzzaman’s life-time spanned the final decades of the Caliphate and Ottoman Empire, its collapse and dismemberment after the First World War, and, after its formation in 1923, the first thirty-seven years of the Republic, of which the years up to 1950 are famous for being very meticolous about the secularity of government policies to keep the modern aspect of the republic (e.g. the women was given the right to vote). Until the years following the First World War, Bediuzzaman’s struggles in the cause of Islam had been active and in the public domain. He had not only taught many students and had engaged in debate and discussion with leading scholars from all over the Islamic world, but he had also commanded and led in person a volunteer regiment against the invading Russians in eastern Turkey in 1914 for nearly two years until taken prisoner. Furthermore, up to that time he had sought to further the interests of Islam by actively engaging in public life. However, the years that saw the transition from empire to republic also saw the transition from the ‘Old Said’ to the ‘New Said’. The ‘New Said’ was characterized by his withdrawal from public life and concentration on study, prayer and thought, for what was required now was a struggle of a different sort.