His dreams drove him crazy; a crab had pierced its claws into his brain. He forsook his prayers and devotions, and neither ate nor slept.

Unable to rest tranquilly in one place, he wandered to a meadow, his head confused with the charms of his vain fancies. An old man was kneading mud upon a grave in order to make bricks. Absorbed in thought, the old man said:

“O foolish soul! Hearken to my counsel. Why have you attached your mind to that gold brick when one day they will make bricks from your dust? The mouth of a covetous man is so wide open that it can be closed again by one morsel. Take, O base man, your hand off that brick, for you cannot dam the river of your avarice with it.

“So negligent have you been in the thought of gain and riches that the stock of your life has become trampled underfoot. The dust of desire has blinded the eyes of your reason-the wind of desire has destroyed the harvest of your life.”

“Wipe negligence from your eyes, for will you not be buried under the dust tomorrow?

“Your life is a bird, and its name is Breath. When the bird has flown from its cage it does not return to captivity.

“Be watchful, for the world lasts but a moment, and a moment spent in wisdom is better than an age in folly.

“Why do we fix our minds upon this caravanserai? Our friends have departed and we are on the road. After us, the same flowers will bloom in the garden, and the same friends will still be sitting.

“When you arrive in Shiraz,² do you not clean from yourself the dust of the road?

“Soon, O you are polluted with the dust of sin, you will journey to a strange city. Weep, and wash away the impurities with your tears.”

Footnotes

1. Sadi of Shiraz (1209-1291) was one of the greatest poets of Persia. Sadi, the traveler, was born in Baghdad and saw a great part of the world before he finally settled in Shiraz, where he died. This story was taken from his work The Orchard.
2. The city of Shiraz represents one’s native land.

According to the Islamic perspective, there are three types of information sources:

Knowledge obtained through the five senses or relating to these senses. These include, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. For example, something that is seen is there, and something that is felt through touching exists.

According to the trend which accepts only this source of information, anything beyond the perception of these senses cannot be a subject of knowledge. This positivist trend has lost its influence over recent decades; however it was widely popular at the beginning of the twentieth century.

The second source of information is the “mind.” When the “mind” is mentioned, an unbiased decision-making entity, capable of evaluating matter within its pure form, and competent of making an objective decision is implied. The importance of a non-degenerate, unbiased, non-oppressed, functional mind is undeniable for information. In the modern world, rationalism is the representative of this tendency. Since its emergence, Rationalism has always advocated the “mind” as the only source of information. However, even rationalism is not sufficient to achieve true knowledge.

Another source of information is “authentic narration.” Authentic narration should be understood in two ways. Firstly, it is knowledge that has been transmitted by a number of different people and accepted as true. For example, a narration about a continent or a country to which one has never been is an authentic narration. To illustrate further, for a person who has never visited the continents of Australia or America, any accurate information, or first-hand information, obtained is of this type. It is possible that we may not have visited or seen these places, however millions of people live on these continents and hundreds of thousands of people visit these continents every year. The information gathered from these people is so powerful and trustworthy that anyone who has not seen these places cannot doubt their existence.

Secondly, authentic narration can also be considered to be that of “Divine Revelation.” In other words, this would consist of the Divine Books revealed to the messengers by God Almighty, where the revelations were brought by the Angel Gabriel (pbuh).

Human beings are not capable of seeing or hearing everything that exists, and thus they are not capable of knowing everything that exists. The mind cannot comprehend everything that exists. There are so many things that exist but which are not sensed through our senses or understood by our minds, or even, if the mind does understand them, can never be sensed or reached. Hence, the human being can only learn these facts through the teachings of a Divine Being whose knowledge, power, and will surround everything. We can only learn the things He knows to the extent that He teaches us in His Divine Books; in this way we become knowledgeable of those matters.

In order to discover the wonders of the universe and to achieve a better and more accurate knowledge with our five senses and mind, we must make evaluations under the light and wisdom of Divine revelations. Only when manipulated to work under these principles will science be able to accomplish its task of producing the fruit that it should.

Otherwise, partial falsification or incorrect interpretations of the Divine Books is inevitable. Moreover, if only the senses and experience will be the basis of information, then one will be forced to say “I do not believe in anything other than what I see, hear…” This is tantamount to rebelling against everything that the mind puts forward. In fact, if only sensory information is taken as the basis of knowledge, then people will be forced to search for compatibility between their deduced knowledge and the universe that is Created by God Almighty. In such a system, whatever facts agreed with their theorems would be true, anything else would be false. However, as God says in the Qur’an: “We did not take the human beings as witnesses to the creation of the Heavens and the Earth” (18:51). When the Divine revelation is not taken into consideration, every explanation is no more than a theorem or a guess.

Unfortunately, because only the first two types of sources were accepted, many Divine Revelations were rejected. With the progress of science, their validity has once again been proved. For example, the stages of an embryo in the mother’s womb have been well defined. When Omer Khayyam, who was an extreme rationalist, was asked about these verses, his response was to comment against the Qur’anic truth by commenting that the verses were not meant literally. Some other scholars thought that a person can only have faith in the “resurrection,” as it cannot be understood by the mind; however, Said Nursi has explained it with a simple analogy. The resurrection is like the spring that follows the winter. We do not have any actual sensory knowledge that this will happen, we know from observation and reasoning that the spring will come. Since some people only trust in the two types of sources, they had to twist what they read in the Divine Book, even the fundamentals of faith . For example, through the influence of philosophy, Farabi and Ibn-i Rusd, even though they were geniuses of their time, considered the Divine Revelations and the prophethood as being man-made concepts.

Some thought that philosophers were higher in status than the Messengers of God. The All-Knowing God was aware of how the Messengers would perform their duty of conveying the message; i.e. with an extraordinarily superior performance. This is why they were given the prophethood in advance; yet philosophers could not see this fine nuance. Moreover, it can be concluded that philosophers are only translating what Aristotle had earlier said to suit their time.

If the Islamic World is considered as a whole, it can be seen that not everybody fell into these traps. Zehravi, Ali Kuscu, Jalaleddin Devvani, Gelenbevi and many others, did not fall into these traps; they were very religious, and they were very influential in their times. People like Molla Husrev and Al-Harazmi, with their work in sciences that led their fields of study for many centuries, even in the West, were still able to maintain their faith without experiencing any conflict and lived for the most part as religious, pious people.

In conclusion, it would be proper to say that all sources of information must be handled together if one is to achieve an end result. Discriminating between these information sources and taking them discretely will open up pitfalls for humanity. The same pitfalls will continue to open if the same mistakes are repeated. Humanity will have to say “True” to those things it claimed as “False” the day before. However, using the Divine Revelations as the foundations of knowledge, and surrounding and framing them with the information attained from the senses and mind is the only path that will lead us in a true direction. 

The foreword, written by M. Fethullah Gulen, provides a good summary of the main ideas in the book. Both the foreword and the book try to make it clear that while many enjoy the poetry of Rumi, in many cases, the reader does not pay much attention to the source of his poetry, the Qur’an and the teachings of the Prophet of Islam. This is unfortunate and misleading. This book establishes the strong connection between Rumi’s poetry and Rumi’s utmost respect and love for the Qur’an and Prophet Muhammad by presenting samples of his poetry. In fact, Rumi says, “I am the soil under the feet of Muhammad.”

The book contains numerous anecdotes, some with references, which shed light on aspects of Rumi’s colorful personality. In the narration of his life, the book provides some interesting details. It is suggested in the book that the death of Shams, in whose persona Rumi first found the light of the Beloved, might have had something to do with the fact that Rumi did not have a close relationship with his eldest son. Another important person in Rumi’s life was his father, Baha al-Din Valad. Rumi’s father was a prominent Islamic scholar, while his son, Rumi, was anything but a scholar. As I read the book I came to an understanding that after the death of his father, Rumi started searching for a path for himself. But the path he chose for himself was not the path of his father. In fact, Rumi had distaste for the sort of encyclopedic knowledge of God that his father had pursued. Rumi longed for an ever-present and imminent experience of God. “The knowledge of the heart is not learnt from books” is how the author expresses it, while Rumi states, “Love shies away from the light of reason.”

Mr. Can, after presenting Rumi’s biography with many colorful and insightful anecdotes, continues with his presentation of Rumi’s views on some important subjects in the second half of the book, such as unity and union with God, love, salvation, beauty, women, poetry, free will, and reincarnation. While making his case, the author draws on numerous examples from Rumi’s poetry. The author’s aim, as he himself confesses, is not to make an objective criticism of Rumi’s views. This is why some of his comments may at times seem to be excessive. Contrary to being a weak point, I think the author’s unquestioned devotion to Rumi makes the book warm, bringing Rumi ever closer to the reader.

Another very valuable contribution of the book is in the cross-references between Plato and Rumi, and Iqbal and Rumi. The author’s wide background is a tremendous help to the reader in finding the common thread and the differences between Rumi and the philosophers of the West and the East. “Rumi: A Mevlevi Sufi Perspective” is not a book that is exclusively concerned with Rumi’s life and views; it actually can also be seen to be a book on Sufism from Rumi’s perspective as well.

Sefik Can’s book, “Rumi: A Mevlevi Perspective” fills a significant gap in the literature on Rumi. The book does an excellent job of collecting a specific composition of roses from the rose garden of Rumi. After reading the book, the reader wishes to learn Persian in order to listen to Rumi and to be able to collect their own samples from that beautiful garden. This book is a must for anyone who desires to have a thorough, heartfelt introduction to the beloved Rumi.

The meanings of beauty need to be redefined all together in order to be properly appreciated. Even though this has been done many times by masters of esthetics, we will try to explain our understanding of beauty in the context of our philosophy and belief, where every beautiful object is a mirror image or a reflection of Divine Beauty. Furthermore, anything that incites appreciation, love, and astonishment is seen as a reflection of Divine Beauty. Therefore, when our hearts are filled with these everlasting reflections, we are always able to perceive ourselves within beauty.

Through such a perspective, we conceive of even seemingly sad things, like death and decay, as being the essence of the most amazing harmonies, thus feeling ourselves to be among infinite beauty. In this way, we never feel upset or discouraged by the fading of our attachments. On the contrary, we experience the outward beauty of faith, breathe in the motivating air of hope, strive to do righteous deeds in the hope that we will fulfill our spiritual desires, seek sincerity in every deed, struggle to be tolerant, merciful, and constructive in all our behavior, and we strive to accept those deeds done for the sake of God as being the best moments of our lives. For us, faith becomes the light that illuminates our horizons, and a source of hope for our expectations. Only through faith can the chaos of nothingness be overcome. Only through faith can we reach the happiness that spreads from our hearts to the infinite Paradise. Through its vastness and power, faith becomes beautiful. Through faith one can find the Divine Unity, turn toward the Truth, and reach worldly and heavenly bliss, being released from all worries.

These are all the beauties within beauty that can be enjoyed through faith in God. The universe, events, objects, and human intellect that can evaluate these are all beautiful in that they help us find faith. Likewise, all righteous acts that stem from faith, good morals, and the desire to reach real faith and progress in the spiritual ranks of love and knowledge of God are also beautiful. Even acts of worship, or calamities that strike us, or sins that we find hard to resist, all of which may seem like hardship from the outside, represent beauty if we adopt the right attitude toward them. Real beauty belongs to God. He necessitates perfection, which is unique to Him alone. All of existence is a different mirror of God, reflecting His beauty as much as its potential allows. Stars sing of the beauty of light every night, they wink at us and remind us of Him through their unbelievable beauty. Moonlight touches the hearts with its softness and beauty and the sun spreads its mercy on each and every thing without distinction. It pours down its light and colors all day long, and sets, giving us another marvelous scene. The seas rise and fall through the tides, and take care of millions of living beings, like a merciful mother. Mountains, with a sheer size that makes our hearts pound, seem to be whispering something to the skies, playing along with the clouds. Mountains invite the rains, and stop the oceans with their proud look, yet they become mere earth. All the voices from the birds, sheep, forests, and mountains make up such a harmonious song, feeding our souls with the most peaceful rhythms. Yes, everything from the smiling skies to the thousands of glories of the Earth is so beautiful that they make us aware of the beauty of Heaven and we simply say “it just could not have been more beautiful!” And human beings themselves seem to be the most beautiful among all this beauty. With our outward looks, our inner world of senses, thoughts, and faith, we are like a sample, a replica of the universe. It is therefore apparent that humans have been created as a key to solve the riddle of creation. This is the way we should perceive beauty, seeing it only as a tool to interpret the real meaning of existence. In this enormous arena of beauty, everything can be seen as a point referring to the Creator. If, with our pure intentions and the right perspective, we can perceive existence as a mirror reflecting the beauty of The Beautiful, we can experience spiritual joy.

In fact, it should not be difficult to be aware of this. Sometimes, only a beautifully designed city or a place of worship is enough to make us enjoy this holy pleasure. Sometimes, a nice poem, a legend, a well-told story, or music that is meant to touch our human sensibilities, that wafts harmony into our soul, can draw us to this beauty, and make us hear the beauty of some other abode. However, the continuity of the joy that these spiritual pleasures give us and the avoidance of suffering depends on relating this worldly beauty to its real Owner. Otherwise, all will end at the most unexpected moment. The Sun will set and the Moon will disappear as our soul sinks into the darkness. It is impossible for souls in decline to appreciate and enjoy beauty. Since every beauty of this world fades away and leaves us one day, for our soul not to despair and to be able to enjoy the real and infinite beauty, it is necessary to establish the true Owner and Originator of the beauty we observe. A poet, relating this concept to a Qur’anic verse said: “Even faces as beautiful as the Sun set in the end. Thus I love not the temporary ones, but the infinite beauty that does not fade away.” Rumi illustrates the same point in the following verses: “My God, after seeing You, knowing You, I do not see the beauty of this world anymore . . .”

Yes, material beauty is just a means to acknowledge the Most Beautiful. Getting stuck at the “means” and not realizing the ultimate goal of this beauty, which shows us the real Beauty of God, is nothing more than being blind to the real goal, the real Truth. The Creator has placed all sorts of beauty and signs along the way so that we will not be blinded; however, for souls that have not reached this realization and which lack the faithful perspective, this beauty is nothing but a source of mischief, or means leading them to sin. But for those who can think clearly, even the love for the beautifully created is only the shade of the shade of the shade of the Beauty of the Beauty of God. As long as we are able to distinguish between the Real Source of Beauty and its reflection, the love we feel for the created is harmless. In this sense we can accept the created as beautiful.

Sometimes, we are aware of the innermost feelings in our souls which sense only the abstract beauty that fills our hearts with God’s love alone. At these moments, when beauty and love become intertwined, the soul, with its unique ability to see, feel, and hear, senses the Real Source in everything that it meets. Through its heavenly bestowed mechanisms, our soul perceives the essence of everything and attributes this to its real owner. It is the lack of this mechanism that renders the materialists and the naturalists short-sighted; they only observe the outer beauty of things, and fall short of perceiving the spiritual and infinite horizons. However, all beauty exists to take us to the Heavens, to the Godly realms.

Every human being displays themselves, their feelings, and their abilities in their works. This means that they are presenting something for others who will observe and perceive through the prism of their insight. God presents His works embellished with color, meaning, and content in order to make Himself known and loved for those seeking Him. We are sent to this world with the responsibility then, to affect and reshape things with His permission, to reflect our understanding, but also to be attentive to the true purpose and meaning of the creation of things. The universe and the happenings in it are thus perfect examples to imitate. However, no matter how perfect the example is, everyone will draw and interpret objects according to their abilities. Charles Lalo, commenting on esthetics once said: “The magnificent scene taking place at the time of sunset will remind a farmer of the rather unesthetic thought of dinner; the physicist, not of beauty or ugliness, but of rightness or wrongness of the analysis of a matter. Thus, the sunset is beautiful only for those who are aware of beauty.” Therefore, only those who see with God and hear with God can appreciate the beauty that spreads throughout existence as their senses are tuned to the spiritual realms.

A heart that beats with God’s love and which desires to meet Him, will be aware of many signs from God along the way. Such a heart will feel the excitement of meeting Him, as it reads the messages from the Moon, the sunset, the twinkling stars, colorful nature, the blowing of the wind, the snow. . . And such a heart would utter, in the words of one who has reached unity of sight and heart, “Everyone from everywhere is coming to watch Your beauty. From beneath and from above, every being is declaring You, displaying the reflections of Your beauty.” This heart looks at nature and objects, but sees the Unseen spiritual realms. This is the point of love and connection with God.

Before analyzing the relationship between these two disciplines, it is necessary to understand what they are. To this end, we should first start by defining what religion and science are.

Religion is a belief system and way of life that attributes all power and order to the Supreme Being, God, Who has offered guidance to human beings through His books and Messengers. The goal of religion is the success of human beings, both on the Earth and in the hereafter. Science is knowledge about the universe, based on experiments, observations and facts that can be proven. Its goal is to explain the relationship between particular events. According to these definitions and goals, religion and science seem to be two different disciplines. Increasingly, in recent centuries, they have been perceived as being two conflicting disciplines, as they seem to disagree on some scientific theories, such as evolution.

At this point, a question arises. Are science and religion really contradictory to one another and how is this situation perceived in Islam? From an Islamic perspective, religion and science are not in conflict with one another. First of all, the universe is a book written by God and is a collection of Divine signs; therefore science and religion cannot be conflicting disciplines. Rather, they are two different expressions of the same truth.

In the Qur’an there are about 750 verses that urge humanity to gain knowledge and which are related to knowledge. Even in the very first verses sent to humanity, God begins His revelation with the actions of reading and writing:

Read! In the name of your Lord, Who created. He created man, from a clot (of congealed blood). Read, by your Most Generous Lord, Who taught by the pen. He taught man what he did not know. (96:1-5)

Now let us look what Carl Sagan said in his book, Cosmos: “Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic.” Muslims believe that the Qur’an contains everything, but not to the same degree. This fact is pointed out in the following verse:

With Him are the keys of the Unseen. None but He knows them. And He knows what is in the land and the sea. Not a leaf falls but with His Knowledge, not a grain amid the darkness of the Earth, nothing of wet or dry but (it is noted) in a Manifest Book. (6:59)

The Qur’an pursues four purposes:

a.existence and unity of God,

b.prophethood,

c.resurrection,

d.concentration on worship of God and justice.

While realizing these purposes, it draws our attention to the acts of God in the universe, His art that is displayed throughout creation, the manifestations of His names and attributes and the magnificent perfect order and harmony that there is in existence. In the Qur’an, God gives examples about some scientific facts, natural events, and even more, He indicates some scientific and technological wonders, such as airplanes, electricity, motor vehicles, and means of radio and telecommunication. At this point, let us look at the verses that are related to science, scientific knowledge, and the importance of gaining scientific knowledge.

The Verses that Urge Us to Gain Knowledge

Say: Are those who know and those who do not know alike? It is those who are endued with understanding that receive admonition. (39:9)

And so amongst men and crawling creatures and cattle, they are of various colors. Those truly fear God, among His Servants, who have knowledge: for God is Exalted in Might, Oft-Forgiving. (35:28)

And such are the Parables We set forth for mankind, but only those understand them who have knowledge. (29:43)

Qur’anic Verses Related to Scientific Facts

The Big Bang and the Beginning of Life:

Have the unbelievers not beheld that the Heavens and the Earth were a solid mass, then We separated them? (21:30) 

The Expansion of the Universe Theory:

And it is We who have built the universe with our power; and, verily, it is We who are steadily expanding it. And We made the Earth habitable; a perfect design. (51:47-48) Embryology:

We have created man from an extract of clay. Then We placed him as (a drop of) sperm in a place of rest, firmly fixed. Then We made the sperm into a clot of congealed blood; then made from the clot a lump of flesh; then made the lump of flesh into bones, and clothed the bones with flesh, then we fashioned him into another creation. So blessed be God, the best to create. Then after that, you will surely die. Then, on the Day of Judgment, you will surely be raised up. (23:12-16)

Genetic Code:

Does man think that we cannot assemble his bones? Yes indeed, we are able to put together in perfect order the very tips of his fingers. (75:3-4)

Hadith on Seeking Knowledge

“The seeking of knowledge is obligatory upon every Muslim.” (Ibn Maja)

“The word of wisdom is the lost property of the Believer. So wherever he finds it he has a better right to it.” (Tirmidhi)

“Whoever goes out to seek knowledge is on God’s path until he returns.” (Tirmidhi)

What Can Science Explain

Scientists simply observe things happening in the universe, sometimes just with the naked eye, and sometimes with the help of tools. When they see something which happens always in an unchanged way then they say that this is a law. An example of such a law is that everything with a mass will fall if left in the air; this happens with no exceptions, therefore it is a natural law. This is not a feature of the Earth only; every object with a mass applies a force to any other object with a mass. This becomes a universal law by which we can explain many things, from why a rock falls to the orbits of planets. But the problem of why two objects in space apply a force to one another is not on the agenda for scientists. Actually, it is not a question that you can find an answer to by scientific methods. This is a law of the universe; yet its reason may not be found in the observable universe. If the cause of this law is not in the observable universe then there is no way an explanation can be found by scientific methods. Some people have the incorrect belief that the theory of relativity explains gravity. The theory of relativity does not assume that objects apply force to each other. In brief and simple words this theory states that space-time is curved at the points where mass exists. Objects move along the geodesics (shortest paths) of space-time. And geodesics pass through the center of the masses; that is why objects tend to move toward each other. This is just a very difficult way of saying the same thing. The question “why do objects travel along the geodesics?” is exactly the same question that we asked above. The theory of relativity does not explain why gravitation exists; it just offers a different way of looking at the problem. Gravitation is just one example of many natural laws; all of these laws cannot answer the question why.

Science Cannot Answer “Why”

The observable universe is three-dimensional. But the universe as a whole is at least four-dimensional. If a natural law has a cause in the fourth dimension, a dimension to which we have no access, we cannot understand it. We can demonstrate this by an example, helping us to understand what we mean. Think of a metallic plane on which there are some creatures that are like electrons, which have no interaction with the third dimension, nor do they have any sense of it. All they can see is the two-dimensional plane where they live. Assume that a person is shooting at the plane, periodically opening holes at regular intervals. Observing that these holes are being opened periodically and at an equal distance, these creatures, if intelligent enough, will begin to see an unchanging pattern. And they may even give it a name, like “the law of holes.” They may calculate exactly where and when the next holes will appear, but they will never understand why these holes are being made or why they are being made in an unchanging pattern. Our idea of universal laws is much the same. We find the laws, we name them, but we will never be able to understand why they exist, or why they work in a mathematically describable way.

The Universe and Its Laws in the Qur’an

The Qur’an introduces the universe as a masterpiece created by God. The Qur’an actually challenges human beings to find any flaws in creation. While talking about the creation of The Heavens it states: “. . . then look again, can you see any disorder?” (67:3). The idea that God created the universe, putting in laws and then left it to its own devices is rejected by the Qur’an. “Verily your Lord is God, who created the Heavens and the Earth in six days, then He established Himself on the Throne (of authority) regulating and governing all things” (10:3). According to the Qur’an, the laws of nature are the commands that God has given to everything in nature. God is in control of the universe every single moment. Natural laws in the terminology of Islam are called Sunnatullah. Sunna means unchanging work. If a person gets up at 6 o’clock in the morning every day without exception, we say that getting up at 6 is his Sunna. Sunnatullah means the Sunna of God, the unchanging work of God. The Qur’an states “There is no altering (the laws of) God’s creation.” (30:30).

This means that there is no change in natural laws. If we think in simpler terms, when a rock left in the air falls, we can say that God made it fall. So everything being done according to natural laws is in fact being done by God, from a falling rock to the creation of a human being from a single cell. There is nothing supernatural going on in the creation of a human being, but this does not mean that it is not God who creates it. It means that God creates it by His routine work (His Sunna). In fact, the act of God creating a human being through His Sunna is more amazing than the supernatural creation of a human being out of nothing. So, in this context, the word miracle in Islam has a different meaning than what is understood by some people in the West. Some people define a miracle as the work of God, but in Islam everything is the work of God. A miracle is therefore defined as an unusual work of God. When we correctly understand the concept of Sunnatullah, then we will not have any difficulty understanding the following verse of the Qur’an, which has troubled many Muslims.

“God has created you and your handiwork (what ever you do)”(37:96). Mu‘tazilites, one of the misguided sects of Islam, do not take this verse literally. They say, “If we want to walk, then we walk, God does not create our actions. We create our own actions.” By saying this they go against one of the basic claims of the Qur’an. That is, they do not accept the fact that there is no creator other than God and that God does not accept any intercessors. Why should we not take credit for our actions? Surely it is we who decide how and when to move. But, consider the simple action of moving our arm. When we decide to move our arm, an enormous amount of communication takes place between our brain and our arm. The amount of energy which will be used in every cell of our muscles-of which there are thousands-how much each muscle should be stretched or loosened, all will be calculated in the brain and transferred to the muscles. If we try to write all the communication between our brain and our arm, all the calculations happening in the brain for the simple act of moving our arm may take up an entire book. And all of this happens with the help of many natural laws (Sunnatullah) and in less than a second. We are unaware of all of these calculations. So how can we claim responsibility for this? All we are responsible for is the desire to move our arm. Said Nursi gives the following wonderful example to illustrate our argument: Think of a very skillful electrician. He builds an electrical terminal to produce electricity. Then he wires an entire city with cable, and puts a lamp at every corner of every street. Then he connects all these wires to the terminal passing through a single switch. He makes one of his assistants responsible for turning the switch on at night. In the evening when dark falls on the city, the assistant turns the switch on, and suddenly the entire city is lit. Now the assistant cannot take any credit for enlightening the city, but if he does not turn on the switch he will be responsible for leaving the city in the dark. Every one of our actions is more complex than the enlightening of this city. We are merely the assistant that flips the switch.

Finally, let us conclude with remarks from two thinkers: Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. (Albert Einstein)

Minds should be enlightened by science, while hearts need to be illuminated by religion. (Said Nursi)

Dating back to the sixteenth century,¹ the Grand Champs des Morts was unique among Istanbul’s necropolises, with burial grounds for followers of both Islam and Christianity in close proximity. Beginning at Taksim (roughly on the site where the Ataturk Cultural Center now stands) and extending down the slopes of Gumussuyu and Findikli lay the graves of Muslims, while the area stretching northward toward Harbiye was divided into separate sections for the city’s various Christian communities. The English traveler Julia Pardoe describes the site in 1836:

The first plot of ground, after passing the barrack [the artillery barracks of Selim III at Taksim], is the grave-yard of the Franks; and here you are greeted on all sides with inscriptions in Latin; injunctions to pray for the souls of the departed; flourishes of French sentiment; calembourgs² graven into the everlasting stone, treating of roses and reine Marguerites; concise English records of births, deaths, ages, and diseases; Italian elaborations of regret and despair; and all the common-places of an ordinary burial-ground.³

Immediately in a line with the European cemetery, is the burial-ground of the Armenians. It is a thickly-peopled spot; and as you wander beneath the leafy boughs of the scented acacias, and thread your way among the tombs, you are struck by the peculiarity of their inscriptions. The noble Armenian character is graven deeply into the stone; name and date are duly set forth; but that which renders an Armenian slab. . . peculiar and distinctive, is the chiseling upon the tomb the emblem of the trade or profession of the deceased.

The Turkish cemetery stretches along the slope of the hill behind the barrack, and descends far into the valley. Its thickly-planted cypresses form a dense shade, beneath which the tall head-stones gleam out white and ghastly. The grove is intersected by footpaths, and here and there a green glade lets in the sunshine, to glitter upon many a gilded tomb. Plunge into the thick darkness of the more covered spots, and for a moment you will almost think that you stand amid the ruins of some devastated city. You are surrounded by what appears for an instant to be the myriad fragments of some mighty whole; but the gloom has deceived you-you are in the midst of a Necropolis-a City of the Dead.⁴

The vastness and natural beauty of the Grand Champs des Morts captured the attention of foreign residents and visitors to Istanbul alike, and few travel accounts and diaries from the past fail to mention-even if only in passing reference-the cemetery on the outskirts of Pera. The Grand Champs des Morts presented a sharp contrast to the densely packed inner-city churchyards which served as the principal burial grounds in so many of Europe’s cities up to the nineteenth century. Although some chroniclers considered the size of the Pera cemetery, as well as the great necropolises bordering other districts of Istanbul, a hindrance to urban expansion and development,⁵ the advantage of such a spacious, sylvan tract of land for burial of the dead was also recognized.

Not far from this [Taksim] we entered upon one of those vast burying-grounds which form one of the most conspicuous features of every Turkish city. . . In a few words. . . I may state that the cemetery. . . covers an area of more than 100 acres, and that a thick forest of cypresses (resembling in shape the poplar, but with a dark green foliage) overspreads it with a solemn shade, extremely appropriate to its ordinary uses. . .⁶

Cemetery planners in Western Europe, spurred on by public calls for improvements to the hygiene and appearance of local burial grounds, cited precedents in Istanbul-as well as other areas of the East-in their effort to close inner-city churchyards and replace them with larger, more salubrious cemeteries outside settled areas. This process of reform essentially began in France during the eighteenth century. It was encouraged by authors such as the naturalist Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737–1814), who, in his celebrated atudes de la Nature, praised the Turkish custom of burying the dead in the countryside (a tradition also observed in classical antiquity and contemporary China) and recommended the implementation of similar practices in Paris. He proposed “landscaped lysces as the burial-place of the great and good, and public cemeteries (essentially landscaped gardens where the dead would be buried and, if prosperity allowed, monuments erected). . . Public cemeteries should be created in the vicinity of the city, planted with cypresses, pines, and fruit-trees, and monuments erected in such a setting could only induce profound moral feelings and tender melancholy in those who visited them.”⁷

By the late 1700s, new methods for disposing of the dead were of absolute necessity in most of Europe’s major cities, and not simply for esthetic purposes, but for maintaining public health. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, the municipality of Paris took the first steps by closing old burial grounds, such as the ancient Cimetire des Innocents, and establishing new cemeteries, including the famed Pre-Lachaise, Montparnasse, and Montmartre early in the next. A similar course of action occurred somewhat later in London, commencing with the opening of Kensal Green in 1832, the first of seven new private cemeteries founded over the next decade on the outskirts of the city.⁸ Finally, in 1852, all graveyards inside the city limits were closed with the passage into law of the Metropolitan Burial Act. By that time, London’s churchyards, many dating from the Middle Ages, were in a critical state. One contemporary journal, The Builder, asserted in 1843 that 50,000 bodies yearly were piled one on top of the other in these overcrowded graveyards, where-left to putrefy and rot-they gave out exhalations and darkened the air with vapors. Charles Dickens cynically portrayed the grim situation in the Uncommercial Traveller:

Such strange churchyards hide in the City of London; churchyards sometimes so entirely pressed upon by houses, so small, so rank, so silent, so forgotten, except by the few people who ever look down into them from their smokey windows. As I stand peeping in through the iron gates and rails, I can peel the rusty metal off, like bark from an old tree. The illegible tombstones are all lopsided, the gravemounds lost their shape in the rains of a hundred years ago, the Lombardy Poplar or Plane-Tree that was once a drysalter’s daughter and several common-councilmen, has withered like those worthies, and its departed leaves are dust beneath it. Contagion of slow ruin overhangs the place . . .⁹

Considering the dismal, unwholesome state of burial grounds in their own countries, it is no wonder that Europeans often waxed eloquent about the cemeteries of Istanbul, highlighting the aura of life which they engendered. Julia Pardoe offers a particularly vivid description of the burial grounds in the Ottoman capital, where the present generation readily merged with those of the past.

[The Turk] looks upon death calmly and without repugnance; he does not connect it with ideas of gloom and horror, as we are too prone to do in Europe,-he spreads his burial places in the sunniest spots-on the crests of the laughing hills, where they are bathed in the light of the blue sky; beside the crowded thoroughfares of the city, where the dead are, as it were, once more mingled with the living,-in the green nooks that stretch down to the Bosphorus, wherein more selfish spirits would have erected a villa, or have planted a vineyard. He identifies himself with the generation which has passed away-he is ready to yield his place to that which is to succeed his own.¹⁰

For the cemetery reformers of Europe, such descriptions offered an ideal in their quest for more wholesome, esthetically appealing burial grounds. Located in the hilly countryside on the fringes of the city, the Grand Champs des Morts and Istanbul’s other great necropolises served as a model for those who strove to create new cemeteries for the sanitary disposal of the dead, as well as provide an idyllic environment for the expression of one’s most tender feelings and deepest sentiments. Contemporary author Samuel Taylor Coleridge even commented on the emotive aspect of Turkish burial grounds.

Nothing can make amends for the want of the soothing influences of nature, and for the absence of those types of renovation and decay which the fields and woods offer to the notice of the serious and contemplative mind. To feel the force of this sentiment, let a man only compare in imagination, the unsightly manner in which our monuments are crowded together in the busy, noisy, unclean, and almost grassless churchyard of a large town, with the still seclusion of a Turkish cemetery in some remote place, and yet further sanctified by the grove of cypresses in which it is embosomed.¹¹ /

Specific reference to the Grand Champs des Morts and other Turkish cemeteries as archetypes to imitate in the West also appear in the writings of John Claudius Loudon (1783–1843), one of the most influential cemetery reformers of the nineteenth century. A Scottish landscape gardener, Loudon proposed that burial grounds should be on elevated ground, distant enough from urban centers as not to endanger the health of the populace, yet near enough to lessen the time and expense of funerals and encourage visits by the living to the tombs of the dead. To make the site attractive, he favored a garden-like setting, and suggested the planting of various types of trees and shrubs. Istanbul’s necropolises offered exemplary models of these principles, and Loudon quoted descriptions of them in his works on burial ground planning and design. “The Turkish cemeteries are generally out of the city, on rising ground, planted with cedars, cypresses, and odoriferous shrubs, whose deep verdure and graceful forms bending in every breeze give a melancholy beauty to the place, and excite sentiments very congenial to its destination.”¹²

Besides the location of Istanbul’s cemeteries in the midst of nature and removed from the habitations of the living, the local tradition of single interments also impressed European observers. As Julia Pardoe remarked, the remains of the dead were not disturbed once laid to rest, a practice followed in both the Muslim and Christian burial grounds of the Grand Champs des Morts. “There is no burying and reburying on the same spot, as with us. The remains of the departed are sacred.”¹³ In stark contrast, Europeans-largely due to space restrictions in their heavily populated cities-regularly opened existing graves and filled them with new cadavers, to the point that some churchyards became pestilential pits, seriously endangering public health. By the late eighteenth century these unsanitary conditions had become intolerable. Through the influence of reformers, many of whom took inspiration from the burial practices of the Ottomans, new laws were instituted regulating methods of disposing of the dead. A French decree passed in 1804, for instance, prohibited burial in common graves, where the dead were stacked up one on top of the other.¹⁴ Instead, each cadaver was to be buried in its own space, dug to a specific depth and separated from other graves by a set distance, a method of sepulture eventually adopted in other European countries as well.

More than Ottoman burial practices, however, the unique social life which revolved around Istanbul’s cemeteries, especially in the Grand Champs des Morts, aroused the interest of foreigners. Both Muslim and Christian inhabitants of the city followed distinct rituals for remembering their dead, and families of all religious persuasions made regular visits to their respective burial grounds, maintaining their link with the generations which had preceded them. The pleasant surroundings of the cemeteries (places to avoid in Europe’s municipalities) encouraged this communion with the departed. Moreover, the great necropolises were more than resting places for the dead. “The Champs des Morts,” as Julia Pardoe recounts, “is the promenade of the whole population-Turk, Frank, Greek, and Armenian. . .”¹⁵

It was known to the locals as a place of keyif, or an area connected with ease and enjoyment.¹⁶ Spacious, fresh, green, and in close proximity to the residential quarters of Pera, the burial ground served as a kind of parkland-an attractive area of rest and relaxation for the populace of Istanbul. With whatever views they pay these visits, it is certain that the burying-ground is their favorite resort, where they spend many of their spare hours. Whole families, parents and little children, may be seen gathered around a tomb in silence and seriousness, or in animated and joyous converse. All the burying-grounds, Turkish, Jewish, and Christian, are chief places of public resort.¹⁷

The Grand Champs des Morts even had a cafe at the crest of the hill overlooking Dolmabahce, where customers could while away the day smoking water pipes, drinking Turkish coffee, and gazing out at the sparkling waters of the Bosphorus in the distance.¹⁸ Itinerant vendors also wandered through the cemetery, offering refreshments to visitors. Water sellers usually followed in their wake, carrying huge dripping jars and shouting their distinctive cry buz gibi su! (ice-cold water),¹⁹ ready to quench the thirst of those strolling or lounging among the tombs. Yet, perhaps the most fascinating sight for Europeans were the public fairs held in the necropolis. More than just a place for commemoration, quiet contemplation, and repose, the Grand Champs des Morts was also the site of lively festivals and celebrations. On such occasions, the burial grounds—primarily those of the Christians—were transformed into an animated spectacle of gaiety and amusement. Julia Pardoe describes in colorful detail one such fte for the living amongst the monuments of the dead.

I have already spoken elsewhere of the indifference, if not absolute enjoyment with which the inhabitants of the East frequent their burying grounds; but on the occasion of this festival I was more impressed than ever by the extent to which it is carried. The whole of the Christian cemetery had assumed the appearance of a fair. . . Grave-stones steadied the poles which supported the swings—divans, comfortably overlaid with cushions, were but chintz-covered sepulchers—the kibaub merchants had dug hollows to cook their dainties under the shelter of the tombs, and the smoking booths were amply supplied with seats and counters from the same wide waste of death. Every hundred yards that we advanced, the scene became more striking. One long line of diminutive tents formed a temporary street of eating-houses; there were kibaubs, pillauf, fritters, pickled vegetables, soups, rolls stuffed with fine herbs, sausages, fried fish, bread of every quality, and cakes of all dimensions. . . . Here and there a flat tomb, fancifully covered with gold-embroidered handkerchiefs, was overspread with sweetmeats and preserved fruits; while in the midst of these rival establishments, groups of men were seated in a circle, wherever a little shade could be obtained, smoking their long pipes in silence, with their diminutive coffee-cups resting on the ground beside them. The wooden kiosk overhanging the Bosphorus was crowded; and many a party was snugly niched among the acacias, with their backs resting against the tombs, and the sunshine flickering at their feet.²⁰

Undoubtedly, Europeans were amazed by the merging of the realms of the living and the dead that occurred at Istanbul’s Grand Champs des Morts, where, as French embassy member Charles Pertusier remarked, ‘those who weep are not disturbed by the lyric songs of joy, and those who laugh pay no attention to those who weep.’²¹ Visiting—much less taking one’s pleasure in—burial grounds would have been almost inconceivable in the West. However, in the first half of the nineteenth century, this had already begun to change with the closing of inner-city churchyards and the creation of cemeteries on the periphery of urban areas in Europe. Planted with a rich variety of trees and shrubs, the burial grounds founded in Paris and London during this era constituted a distinctly new style. Essentially funerary gardens, they served both as cemeteries and parklands. Burial grounds such as Pere Lachaise, Montmartre, Kensal Green, and Highgate became renowned for their natural beauty, and were frequented—much like today—both by mourners wishing to commemorate the dead as well as visitors seeking a quiet spot for meditation and repose. Ironically, even as Europeans in the nineteenth century were opening new burial grounds influenced by models from Istanbul, sections of the very cemeteries from which they had derived inspiration (including portions of the Grand Champs des Morts) were being lost in the wake of rapid urban development. During the course of this transformation—spurred on by a desire to rebuild the city in contemporary Western fashion—it was inevitable that many of Istanbul’s old burial grounds would lessen in size, or vanish completely from the map. The city was unique in that so many of its immediate environs were taken up by vast necropolises for the dead, a conspicuous feature which left a distinct impression on foreign travelers, such as Stephen Olin, who in 1853 remarked on the loss of the cemeteries in the wake of urban growth.

Indeed, so vast a space has been devoted to the dead around Istanbul, that it is no longer possible to respect the sanctity of their abode without interfering greatly with the convenience of the living, and even the entire sacrifice of public convenience. Immense as the city is, I am quite sure that much more ground is occupied by tombs and graves than by the habitations of the living. The whole country about Constantinople, Scutari, and Pera is occupied in this way, and a vast number of tombs and burying grounds are enclosed within the walls. In forming roads, streets, and in building, it is no longer possible to spare them, and one often treads upon causeways or pavements made of sculptured grave-stones and monuments.²²

Between 1840 and 1910, the area of Istanbul stretching northward from Taksim to li was transformed from open countryside to densely inhabited residential settlement. Early nineteenth-century maps of Istanbul show much of the area in this direction taken up by the non-Muslim burial grounds of the Grand Champs des Morts, with the Frankish section directly in the path of the main route of expansion. Already, by 1842, this burial ground was being whittled down, as a contemporary account by Reverend William Goodell attests. One of the founders of the American Board mission to the Armenians at Istanbul, Goodell had lost his nine-year-old son, Constantine Washington, to gastric typhoid in 1841 and buried him in the Frankish section of the Grand Champs des Morts.

February 18, 1842. On account of the encroachments. . . on the Frank burying ground, I had to remove the body of our beloved boy. The grave . . . had been dug deep, and the coffin was scarcely damp. Every thing was sweet and still. The new grave which we have prepared a few rods distant was also deep and dry; and there we laid the body, to rest in its quiet bed till the resurrection morning. Beloved child, farewell!²³

However, little Constantine’s tranquility lasted far less than expected, disturbed again by a flurry of construction in the early 1860s, including the widening of the main road running from Taksim to Pangalti. In July 1863, the remains of more than a dozen Americans, including those of Constantine Washington Goodell, were exhumed from the old Frankish burial ground in the Grand Champs des Morts. They were transferred, along with their grave markers, to a new Protestant cemetery in Ferikiy—created by order of Sultan Abdulmecit I in the 1850s—for re-interment.24 The land occupied by the former burial ground was turned into a public park (in a modern Western sense), a project finally completed six years later with the opening of Taksim Garden in 1869.²⁵ As the urban environment around Taksim expanded in succeeding decades, the other burial grounds of the Grand Champs des Morts also disappeared. The Armenian cemetery, which lay to the north of the Frankish burial ground, was still delineated on the 1925—26 Pervititch insurance maps of Istanbul, but labeled as ‘ex-Cimetire Armenien,’ apparently indicating that it had ceased to be an active place of interment. Most of the Muslim burial grounds which had covered the slopes of Gumussuyu and Findikli had already vanished by the First World War; an aerial photograph taken from a balloon at that time shows a small portion—evident as a thick patch of cypresses—still straddling the side of the hill between the Taksim barracks an the military hospital in Gumussuyu.²⁶

The scant remains of the once great necropolis would cease to exist by the mid-twentieth century.²⁷ All the while, as the great cemetery shrank—sacrificed for the sake of public convenience—reformers in Europe were transforming the spatial relationship of the living and dead in the West. The nineteenth century witnessed an innovative concept in European burial ground design, with the introduction of expansive, magnificently landscaped cemeteries. Serene and picturesque, they served as additional public parks in many towns and cities. Whereas the small, noxious churchyards of previous ages had been shunned, the new necropolises were considered an ideal place for a relaxing stroll or family outing, not to mention a site of regular pilgrimage to pay respects to the well-loved dead. This shift in custom and attitude was the culmination of several decades of reform, which—to no small extent—was inspired by the traditions of sepulture in other lands, including the Ottoman empire. Remarkably, at a time when the Ottomans were actively borrowing ideas and institutions from Europe in an effort to modernize the empire, their centuries-old customs of burial and commemoration of the dead helped fuel a vital social advance in the very countries they looked to for guidance. At the same time, urban development in the Ottoman capital, influenced by Western models, led to the closure of the Grand Champs des Morts—Istanbul’s ‘City of the Dead,’ a world-renowned necropolis which had provided inspiration, as well as an ideal, for the cemetery reformers of Europe.

Footnotes

1. By some accounts, the earliest interments at the Grand Champs des Morts date to c. 1560, when Istanbul was struck with a severe epidemic of plague, and the open fields around Taksim were used to bury the great numbers of dead; see Istanbul Ansiklopedisi, s.v. ‘Ermeni Mezarliklari.’ The tombstone of a Dutch physician, Willem Quackelbeen, who died of the disease in 1561, offers physical evidence of this conjecture. It is currently located in the Roman Catholic cemetery at Ferikiy, where it was most likely transferred when the Frankish section of the Grand Champs des Morts closed in the mid-1800s, see A.H. de Groot, Old Dutch Graves at Istanbul, Archivum Ottomanicum 5 (1973): 6. Robert Walsh, chaplain to the British Embassy at Istanbul in the 1830s, recounted in his memoirs that the earliest grave-marker in the Frankish burial ground was that of Ludovicus Chizzolo, a Jesuit who succumbed to the plague in 1585, see R. Walsh, A Residence at Constantinople, vol. 2 (London: Richard Bentley, 1838), 441.
2. Calembourg: a pun, or play on words.
3. Julia Pardoe, The City of the Sultan, 4th ed. (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1854), 51.
4. Ibid., 53—54.
5. For instance, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, writing in 1717, commented: ‘The burying fields about it (i.e., Istanbul) are certainly much larger than the whole city. ‘Tis surprising what a vast deal of land is lost this way in Turkey. Sometimes I have seen burying places of several miles, belonging to very inconsiderable villages. . . .’ See Hans-Peter Laqueur, ‘Cemeteries in Orient and Occident: The Historical Development,’ in Cimetires et Traditions Funcraires dans le Monde Islamique (Ankara: Turk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi, 1996), 2: 3.
6. An American, Sketches of Turkey in 1831 and 1832 (New York: J. & J. Harper, 1833), 158.
7. James Stevens Curl, The Victorian Celebration of Death (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing Ltd.), 17.
8. These included West Norwood (1837); Highgate (1839); Brompton, Nunhead, and Abney Park (1840); and Tower Hamlets (1841).
9. Charles Dickens, The Uncommercial Traveller (London: Oxford, 1860) 233.
10. Pardoe, The City of the Sultan, 36.
11. John Claudius Loudon, ‘On the Laying Out, Planting, and Managing of Cemeteries and on the Improvement of Churchyards.’ The Gardener’s Magazine, 1843, p. 100.
12. Ibid., 405.
13. Pardoe, The City of the Sultan, 50.
14. Thomas A. Kselman, Death and the Afterlife in Modern France, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993, 169—70.
15. Pardoe, The City of the Sultan, 50.
16. Charles White, Domestic Manners of the Turks in 1844, vol. 1 (London: Henry Colburn, 1846), 15-16.
17. Stephen Olin, Greece and the Golden Horn (New York: Carlton & Philips, 1854), 249.
18. Pardoe, The City of the Sultan, 51.
19. White, Domestic Manners of the Turks in 1844, 1: 15—16.
20. Pardoe, The City of the Sultan, 134—35.
21. Petusier further states: ‘To form a correct idea of these heterogeneous scenes, we must be on the spot, for no description can do justice to them; and even when we see them, for the first time, it appears such a complete illusion, that we can scarsely conceive its reality.’ See Charles Petusier, Picturesque Promenades in and near Constantinople and on the Waters of the Bosphorus (London: Sir Richard Phillips and Co., 1820), 96.
22. Olin, Greece and the Golden Horn, 219.
23. E.D.G. Prime, Memoirs of Rev. William Goodell, D.D. (Robert Carter and Brothers, 1876), 275.
24. Burial Registry of the Ferikiy Protestant Cemetery, no. 331—343, 1863, Governing Board of the Ferikiy Protestant Cemetery, Istanbul, Turkey.
25. Zeynep Celik, The Remaking of Istanbul, Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1986, 69.
26. For a copy of this image, see Celik Gulersoy, Taksim: Bir Meydanin Hikayesi (Istanbul: Istanbul Kitapligi, 1986), 37.
27. Some tombstones from the Frankish section of the Grand Champs des Morts still survive in the Protestant and Catholic cemeteries in Istanbul’s Ferikay district, where they were transferred after the old burial ground closed in the mid-1800s.

Asteroids and Comets

At the time when the proof that such an occurrence had already taken place on Earth was first discovered in the early 1980’s, there was a threat of a similar crash. The American physicist Luis Alvarez and his son William proposed the hypothesis that about 65 million years ago (at the end of the Cretaceous period), as a result of a meteorite hitting the Earth, the climates had changed altogether and that this had led to the extinction of many land and marine species. According to this theory, which is supported by fossils found throughout the world, approximately 65 million years ago, when a meteorite almost 10 kilometers in diameter hit the Earth, a cloud of dust formed, leaving the Earth in darkness for years; the result of this was that rays of the Sun could not reach the Earth, thereby preventing photosynthesis, and consequently the possibility of plant life. This in turn led to a chain reaction, eventually leading to the extinction of some animal species (including dinosaurs) that fed on plants and other animals. The cooling of the air, the poisonous gases that filled up the atmosphere as a result of forest fires, and the rising of the acidity of the subsequent rain might all have played their roles in the extinction of land and marine animals. It seems that 8 out of 10 species disappeared from the face of the Earth in a few thousand years, or even less. The traces of the meteorite crash can also be seen in the iridium levels found in sediments from the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary (This metal from the platinum group is found in small amounts on Earth, whereas in meteorites it is in abundance). In the quartz crystals that had undergone shock it was visible that they had been subjected to high pressure due to a crash; the nickel minerals showed that a nickel-rich meteorite had been oxidized in the atmosphere. The location of the meteorite crash was found in 1991. On the shores of the Mexican peninsula of Yucatan, under a one kilometer stratum of sedimentation, a crash crater with a diameter of 260 kilometers was discovered through gravimetric methods. Its age was found to be 65 million years. Another factor that could have led to great amounts of carbonic gas and sulfur oxide being introduced into the atmosphere would have been intense volcanic activity, which it is understood took place at the end of the Cretaceous period; this too could have contributed to the degeneration of the climate.

This was not a one-off incident. Approximately 445 million years ago (at the end of the Ordovician period) gamma rays from space could easily have been the cause of a mass extinction of two-thirds of all species on Earth. Gamma-ray explosions are the strongest explosions known. When huge stars implode into black holes at the end of their lives, they emanate very strong gamma rays as pulses at a particular frequency from their poles. If such an explosion should happen in our galaxy and should the rays head toward us, it would be very destructive indeed. It has been understood that species like “trilobites,” which continued to live very close to the ocean surface suffered great losses during this period. This could be explained only by the occurrence of a gamma ray explosion, which would affect the creatures on land and the ocean surface, but would not greatly trouble the deep-water creatures (Hecht, 2003).

Around 250 million years ago (the Permian-Triassic boundary), as a result of another mass extinction, probably 90% of marine species and 705 land species disappeared from the face of the Earth. These extinctions were attributed to the rapid changes in the climate and sudden changes in sea-levels or intense volcanic activity. To these factors was added the “cosmic cause.” In the rock sediment specimens of this period, the isotope distribution of helium and argon gases was more similar to the distribution in meteorites than to that of the rocks on Earth. In 2001 American geochemists and Australian geologists found new evidence concerning the meteorite crash.

In the 1990’s, astrophysicists understood that the balance in the solar system was very sensitive, and that it was impossible to predict the long term orbit of a heavenly body. Apart from the regular movements of planets and their satellites, innumerable comets and asteroids, at various angles to the system, are engaged in rotating motions which are impossible to pre-calculate. In 1996, the Shoemaker-Levy star fell onto Jupiter bit by bit, tearing away balls of fire as big as the Earth. So, what sort of objects can hit the Earth?

Andromeda, the closest galaxy to ours, is coming toward us at a speed of 400,000 kilometers per hour. But because it is two million light years away it is set to collide with our galaxy only five billion years later (if Doomsday does not arrive before then!) According to the information we have today, since the neighboring stars change their positions along with the Sun within the great circular movement of the Milky Way, the possibility of crashing into one of these is nearly non-existent. The planets in the solar system give us no reason for concern either. Their orbits, in which they have been excellently placed, do not intersect with that of the Earth. The Moon does not present a threat either. It is also not anticipated that any machine parts from satellites will reach an acceleration that could be disastrous as they enter the atmosphere. What threats remain are asteroids and comets that have a tendency to hit the Earth.

Asteroids are large objects that have a rock-like structure, yet are not big enough to be considered planets. Their diameters range from a couple of meters to 30 kilometers. Many asteroids that are close to us move in orbits that intersect those of the Earth. Asteroid 3753 (1986 TO), which has an orbit that has a dynamic relationship to ours, seems to be another satellite to the Earth, along with the Moon. (Wiegert et al., 1997). Comets, on the other hand, are balls of dust that have heated up as they pass close to the Sun and are adorned with bright tails. The possibility of a crash stems from these two groups. These comets revolve around the Sun in specific orbits, and it is without a doubt that they have a great significance for the system; these objects are concentrated in three major areas. The first area is a large belt between Mars and Jupiter (The Asteroid Belt). Here there are approximately a million asteroids of diameters greater than a kilometer. Further away, beyond Neptune, in the Kuiper belt, whose size is 30-100 times greater than the distance between the Earth and the Sun, it is believed that there are more than a trillion comets. Another source of meteorites is the border area of the solar system, which opens up to wider space, the sphere shaped Oort Cloud, whose diameter is 40 thousand times greater than the distance between the Earth and the Sun. (Poirier & Greffoz, 2001)

When we consider an asteroid of a kilometer in diameter and which is further away than Mars, it hardly seems bigger than a grain of sand 100 kilometers away from Earth. In 1998, NASA started a project which aims to use telescopes to identify (within 10 years) 90% of the asteroids of more than a kilometer in diameter which are moving toward Earth.

Unity in Abundance

The solar orbits of those distant bodies that cannot be identified can be disturbed by even the slightest intervention. It is enough that the orbit of an asteroid should be ever so slightly disturbed as it passes near one of the satellites of Jupiter for it to leave its orbit and start heading toward us. Our existence is bound to such vast Compassion, manifesting itself in such a fine equilibrium; this only goes to demonstrate to us that it is only He Who protects us to Whom we should be grateful, not only for our Creation, but also for every step of our life and every breath; it is He Who is Alive and Who is the Source. On the other hand, our condition of being human and our responsibility to look after what has been given into our keeping spurs us to search for apparent causes in this world. Since we do not know when or why our deaths will come upon us, we take precautions against situations that may be dangerous and try to stay alive; in the same way, as we do not know when Doomsday will come nor what its apparent cause will be, we must take precautions against risks like meteorites (without forgetting that the real affect and the final will lies always with God) in order to protect life on Earth. But we do not know what the scientists (and authorities with executive powers) who have the means to monitor the Universe with well-developed equipment feel; and with what feelings they inquire into the nature of these meteorites. We wonder if they are aware of the fact that the meteorites are in the Command of the One and Only, as are the Sun and the Earth and, indeed, the whole Universe. Can they acknowledge this fact openly, without feeling the psychological terror that the science of the “denying school” imposes? Can they see the falsity of using the word “threat” for meteorites?

What Sort of Measures for What Sort of Life?

Asteroids can reach a speed of 100,000 kph, while comets can get up to 150,000 kph. Even if the mass may be small, at such speeds a great amount of energy is produced. According to Brian Toon of Colorado University, if a meteorite crashes on to the Earth, the surface of the Earth will catch fire and the sky will be filled with very hot particles that are lifted from the ground (Hecht, 2002). The amount of damage that the crash will cause to humanity is dependent on whether the meteorite crashes into the middle of the ocean or into a city. According to researchers, if the diameter of the meteorite is less than 300 meters, then the people living in the probable crash site should be evacuated. If the meteorite is quite large, then one should send a rocket with a nuclear head toward it in order to blow it up and try to diverge it from its orbit. But this intervention could be risky; the energy of the rocket could be less than needed, and the radioactive shower could fall back down to Earth. Other options, like using rockets without nuclear heads or other asteroids, exploding the meteorite with lasers or trying to decrease its size through piercing it with drills could be attempted. But all these are technologically impossible today. It is not even known whether the time between the determination of the body”s approach toward the Earth and its probable crash time will be enough for us to determine what to do. In the worst case scenario, a great crash and massive deaths could be the result. The probable destructive force of these objects can be inferred from nuclear tests that have been carried out. But the determination and analysis of occurrences in the past has proven to be difficult. Since three-quarters of the world has been covered with water for billions of years, the traces of crashes under the seas and the oceans do not remain, and the crash sites on land are eroded away, sometimes even as quickly as in a couple thousand years.

Other Possibilities

So is there nothing else that can fall upon our heads? For instance, anti-matter. Anti-matter is composed of antiparticles, which are just like ordinary protons, electrons, and neutrons except they have opposite electrical charges and magnetic moments. When antimatter and matter collide, both are annihilated. The existence of anti-matter in the universe has been demonstrated by particle accelerators. The entry of anti-matter the size of a pebble into the atmosphere could be enough for matter and anti-matter to disappear in a great whirl of energy, greater than the one caused by the Hiroshima bomb. We cannot even imagine what would happen if an anti-meteorite with a diameter of a kilometer should hit the Earth. Nevertheless, the French astrophysicist Marc Lachièze-Rey said: ‘Had there been an anti-matter asteroid in our galaxy, it would emanate x-rays when it disappeared with the material it had around it.’ Now let us get back to usual asteroids. There was the greatest crash of the 20th century, which took place in June 1908 in Tunguska (Russia). It is believed that there a small asteroid cleared 2,000 km2 of Siberian forest. A similar incident was the strange explosion that lit up the Jordanian sky, shattering the rocks in the area on 18 April 2001. It is believed that the 100 km2 diameter of the Popigay crater in Siberia was caused by a meteorite (Bottomley et al., 1997). In the last eight years US satellites that look for nuclear explosions have determined nearly 300 optic blazes were caused by small meteorites (diameters of 50-100 meters). According to Bill Napier from the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland, comets present a greater danger. Comets with tails composed of gas and dust and with structures of ice are much rarer than those with a rock-like structure, and they may damage the Earth in different ways. A comet that evaporates under the rays of the Sun would leave billions of particles of dust in the orbit of the Earth. If the dust were to shower down onto the Earth, it could block the rays of the Sun from reaching the Earth, thus triggering the start of a new ice age. There are still four known objects in space with diameters of more than a hundred kilometers that are believed to be comets. There may be 2,000 more in the Oort Cloud, beyond Pluto (Samuel, 2001) In short, there are many objects moving around our planet that could end our life, and yet, life on Earth has continued for billions of years.

He Makes Us Live and Die

On the other hand, after a crater caused by a meteorite cools down, life can regenerate. Devon Island in Canada is a polar desert on which there are no plants and animals. There, the Haughton crater, with a diameter of nearly 24 kilometres, is believed to have been caused by a meteorite crash that happened 23 million years ago. As far as we can gather from fossils and other traces, there were probably thick forests in this area; the forest was lost and the shock wave that took place here destroyed most of the other living things with an explosion and the subsequent heat. About a thousand years later, life came back to Haughton. The subterranean waters were heated as a result of the crash, thus presenting a perfect living environment of hydrothermal systems for organisms that live in colonies, such as bacteria and algae. This activity has been observed in 70 of 170 crash craters. It is not know when life was created, but the first traces go back nearly 3.8 billion years. That is to say, the Earth might have been full of these hydrothermal systems at the beginning of its creation. The craters on the Moon, on the other hand, show us that meteorite crashes in the past were 15 times more common (Osinski, 2003). Thus it is impossible to explain, through reason, how life could have been created in a period of our world when it was—apparently—extremely unfavorable for life. There are other influences that reach the Earth from space. About a thousand years ago the Earth was going through its last ice-age. The Aquila star constellation, which can be observed from the Northern Hemisphere, probably went through an intense upheaval and emanated radiation in great amounts in all directions. This wave of high energy traveled through space for 20,000 years, hitting the Pacific Ocean on the evening of 27th August 1998. As far as it could be recorded with terrestrial and orbital observation, on that summer night the Earth was bombarded with gamma and X-rays for five minutes. The radiation scattered as it reached the lower strata of the atmosphere. A greater energy could have reached the Earth from interstellar space and caused destruction of matter. It is believed that this incident that took place in 1998 was caused due to the tearing up of the surface of a ‘magnetar’; this is a sort of a neutron star. It is believed that that magnetar was of a diameter measuring 35 kilometer, but denser than the Sun; a thimble-size portion of it would have weighed as much as 100 million tons. This star revolved around itself like all neutron stars and as a result created a great magnetic field. If this magnetar had been only 10 thousand light years away then the energy that reached the Earth would have been four times greater; it may have been strong enough to damage the ozone layer (Ward & Brownlee, 2000).

Conclusion

At the start of the 19th century, Georges Cuvier, a French palaeontologist and a practicing Christian, stated that disasters played a determining role in the life story of the Earth, basing this view on what befell the people the Prophet Noah. In Darwin”s model there was no space for disasters. The speculation of ‘The course of evolution’ became a dogmatic model which was taught under the name of scientific theory. Today, Cuvier”s concept of ‘disaster’ is being accepted once again in the West. Life has, now and then, been faced with sudden disasters which have affected its natural course. For 200 million years, the dinosaurs were the sovereigns of the Earth; the mammals were few. But a stone fell out of the sky and suddenly the dynasty of the dinosaurs ended. Could the same thing not happen to the false dynasty of humanity? All these possibilities of termination should lead us (and the experts) to think more carefully about our existence, life, Earth and humanity as a whole. But, unfortunately, this is not what happens, and countries which worry about meteorites only in relation to themselves have destroyed certain regions in the world with bombs, creating the effect of meteorites long before the meteorites themselves reach us; such people see nothing wrong in causing the deaths of many people. The existence of meteorites (and other cosmic phenomena) carries many divine truths. We are not alone in the time-space dimension; all these planets and their satellites, innumerable comets and asteroids move around and among us and yet they do not effect the accurate and sensitive functioning of the system; in truth, they constitute a vital part of its accuracy. They have submitted to the great Will that has created them: Do they not then look up to heaven above them how We have made it and adorned it and how it has no gaps?(Qaf 50:6) The atmosphere and the magnetosphere that surround our Earth as a token of compassion and protection serves, under Divine orders, as the shield against solar explosions that regularly take place every 11 years, against harmful cosmic radiation and particles. Otherwise, conditions that are very unfavorable to life would have been the reality, with craters pitting the surface of the Earth, just as we see on the surface of the Moon, which has no atmospheric or magnetic shields. On the other hand, the possibility of a meteorite colliding with the Earth makes us think of other things as well: How will the end of the Earth come about; through collision with a meteorite, or through more complex phenomena? This is something we cannot, and maybe do not, need to know for sure: what is more important is that the Earth will end, that the day that has been promised will come, that the day described in the Qur’an will make us shudder, and that we have to tread accordingly on this Earth. On this issue Said Nursi points to an important truth concerning faith: ‘If Earth were to explode, those servants of God with truly illuminated hearts would not be frightened—they might even consider it a marvel of the Eternally Besought”s Power. A rationalist but unbelieving philosopher might tremble at the sight of a comet, lest it should strike Earth. (This was how some Americans reacted to the recent sighting of Haley”s comet.)’ Another lesson for contemplation that the comets offers us could be the following: ‘The movements of heavenly bodies in the sky (the world”s roof), the appearance of comets and new stars while some others are extinguished, as well as solar and lunar eclipses, demonstrate that it is not stable and therefore is making its way toward a final ruin. However slow its changes are, they also show that the world is mortal and moves to its inevitable end.’ Our life has been given into our safe keeping by our Lord; and so we must try to protect it to the best of our ability. In that spirit, we can take precautions against a comet that comes toward our Earth in order to protect life; we may be able to smash it into pieces using the technology that we have. But if not today, tomorrow, or soon Doomsday will arrive; we should not forget that, just as we should not forget that rendering meteors ineffective is a gift from God Who is the true holder of knowledge and power. But will such a success lead humanity to assume a more ungrateful and arrogant position toward God, or will it end in our praising God and giving Him thanks, as did the Prophet Solomon? The last position is the following: And call not God with any other god; there is no god but He, every thing is perishable but He; His is the judgment, and to Him you shall be brought back (Qasas 28:88).

References

• Bottomley, R., Grieve, R., York, D. & Masaitis, V., The age of the Popigai impact event and its relation to events at the Eocene/Oligocene boundary, Nature, Vol 388, pp.365-368.
• Hecht, J., The End of the World, New Scientist, 2 February 2002.
• Hecht, J., Did a Gamma-Ray Burst Devastate Life on Earth? New Scientist, 27 September 2003.
• Osinski, G., Shocked into Life, New Scientist, 13 September 2003.
• Poirier, H. & Greffoz, V., Asterodes: La Menace se Precise, Science & Vie, no 1006, Juillet, Paris.
• Samuel, E., Sting in the Tail, New Scientist, 24 March 2001.
• Ward, P.D. & Brownlee, D., Rare Earth, Copernicus Books, New York: 2000
• Wiegert, P.A., Innane, K.A. & Mikkola, S., An Asteroidal Companion to the Earth, Nature, Vol. 387, pp. 685 – 686.
• Nursi, S., The Words, the Third Word, the Twenty-Fifth Word, Kaynak, Izmir: 1997.

A major achievement in the computation of π was made around 250 BC. Archimedes of Syracuse (287-212 BC) had the brilliant idea to approximate π by using inscribed and circumscribed polygons that approached a circle (see the figure). The circumference of a circle of diameter 1 is π. He inscribed a polygon of n-side and computed its circumference.

This circumference is clearly less than π. Similarly, he circumscribed another polygon of n-side and computed its circumference. This time the circumference of the polygon is greater than the circumference of the circle which is π. So, he arrived at the inequality 3 < π

In the following centuries, some people used Archimedes’ technique, using polygons with more sides, and arrived at more accurate estimates for π. Ptolemy (c. 150 AD) found the value up to 4 places, Zu Chongzhi (c. 500) 6 places, al-Khwarizmi (c. 800) 4 places, al-Kashi (c. 1430) 14 places, Roomen (c. 1580) 17 places, while Van Ceulen (c. 1600) arrived at 35 places.

Unfortunately, Archimedes’ idea was the only mathematically significant approach for almost 2,000 years. The second major step in this direction came with the Renaissance. The general progress in theoretical mathematics gave a great push to the computation of π. With the aid of calculus and infinite series Gregory found the following formula: arctan(x) = 1- x/3 + x3/5 – x5/7 +… He then plugged in x=1, arriving at π/4 = 1- 1/3 + 1/5 – 1/7 +…

This formula looks very nice to begin with, but unfortunately it is not very useful for the computation of π. To get the first 4 places right, we need 10,000 terms of the series, making it very untidy. This formula was considerably improved later by others, and went on to become very useful for computation. By using trigonometry, Machin found the following formula for π: π/4 = 4arctan(1/5) – arctan(1/239).

With Gregory’s expression for arctangent, this formula became so powerful that one could arrive at 5 places of π in just 6 terms. Again, with such a formula, the only problem left is that the computation is quite tedious. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Machin, Rutherford, Shanks, and others improved the calculation of π to 700 digits.

On the other hand, amazing facts were discovered about the nature of π. In 1761, Lindemann was the first to show that π is irrational, which means that it cannot be written as the ratio of two integers, like 22/7, 353/113, etc. Then he proved that it is transcendental, or “very irrational,” i.e. it cannot be a root of any integer coefficient polynomial. In other words, it cannot be A10,A2 + A3, 3A29, etc. These facts imply that π is a very irregular number, that there is no pattern in its decimal places, and that one cannot express π in a simple algebraic way.

So, by the beginning of 20th century, we were able to compute only 700 digits of π. In the first quarter of the last century, the brilliant Indian mathematician Ramanujan accomplished the third great theoretical leap in or the computation of π, and came out with many impressive infinite series. He arrived at sound algebraic expressions which are very close to π.

In the second quarter of the last century, computers came onto the scene. With the arrival of computers, pen and paper calculations were rendered obsolete. After Ramanujan’s time, the people calculating π became programmers rather than mathematicians. In 1955, more than 3,000 digits were calculated at the Naval Ordnance Research Center in only 13 minutes, almost 500 times faster than the ENIAC only 6 years later. In 1959 an IBM 704 calculated more than 16,000 digits of π. In 1961 an IBM 7090 calculated over 100,000 digits of π in around 9 hours, in 1966 an IBM 7030 calculated 250,000 digits of π, while a year later a CDC 6600 calculated 500,000 digits and in 1973 a CDC 7600 calculated 1,000,000 digits of π in 23 hours.

However, the techniques for calculating π were still using arctangents which have a quadratic growth rate. In 1976 Eugene Salamin rediscovered a formula developed by Gauss. It was calculation intensive in Gauss’ time, but well suited for modern super computers the size of the Whitehouse and had a much lower growth rate than the arctangents formulas did. In 1982, a HITAC M-280H calculated 16 million digits of π in 30 hours, in 1988 a Hitachi S-820 calculated 201 million digits in 6 hours, while in 1989 both the 500 million and 1 billion π calculation records were broken. In 1995, 6 billion digits were calculated, in 1996, 8 billion, and finally in 1997 a Hitachi SR2201 calculated 51 billion digits of π in 29 hours. This Hitachi machine had 1,024 processors and 212 gigabytes of RAM. However, in September of 1999 a new record of 206,158,430,000 was announced. The calculation was set by Yasumasa Kanada and the University of Tokyo. The calculations took over 37 hours, with 43 hours more needed to verify them. The machine used contained 817GB of main memory and consisted of 128 Hitachi SR8000 processors.

So, we can see that this mysterious number has attracted the attention of many people for centuries; it seems set to continue to do so. It might not seem very interesting to compute billions of digits of one transcendental number, and it might even seem pointless. The real point here is not the billionth digit of the number, but the excitement and the beauty of the problem, and the challenge to human intelligence, like with so many other mathematical problems.

References

• J. J. O’Connor and E. F. Robertson, www.gap.dcs.stand.ac.uk/history/HistTopics /Pi_through_the_ages.html
• D. Hazeghi, www.myownlittleworld.com/pi /history.html
• D. H. Bailey, J. M. Borwein and P. B. Borwein, www.cecm.sfu.ca/organics/papers/borwein /paper/html/paper.html
• Lazarus Mudehwe, www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral /Lab/3550/pi.htm
• www gap.dcs.stand.ac.uk/history/HistTopics/Pi_chronology.html

The fifth branch is that of love and fear, worship and imitation of the Prophet. The addressee is first Nursi’s own soul, and secondly “his friend who loves the worldly life.” In the first statement, Nursi wants to direct the love of humans to Almighty God, who deserves the utmost love.

“Love is the universe’s raison d’tre, the bond between all things, the light and life of existence. Since we are the most comprehensive fruit of existence, a love so overflowing that it can invade the universe has been included in that fruit’s heart (its seed or core). One who deserves such an infinite love can only be one with infinite perfection”;¹ this is God.

According to Nursi, human nature has been endowed with two tools: love and fear. Both of these senses inevitably will be directed to the Creator or the created. Fear of the created or blind love of the created are both dreadful calamities according to Nursi; because people become afraid of people and created things that do not show mercy toward them. As for a love of creatures, Nursi explains that many of them do not understand love and do not acknowledge us. One may love a beautiful panorama, but the panorama does not acknowledge a person; one may love the stars of night, but the stars do not acknowledge a person. Many of these beloveds leave us without ever saying goodbye, like our youth or wealth-either they leave us, or we leave them.

According to Nursi, ninety-nine percent of lovers complain about their beloved. The reason for this is that the inner heart is a mirror of God, the Self-Sufficient Who needs no one and Whom everyone else needs. And the heart can only be satisfied with His love. After mentioning this, he makes his point as follows: “So turn your fear and love toward such a One so that your fear will be a pleasant humility and your love a happiness free of humiliation.”

For Nursi, to fear God means to take refuge in his mercy. Fear is a motivator that throws a person on God’s mercy just as a child, when threatened, takes refuge in the arms of their mother. “. . . maternal care and compassion for all living beings is only a ray from His Compassion.” If fear of God is so joyful, then how does the love of God compare? There is great joyfulness in the love of God. For Nursi, even the love of creatures is joyful since it is for His sake. “Only when you can assign that love to its rightful owner can you love, for His sake and as mirrors to Him, all things without pain or trouble. Such love must not be assigned directly to existence for the sake of existence itself. Otherwise, while being a most pleasurable Divine grace, this love will become a most painful ailment.”

According to Nursi, the human soul is prone to love itself above everyone and everything else. In fact, it should not do so; the soul does not deserve such a love, as it is not the source of the beauty of the universe. “Your intense self-love is nothing but your innate love for His ‘Essence’, which you unconsciously carry in yourself and wrongly appropriate for your self. Tear apart the ‘I’ in yourself and show the ‘He’.” Underneath your ego you will find God. “All the love you divide among other beings is nothing but the love implanted in your being for Him.”

For Nursi, the whole beauty of paradise, with all varieties of beauty, is the result of such a love from Him. “However, the universe cannot compensate for even one particular manifestation of His love. Given this, listen and obey the following eternal decree, which the Eternal, Beloved One made His beloved (Prophet Muhammad) declare: If you really love God, follow me [so] that God may love you (3:31).”

Although early Islamic mystics totally rejected love for the world, Nursi found a new way of interpreting the concept of love toward the world. He says, “The world has three faces.” The first two faces of the world are admirable and desirable. The first states that the world is a place where God’s names are reflected. The world is a place where a believer can contemplate them. The world is a fair for the exhibition of God’s names. From this perspective, the world is desirable. One has to think in order to understand God in this world.

The second state of the world, according to Nursi, can be understood by the analogy that the world is a field for the afterlife. This face is also desirable, since individuals must sow in order to reap for the afterlife. Without this world, there would be no results for actions in the afterlife. There would be no place to sow, and thus no fruit. By making such distinctions, Nursi gave a new interpretation of love toward the worldly life.

The third face of the world is the one that the Sufism avoids. This face, Nursi said, is the world as a place of entertainment for those who indulge in worldly desires. This is the face which all Sufis reject. By generalization, it is understood that all parts of the world were not desirable, and thus people generally chose to leave the world. People should not connect their hearts to this world. “It is necessary to abandon the world heartily, not physically.” People have to abandon the world from the heart, not the limbs. Individuals should not abandon their studies or other aspects that are necessary in this world for this life.

One said, “I love my life, I love my youth, I love spring, I love this world, I love all beautiful things. How can I leave all of these things for God?” Nursi says, in answer to this question, “However involuntary loving is, you can direct it to a certain object. For example, by convincing yourself that something beloved is ugly, or an obstacle to or only a mirror for an object worthy of true love, this feeling of love can be diverted to the true object of love.” Nursi thus says, “I do not tell you not to love what you have enumerated, but I tell you to love them in the name of God, and in the name of the love of God. Love the beautiful fruit as a bounty from God, the Merciful and Compassionate One. When you love this, you love the Merciful and the Giver of the Bounties, al-Mun’im. This love is a collective thankfulness. To love these things is good. Love your mother and father, because they helped you when you were young. When you love them in the name of God, your love for them, in fact, is love for God. When your parents are old, you love them more; thus one loves for the sake of God. Love your children in the name of God, as they are gifts from God. Be patient if they die, and do not be without hope; you should say that they were a gift from my Lord to me, and they were His creatures. . . He took them to a better place. If I had one share in them, He had a thousand shares.” It is thus important to submit to the will of God. Nursi says, “Life is the most beautiful bounty that God has given you. When you love your life, you should know that this life is a gift from God, and you love it in the name of God. Loving your spouse is a gift, and your love should not be based on apparent beauty, because when they are old, that beauty will not last. Love should not be based on physical beauty, but on spiritual beauty, or ethical beauty. This beauty continues to the end of life. The criterion of your love for them for the sake of God is that when they lose their physical beauty, they will need you more, and you will continue in your love for them.”

In this way, the world is a reflection of God, and by loving the world, one will be led to loving God. Nursi concludes this concept with the following statement, “Love the world and what is in it, with mana-i harfi;² that is to love it not for itself, but for God, and to say how beautifully it has been created, not how beautiful it is. Do not put the love of anything in the depths of your heart, because the innermost heart is the mirror of God, and it belongs to Him.” Nursi ends with this prayer, “O Lord, bestow upon us your love, and the love of things that make us close to you.”

Nursi also speaks of ubudiyya, or worship of God. According to him, when people pray they do not pray for future rewards, because as humans we have been given our reward. “Oh my soul, worship is not the beginning of future bounties; it is the result of previous ones. Yes, we have already received our wages. Accordingly, we are asked to worship and serve.”

Nursi says that our individual existence is a bounty, and being a human is another bounty-existence is pure goodness compared to non-existence. Food is also a bounty from God prepared for the needs of our stomach. The created world is another bounty which is adored through our eyes and ears. After mentioning this, Nursi says, “Oh my soul, you have already received this wage. You are asked to fulfill worship, which is joyful and easy for the body. Despite that, you are lazy. Even if you perform some kind of worship, you ask for something more, as if the previous bounties were not enough. And you even complain, asking why your prayer has not been accepted. Yes, your duty is not to complain, but to continue praying. Almighty God gives you Paradise and eternal bliss merely as a result of His Grace and Mercy. You constantly take refuge in His Mercy and Grace. Trust in Him and listen to His divine command. ‘Say, Oh Muhammad, let them be happy for what God has given them through His Grace and Mercy. That is better than what they have collected’” (10:58).

Nursi goes on to say that the one person’s worship is not enough to repay the bounties of God. Nursi quotes a saying of the Prophet, “the intention of a believer is higher than their action,” which means that, by performing an action, an individual may have a limited amount of worship, but by making an intention one can have a limitless amount of worship. When a person says in their daily prayers “O Lord, to you alone we worship and to you alone we ask for help,” they introduce the worship of all creatures to God. This makes the amount of worship limitless and makes them the representative of all creatures speaking and presenting their worship to God. Nursi refers to this statement, saying “O Lord, we glorify you with the glorification of all your creatures.”

Nursi finishes this section by restating the importance of love for God and not for the universe. He says, “If a human is deceived by indulging in the world of multiplicity through the love of the world and is drowned, they will most certainly suffer unlimited loss. They will execute themselves collectively. If humans raise their heads and listen to the language of the Qur’an through the ears of the heart and direct themselves to unity, they then can ascend the ladder of worship, approaching the throne of perfection and then can become an eternal human.”

Nursi believes that there are two paths in front of all individuals. On one path they can use this capacity of love for transient things and, in the end, will certainly lose. On the other path, they will be aware of their importance and their unlimited capacity of love and goodness and, being a candidate of eternal bliss, they will successfully, through their trust in God, gain it.

Finally, Nursi refers to Prophet Abraham’s story, as narrated in the Qur’an. In order to make his people see the truth, when he sees a star he says: “This is my lord (according to your claims).” When the star sets (fades), he says “I do not love those that set.” When he sees the Moon, he says “This is my lord (according to your claims).” When he finds it fading, it becomes obvious that it cannot be his lord. When he sees the Sun, he says “This is my lord; this is larger.” When it sets, he says “O, my people, I am innocent of what you associate (with God).” The Qur’an speaks of his famous statement, “I do not love those that set” (6:76). Nursi says, referring to this story, “O my soul, since the truth is this, and since you are from the nation of Abraham, peace be upon him, be like Abraham and say that I do not love those that set and turn your face to the eternal Beloved.”

Footnotes 

1. The quotes in this article are taken from the Turkish Sozler by Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (Nesil Yayinlari, Istanbul: 1996) v. I, pp. 156-60; 292-93. For the English translation of the book see The Words, Nursi, S., Kaynak, Izmir:1997
2. Nursi refers to a grammatical rule in the Arabic lan- guage which indicates that a letter by itself has no meaning. In order to have a meaning it has to rely on something else. 

We all know that it is essential for life. However, probably because of its abundance and simple chemical composition, we often regard this tasteless and odorless substance as being important, but quite simple and ordinary. Scientifically, it is the exact opposite. It appears to show extremely complex and unusual behavior. It is the most studied substance on Earth. Yet, scientists are still puzzled over its strange properties. Even the best computers we have today cannot simulate all of the different properties of water.

Let us look at an example of the surprising properties of water. The strangeness of water starts with the fact that it exists on Earth. Water, being composed of two fairly light atoms (hydrogen and oxygen), should be in the gas phase at the usual temperature ranges that exist in our world. In fact, all compounds that are close to it (i.e. H2S, H2Se, and H2Te) are found mostly in the gas phase. But, compared to similar substances, it melts about 100 degrees above the expected melting point and it boils about 150 degrees above the expected boiling point (see Figure 1). The result is that it is the only material that exists naturally in all three forms (i.e. as ice, liquid, and vapor) on Earth.

In addition to the example given in the previous paragraph, water has at least 40 different surprising properties (See for example the “Forty-one anomalies of water” section in Ref 1). But, what is even more astonishing is the fact that most of these anomalous properties of water are absolutely crucial for life. Simply stated, life on Earth depends on these extraordinary aspects of water. Below we will discuss some of the anomalous properties of water and their importance for life. At the end we will briefly try to explain why water behaves so differently.

1-Water Has an Unusually High Heat Capacity

Heat capacity is a measure of the ability to store heat. Formally, it is defined as the amount of heat required to raise the unit mass of a substance by one degree of temperature. If the heat capacity of a substance is high, it will store heat well, i.e. its temperature will not rise much for a given amount of heat. Water has the highest heat capacity among common substances. This has a crucial impact on our life.

It is thanks to this fact that living organisms, which are mostly composed of water, can regulate their body temperature easily. For example, the human body needs to keep its temperature between 36.1 and 37.8 °C. This is only possible because it is composed mostly of water. Since the heat capacity of water is unusually high, even if the temperature of the environment changes greatly, the heat exchange between the body and the environment does not cause a great change in body temperature.

Another consequence is the moderation of the climate near large masses of water. The heat capacity of land is much less than that of water. This is why the temperatures of oceans tend to vary much less than that of land. The temperatures in the oceans vary between -2 0C and 35 0C. On land, temperatures may vary anywhere from -70 0C to 57 0C. Compare also the Moon, which has no water. Temperatures on the Moon range from -155 0C to 135 0C.

In addition to having a great heat capacity, water conducts heat more easily than any other liquid, except mercury. This makes the temperature quite uniform in living organisms. Also, the vertical temperature profile in oceans and lakes is essentially uniform due to this fact.

2- Water Has an Unusually High Heat of Evaporation

When a liquid evaporates, it absorbs heat from the environment. This energy is used to transform molecules into gas form. The heat of evaporation is defined as the amount of heat required to convert a unit mass of liquid into gas. Water has an unusually high heat of evaporation compared to most other common substances. It is so great that you need to supply about five times the amount of energy to evaporate water that is needed to heat it from 0 to 100 0C.

This fact is crucial for the evaporative cooling system of the human body and animals. When we sweat, the sweat absorbs heat from the body in order to evaporate. Since water has a very high heat of evaporation, effectively a large amount of heat is removed from the body through sweating. That is why when we engage in physical activity we sweat. Excess heat in the muscles is easily removed through the evaporation of sweat thanks to the high heat of the evaporation of water.

The high heat of evaporation also prevents dehydration. If it were low, water would then evaporate easily from the body and we would quickly dehydrate.

3- The Density of Water Behaves Unusually as a Function of Temperature

The density of almost all other liquids decreases with increasing temperature. Water is an exception to this. Starting from 0 °C, the density of water increases, and reaches a maximum at 4 °C, decreasing afterwards. Also most other liquids become denser when they condense, but water is an exception to this as well. The density of ice is less than the density of water, which is why ice can float on water.

Both of these exceptions turn out to be extremely important for underwater life. When the weather gets cold near a lake, first the temperature of the lake’s surface starts to decrease. As the temperature of the surface cools to around 4°C, it becomes denser and can move downwards, letting the warmer water reach the surface. Therefore, before the lake can start freezing almost all of the water in it needs to be cooled to approximately 0 °C. If there was not an anomaly at 4 °C then water would begin to freeze from the surface before the entire lake cools to 0 °C. Since water has an enormous heat capacity, the necessity for the entire lake to cool to approximately 0 °C before any freezing can occur delays the freezing considerably. It is also crucial that the density maximum in water is near freezing point, not at any other point.

When the temperature finally gets to 0 °C and the water start to freeze, it will start to freeze on the surface. Since ice is less dense than water, it will float on the surface and will not sink to the bottom. And once a surface layer of ice is formed, it will protect the rest of the lake from the environment and no further freezing will occur. There would not be any underwater life if ice formed on the bottom. It would also take forever for the ice to melt if it was formed on the bottom rather than on the surface.

The fact that water expands upon freezing is also important for the formation of soils. When the water freezes inside a rock, it can easily crack it into pieces, just like a soda placed in the freezer explodes upon freezing. Therefore, one of the most important steps of soil formation is dependent on this exceptional characteristic of water.

4- The Absorption Coefficient Anomaly in the Visible Region

Another interesting property of water lies in its absorption of light. Every

substance has a characteristic absorption spectrum that shows how much light at a particular wavelength is absorbed. If the absorption coefficient is high at a particular wavelength then the material will look opaque at that wavelength. If it is low, light at that particular wavelength will be transmitted and the material will appear transparent.

In Figure 2, the absorption coefficient of water is plotted as a function of wavelength (red line). The first thing you notice is that water has a very high absorption coefficient, except for a very narrow region around 500nm. In this small region of wavelength, the absorption coefficient is ten million times smaller than the neighboring regions. What is more interesting than this enormous drop in the absorption coefficient is that this dip happens exactly at the visible part of the spectrum. The human eye can only see wavelengths between 400-700 nm. This visible part of the spectrum is indicated by a rainbow colored strip in the graph. It is amazing that this exactly coincides with the region where water is transparent. Adding to this pleasant surprise is the fact that the amount of light emitted by the sun peaks around this dip as well.

Everything is conveniently adjusted for the habitants of this blue planet. The maximum intensity of emitted sunlight happens to be in the narrow range of the spectrum that we can see. And water on the atmosphere lets this part of the spectrum through thanks to the strange dip in the water absorption spectrum. Worried about the dangerous UV radiation from the sun? This is taken care of too. Just below the visible region, the absorption coefficient of water is ten million times higher. So water vapor in the atmosphere very effectively removes most of the dangerous UV light and shields us.

The spectrum of the light from the sun, the absorption spectra of water and the visible region of the spectrum that we can see are all physically independent phenomena. Yet, it is worth noting that each of these phenomena behaves in such a way that it seems they should have a precise knowledge of each other. If you think this is too much of a coincidence, there is even more. Water is also designed to maximize our visual pleasure. You are probably astonished by the lovely color match between the blue sky and the blue sea. Most people assume that this is because the sky is blue and the sea appears to be blue because it reflects the sky. In fact this is wrong. Water is blue since its absorption coefficient is higher in red; therefore it absorbs more red and reflects the blue part of the spectrum. This can be seen in Figure 2, in which the absorption coefficient in the red colored segment of the rainbow strip is more than 100 times greater than the blue part. The sky is blue for an entirely different reason (since it is blue light that is scattered the most by the nitrogen in the atmosphere). Again two very different, independent physical phenomena are at work here, but the result is a pleasant view for us.

Why is Water so Strange?

Most of these unusual properties of water are the result of the collective behavior of water molecules. That means that one cannot understand them just by thinking about a single H2O molecule. A single H2O molecule is a polar molecule: the two H atoms are slightly positive and the O atom is slightly negative. So when you put these molecules close to each other, the positively charged H atoms are attracted to the negatively charged O atoms of the neighboring water molecules. This is called “hydrogen bonding.” Because of this, molecules tend to order themselves rather than moving randomly, even in liquid water.

Hydrogen bonding is thought to be responsible for most of water’s strange properties. This is why, for example, water has a high boiling point and a high heat of evaporation. Extra energy needs to be supplied to break the hydrogen bonds before boiling and evaporation can occur. Another example is the high heat capacity. As water absorbs heat, it stores this as potential energy by breaking hydrogen bonds without considerably increasing its kinetic energy. This leads to a small temperature increase, therefore a high heat capacity is created for a given amount of heat.

But not all of the anomalous properties of water are that simple. Some of them are not even understood today, despite a considerable amount of current research. For example, water seems to play a crucial role in protein folding. Protein folding is the process by which each protein acquires a unique three-dimensional shape. And it can only function effectively in this particular shape. Despite millions of different possible folding configurations, a certain protein will always fold into its unique structure within milliseconds. But how can a protein always find its way to the same configuration? Water comes into play at this point. It is thought that the hydrophobic (water repelling) interactions between water and protein molecules and the hydrogen bonding interactions in water are major driving forces in protein folding. The exact details of this are still not known. Understanding them is the key for understanding many diseases and developing drugs.

In summary, water is central to our lives. It accounts for a large proportion of our bodies, we drink it, fish in it, and wash and swim in it. But we usually are unaware of how remarkable it is. Here, we have given only couple of examples of the anomalous properties of water that are also crucial for life. Scientifically, our understanding of water is far from being complete. It seems, as the research continues, that the already long list of mysterious aspects of this miraculous substance will get even longer as we learn more about it. On the philosophical side, it is interesting to note that a very simple molecule (H2O) has been selected as a means to do all of these vital, complicated, and unrelated jobs, all at the same time through its unexpected and surprising properties. 

References 

• “Water Structure and Behavior,” Martin Chaplin, www.martin.chaplin.btinternet.co.uk
• Segelstein, D., 1981: “The Complex Refractive Index of Water”, M.S. Thesis, University of Missouri-Kansas City.
• www.biology.arizona.edu/biochemistry/tutorials/chemi stry/page3.html
• www.hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/chemical/water.html
• “Water – The Marvellous Molecule”, BBC TV program.
• www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/archive/030430_molecule.shtml