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My ‘azîz, siddîq brother, and a zealous and earnest companion in this fleeting world!

…

Thirty years ago, while I was a member of the Dar al-Hikmah, one day one of our friends, a fellow member of the Dar al-Hikmah, Sayyid Sa‘deddin Pasha, said to me:

‘I have been informed through a reliable source; a zandaqa committee, whose roots are abroad and whose presence is here, has read a work of yours. They said: “If the author of this work remains alive in this world, we will never be able to make this nation accept our path (that is, zandaqa, which is irreligion). We must eliminate his existence.” Thus, they have decreed your execution. Protect yourself.’

And I replied: تَوَكَّلْتُ عَلَى اللهِ1

The appointed time of death is decreed and it does not alter.

Indeed, for thirty or forty years, this committee has both expanded and employed every kind of intrigue in its struggle against me. They have attempted to imprison me twice for my extermination and to poison me eleven times (it has now become nineteen times). Their latest terrible plan has been to deploy the former minister of the interior, the former governor of Afyon and the former acting district governor of Emirdağ against me, thereby using the influence of the official government against me with all its severity.

Although I saw that those three official authorities directed such propaganda against a helpless one like me — who is weak, elderly, reclusive, poor, in ghurbah and in great need of assistance — and intimidated everyone to such an extent that if an official greeted me, they would reassign him the moment they found out, meaning no official except spies ever visited me, and some of my neighbours out of their fear never greeted me at all; the ‘inâyah and protection of Allah granted me a patience and endurance. This unprecedented torture and this oppression did not compel me to bow down to them.

…