Serif Mardin, Said Nursi, Islam, Quran, Risale-i Noor, Nur 

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF ISLAMIC THOUGHT IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY AND BEDIUZZAMAN SAID NURSI 

Professor Mardin was born in 1927, and in 1948 graduated from Stanford University, California. He then joined the Political Sciences Department as an assistant, and rose to the rank of Professor in the same university. He moved to Boğaziçi University in Istanbul in 1973. Professor Mardin has published numerous works and articles, translated into Turkish, such as Din ve İdeoloji, and Jön Türkler, and into Japanese and other languages. He is the close relation of the late Ebu'lula Mardin. He first started doing sociological research on the subject of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi and Nurjuluk (the Risaie-i Nur movement) at the suggestion of the thinker Cemil Meriç, and the fruit of ten years' work in this field was Religion and Social Change in Turkey; the Case of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, which was published in America in December 1989. Translated into Turkish, it was published in Turkey in October 1992 under the title, Bediuzzaman Said Nursî Olayı; Modem Türkiye'de Din ve Toplumsal Değişim. Professor Mardin has lectured in Paris, London, and America on Said Nursi and the Nutju movement. An article entitled, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, the Shaping of a Vocation, appeared in the work Religious Organization and Religious Experience (1982).