The Book of Light (Risale i-Nur) is one of the most important and comprehensive Islamic theological and spiritual works of the twentieth century. Composed in grave and difficult circumstances by the renowned Muslim sage and scholar Imam Bedi'uzzaman Said Nursi (1877-1960) during the transitional early post-Ottoman period in which the tenets of Muslim faith and Islamic civilisation were being threatened by the encroachment of atheistic ideology, it is a spiritual and intellectual manifesto of encyclopedic scope, that makes the full range of the Islamic sciences accesible within the radically transformed circumstances in which contemporary man now finds himself.

The Short Words was one of the first parts of The Book of Light to be written, and comprises eight enduringly popular epistles that illustrate important spiritual truths relating to true faith, worship and man's life in both of this world and the hereafter, through allegories and analogies that represent deep sacred realities.