Money Talks

One day, Nasreddin Khoja, in his usual humble dress, went to a Turkish bath.  The bath attendants totally ignored him while they lavished attention on their more prominent-looking customers.  When the Khoja left, however, he tipped the attendants handsomely, giving each one a valuable gold coin.

The next day, the Khoja returned to the same bath.  This time, the attendants treated him like a sultan.  They offered him the best towels and soap; they massaged and perfumed him; and begged him to request further service.  Upon leaving, the Khoja stunned the expectant attendants by giving them a mere penny each.  “These pennies are for last time,” explained the Khoja.  “The gold coins were for this time.”

This next anecdote deals with the problem of choosing one’s source of knowledge.

Choosing Evidence

A neighbor went to Nasreddin’s home to ask if he could borrow the Khoja’s donkey.  “It’s not here,” lied the Khoja.  “I’ve already lent it out to someone else.”  Just then, the Khoja’s donkey began to bray loudly from the backyard.

“You must be mistaken,” said the neighbor.  “I can hear your donkey braying behind your house.”

“What kind of man are you?” demanded the Khoja indignantly.  “Do you take the word of an ass over the word of a white-bearded teacher like me?”

Despite their lack of formal education, Turkish peasants and small townspeople loved stories dealing with the complexities of inductive-deductive reasoning, drawing inferences, and analogies, as we see in the following stories.