Many religious traditions, for instance, have legends claiming that a site was chosen when a revered person’s mount, unguided by human hands, stopped at a particular place. That simple story—what folklorists call a “tale type”—explains in its many localized forms, or variants, the origins of mosques, Sufi shrines, Christian churches and monasteries, and so on, attributing the divinely inspired choice of locale to camels, donkeys, and horses. So with the trickster-fool tales of the Middle East, although the same plot may be found from Morocco to Afghanistan and perhaps beyond, the hero goes by different names in different parts of the region.

In the Arab countries, the trickster-fool is known most commonly as Juha (Goha in the Egyptian dialect) or Abu Nawwas. Juha tends to appear more frequently in oral tradition, but Abu Nawwas is found over a wider geographic area, and even beyond the Arab world in East Africa.

In Iran and Afghanistan the trickster-fool goes by the Farsi name Mullah Nasruddin, and in Turkey he is Nasreddin Khoja or Nasruddin Hodja. Arguments have been made to establish the historical origins of the popular hero’s various incarnations.

Anecdotes of Nasreddin Khoja

Fikralar (anecdotes) concerning the Khoja exist for practically any situation. They provide humor and wit while offering various perspectives on life’s situations. Each has several levels of meaning, as can be found in the trials and tribulations of Nasreddin Khoja, a mythical figure who purportedly lived in the thirteenth or fourteenth century. The Khoja (meaning religious teacher) is both wise and naive, shrewd yet gullible, and always a comical figure. All Turks know, and practically all love, this famous character, whom they usually depict on his favorite donkey.

No one has ever counted all the Khoja stories; however, the European folklorist Albert Wesselski collected over five hundred such tales in his two-volume Der Hodscha Nasreddin.