Nasreddin


Nasreddin or Nasreddin Hodja or Mullah Nasreddin Hooja or Mullah Nasruddin was a Seljuq satirist, born in Hortu Village in Sivrihisar, Eskişehir Province, present-day Turkey and died in 13th century in Akşehir, near Konya, a capital of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum, in today's Turkey. He is considered a populist philosopher, Sufi and wise man, remembered for his funny stories and anecdotes. He appears in thousands of stories, sometimes witty, sometimes wise, but often, too, a fool or the butt of a joke. A Nasreddin story usually has a subtle humour and a pedagogic nature. The International Nasreddin Hodja festival is celebrated between the 5 and 10 July in his hometown every year.

Origin and legacy

Claims about his origin are made by many ethnic groups. Many sources give the birthplace of Nasreddin as Hortu Village in Sivrihisar, Eskişehir Province, present-day Turkey, in the 13th century, after which he settled in Akşehir, and later in Konya under the Seljuq rule, where he died in 1275/6 or 1285/6 CE. The alleged tomb of Nasreddin is in Akşehir and the "International Nasreddin Hodja Festival" is held annually in Akşehir between 5–10 July.
According to Prof. Mikail Bayram who made an extensive research on Nasreddin, his full name is Nasir ud-din Mahmood al-Khoyi, his title Ahi Evran. According to him, Nasreddin was born in the city of Khoy in West Azerbaijan Province of Iran, had his education in Khorasan and became the pupil of famous Quran mufassir Fakhr al-Din al-Razi in Herat. He was sent to Anatolia by the Khalif in Baghdad to organize resistance and uprising against the Mongol invasion. He served as a kadı in Kayseri. This explains why he addresses judicial problems in the jokes not only religious ones. During the turmoil of the Mongol invasion he became a political opponent of Persian Rumi. He was addressed in Masnavi by juha anecdotes for this reason. He became the vazir at the court of Kaykaus II. Having lived in numerous cities in vast area and being steadfastly against the Mongol invasion as well as having his witty character, he was embraced by various nations and cultures from Turkey to Arabia, from Persia to Afghanistan, and from Russia to China, most of which suffered from those invasions.
The Arabic version of the character, known as "juha", is the oldest attested version of the character and the most divergent, being mentioned in Al-Jahiz's book "Saying on Mules"— القول في البغال—, according Al-Dhahabi's book Al-Dhahabi's book "ميزان الاعتدال في نقد الرجال", his full name was "Abu al-Ghusn Dujayn al-Fizari", he lived under the Umayyads in Kufa, his mother was said to be a servant to Anas ibn Malik, thus he was one of the Tabi'un in Sunni tradition.
As generations have gone by, new stories have been added to the Nasreddin corpus, others have been modified, and he and his tales have spread to many regions. The themes in the tales have become part of the folklore of a number of nations and express the national imaginations of a variety of cultures. Although most of them depict Nasreddin in an early small-village setting, the tales deal with concepts that have a certain timelessness. They purvey a pithy folk wisdom that triumphs over all trials and tribulations. The oldest manuscript of Nasreddin dates to 1571.
Today, Nasreddin stories are told in a wide variety of regions, especially across the Muslim world and have been translated into many languages. Some regions independently developed a character similar to Nasreddin, and the stories have become part of a larger whole. In many regions, Nasreddin is a major part of the culture, and is quoted or alluded to frequently in daily life. Since there are thousands of different Nasreddin stories, one can be found to fit almost any occasion. Nasreddin often appears as a whimsical character of a large Turkish, Persian, Albanian, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Bengali, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Chinese, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Judeo-Spanish, Kurdish, Romanian, Serbian, Russian, and Urdu folk tradition of vignettes, not entirely different from zen koans.
1996–1997 was declared International Nasreddin Year by UNESCO.

Name

Many peoples of the Near, Middle East, South Asia and Central Asia claim Nasreddin as their own. His name is spelt in a wide variety of ways: Nasrudeen, Nasrudin, Nasruddin, Nasr ud-Din, Nasredin, Nasiruddin, Naseeruddin, Nasr Eddin, Nastradhin, Nasreddine, Nastratin, Nusrettin, Nasrettin, Nostradin, Nastradin and Nazaruddin. It is sometimes preceded or followed by a title or honorific used in the corresponding cultures: "Hoxha", "Khwaje", "Hodja", "Hoja", "Hojja", "Hodscha", "Hodža", "Hoca", "Hocca","Hooka",
"Hogea", "Mullah", "Mulla", "Mula", "Molla", "Efendi", "Afandi", "Ependi", "Hajji". In several cultures he is named by the title alone.
In Arabic-speaking countries this character is known as "Juha", "Djoha", "Djuha", "Dschuha", "Chotzas", "Goha". Juha was originally a separate folk character found in Arabic literature as early as the 9th century, and was widely popular by the 11th century. Lore of the two characters became amalgamated in the 19th century when collections were translated from Arabic into Turkish and Persian.
In Sicily and Southern Italy he is known as "Giufà", derived from the Arabic character Juha.
In the Swahili and Indonesian culture, many of his stories are being told under the name of "Abunuwasi" or "Abunawas", though this confuses Nasreddin with an entirely different man – the poet Abu Nuwas, known for homoerotic verse.
In China, where stories of him are well known, he is known by the various transliterations from his Uyghur name, 阿凡提 and 阿方提. The Uyghurs believe that he was from Xinjiang, while the Uzbeks believe he was from Bukhara. Shanghai Animation Film Studio produced a 13-episode Nasreddin related animation called 'The Story of Afanti'/ 阿凡提 in 1979, which became one of the most influential animations in China's history. The musical Nasirdin Apandim features the legend of Nasreddin effendi, largely sourced from Uyghur folklore.
In Central Asia, he is commonly known as "Afandi". The Central Asian peoples also claim his local origin, as do Uyghurs.

Tales

The Nasreddin stories are known throughout the Middle East and have touched cultures around the world. Superficially, most of the Nasreddin stories may be told as jokes or humorous anecdotes. They are told and retold endlessly in the teahouses and caravanserais of Asia and can be heard in homes and on the radio. But it is inherent in a Nasreddin story that it may be understood at many levels. There is the joke, followed by a moral and usually the little extra which brings the consciousness of the potential mystic a little further on the way to realization.

Examples

The Sermon

Whom do you believe?

Taste the same

Nasreddin's ring

Azerbaijani literature

Nasreddin was the main character in a magazine, called simply Molla Nasraddin, published in Azerbaijan and "read across the Muslim world from Morocco to Iran". The eight-page Azerbaijani satirical periodical was published in Tiflis, Tabriz and Baku in the Azeri and occasionally Russian languages. Founded by Jalil Mammadguluzadeh, it depicted inequality, cultural assimilation, and corruption and ridiculed the backward lifestyles and values of clergy and religious fanatics. The magazine was frequently banned but had a lasting influence on Azerbaijani and Iranian literature.

European and Western folk tales, literary works and pop culture

Some Nasreddin tales also appear in collections of Aesop's fables. The miller, his son and the donkey is one example. Others are "The Ass with a Burden of Salt" and "The Satyr and the Traveller."
In some Bulgarian folk tales that originated during the Ottoman period, the name appears as an antagonist to a local wise man, named Sly Peter. In Sicily the same tales involve a man named Giufà. In Sephardic culture, spread throughout the Ottoman Empire, a character that appears in many folk tales is named Djohá.
In Romanian, the existing stories come from an 1853 verse compilation edited by Anton Pann, a philologist and poet renowned for authoring the current Romanian anthem.
Nasreddin is mostly known as a character from short tales; whole novels and stories have later been written and production began on a never-completed animated feature film. In Russia, Nasreddin is known mostly because of the Russian work Возмутитель спокойствия by Leonid Solovyov. The composer Shostakovich celebrated Nasreddin, among other figures, in the second movement of his Symphony No. 13. The text, by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, portrays humor as a weapon against dictatorship and tyranny. Shostakovich's music shares many of the "foolish yet profound" qualities of Nasreddin's sayings listed above.
The Graeco-Armenian mystic G. I. Gurdjieff often referred to "our own dear Mullah Nasr Eddin", also
calling him an "incomparable teacher", particularly in his book Beelzebub's Tales. Sufi philosopher Idries Shah published several collections of Nasruddin stories in English, and emphasized their teaching value.
He is known as Mullah Nasruddin in South Asian children's books. A TV serial on him was aired in India as Mulla Nasiruddin and was widely watched in India and Pakistan.

Uzbek Nasreddin Afandi

For Uzbek people, Nasreddin is one of their own; he is said to have lived and been born in Bukhara. In gatherings, family meetings, and parties they tell each other stories about him that are called "latifa" of "afandi".
There are at least two collections of stories related to Nasriddin Afandi.
Books on him:
In 1943, the Soviet film Nasreddin in Bukhara was directed by Yakov Protazanov based on Solovyov's book, followed in 1947 by a film called The Adventures of Nasreddin, directed by Nabi Ganiyev and also set in the Uzbekistan SSR.

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