Nasreddin Hoca, Mulla Nasreddin, Efendi, etc

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Hoja in Deathbed

With his last breath, Nasreddin Hoja scandalizes his wife by making fun of the grim angel of death, Azrael, when he sees him already hovering near his bed. "Put on your very best clothes, my dear wife," Hoja says. " Do your hair nicely, and put some colour on your face. Try to make yourself as beautiful as possible. Then perhaps if Angel Azrael sees you in these fine clothes looking like and angel or a peacock, he might take you along and leave me."

Hoja and the Curse

There is a legend - only a legend - that when Nasreddin Hoja was young and still at school, two of his classmates killed, cooked and ate a lamb of which their teacher was extremely fond. The teacher was deeply pained and shocked by the enormity of this outrage, and he soon found out who the culprits were. Nasreddin Hoja's classmates confessed that one of them had slit the animal's throat while the other had flayed and cooked it, and when asked what role Nasreddin Hoja had played in this despicable affair, they said he had only watched and laughed. So the teacher had a curse on them saying, "Let him who slit the throat of my lamb have his own throat slit. Let him who flayed my lamb himself be flayed. and let him who laughed be laughed at by the whole world."

...............................

Years later, the legend goes, the curse was fulfilled, with disastrous consequences for the other students. But in the case of Nasreddin Hoja it turned out somewhat differently. It is not at Nasreddin Hoja but with him that the world has been laughing for seven and a half centuries, and with whom people will continue to laugh for ever more.

Hoja and the End of the World

A group of philosophers travelled far and wide to find, and
contemplated for many years, the end of the world but could not state
a time for its coming. Finally they turned to Nasreddin Hoja and
asked him:

- Do you know when the end of the world will be?
- Of course, said he, when I die, that will be the end of the world.
- When you die? Are you sure?
- It will be for me, said he.

The Three Truths

One day the effendi took his carrying pole and rope and went to the bazaar looking for work. He joined a group of day laborers waiting to be hired, squatted down and hoped for a bit of luck. After a while, a great lord came along and called out loudly, `I have bought a case of porcelain. To the one who will carry it home for me I will tell three incontrovertible truths.' (cont. next page)