نَصْرُ الدِّين خوجَه

Nasr Eddin Hodja

c. 1208 — 1284 · Sivrihisar → Akşehir, Anatolia

The mirror that laughs —
so that you need not weep.

He is said to have been born at Sivrihisar in the 13th century, and to have died at Akşehir in 1284. But when one reads his stories, one quickly understands: he does not die, he keeps being born — everywhere someone recognises themselves in his laughter.

Hodja is that unbearable friend who says what one did not dare to. That sage who always takes the appearance of an idiot. That mirror that laughs before us, to spare us from having to weep. He is called Nasr Eddin in Turkey, Mullah Nasruddin in Iran, Djoha (جحا) in the Arab world, Goha in Egypt, Nasradin in the Balkans — a single man, twenty languages, seven hundred years.

“To renounce all that comes from reason —
now has come the time of madness.”
— Rūmī, as an epigraph to the Maunoury edition

Why meditate on him

The tales of Nasr Eddin are not humour — they are koans. Riddles that bring the truth forth through the absurd, as Zen brings forth awakening through the riddle. Maunoury said it first: a koan in which the emphasis would be placed on the derisory, on the laughable in every human undertaking.

And there is more still. If you read eight hundred little stories, you see Nasr Eddin by turns wise and foolish, honest and a trickster, pious and a blasphemer, tender and cruel, miserly and generous. He is not a character — he is the assumed catalogue of human contradictions.

When you laugh at Hodja, you laugh at yourself. When you meditate on him, you meditate on yourself. That is the mirror that laughs.

المَوْضُوع

By theme

When you are looking for a precise subject — woman, the donkey, money, power, death… Twelve thematic doors to enter the tales.

↓ See the 12 themes

القُرْعَة

By chance

As one consults the I Ching, as one draws a tarot card — the tale that falls upon you today is that one. The hand of Hodja holds it out to you.

Draw a tale

المَعْنَى

By spirit

When you are looking for a certain quality of touch — a koan, a mirror, a sacred insolence. Seven Sufi spirits that run through the work.

↓ See the 7 spirits

The 12 themes

A material classification — what the tale speaks of

المِرْآة

The mirror

Hodja facing himself — the heart of the work.

الزَّوْجَة

Woman and the couple

Khadija, the quarrels, the hidden tenderness.

الحِمَار

The donkey

His companion, his alter ego, the body he rides.

السُّلْطَان

The powerful

Tamerlane, the imam, the qadi — the art of speaking true to the king.

المَال

Money and the market

Greed, lending, trade, the missing coin.

العَدْل

Justice and the law

Hodja the judge, Hodja the judged — the court turned over.

الإِيمَان

Faith and religion

The sermon, the prayer, the absent imam, the empty mosque.

العِلْم

Knowledge and ignorance

The school, the master, the pupil — who learns from whom?

المَوْت

Death

The tomb, the widow, the end — and Hodja still laughing.

الحِيلَة

Cunning and the thief

The art of turning the trap — who catches whom?

البَيْت

Everyday life

The house, the meal, the neighbour, the cup of tea.

الطِّفْل

Childhood

Children as a mirror of adults — the impossible question.

The 7 spirits

A spiritual classification — how the tale acts

The koan

An insoluble riddle that opens. Hodja does not answer — he sets the ground moving beneath your feet.

“The ring sought in the moonlight”

The reversal

The absurd brings forth the true. Inverted logic reveals what straight logic concealed.

“If it is the cat, where is the meat?”

The mirror

Hodja = you, with no possible detour. You laugh, then you fall silent, then you recognise yourself.

“Am I a swindler or an idiot?”

Sacred insolence

To speak true to the powerful — Tamerlane, the imam, the qadi. The Sufi art of the malāmatī, the one who spares no one.

“Timur, be off with you, and quickly!”

The idiocy that sees

The wise fool. To play the idiot so that the truth may pass. The madness in God of the Sufi tradition.

“Do you know what I am going to speak to you about?”

The closed door

The answer that is not one. Hodja closes the question again instead of opening it — and that opens it otherwise.

“The prayer for a stale corpse is done like this.”

Inverted teaching

The master who learns from the pupil, the imam from the donkey, the sage from the child. The reversed hierarchy makes the meaning spring forth.

“Master, what is the most difficult thing?”

What is to come

This page is the empty architecture — soon it will fill. Here is what is in progress:

Twelve inaugural tales — one per theme, the most fitting of each family, treated like a jewel: an English retelling, the Ottoman original folded in, a meditative question, a space for personal writing.
The random draw — so that with each visit, a different tale may find you.
The private notebook — a space, beneath each tale, where you can write “at what moment of my life is Hodja telling me?”. Everything stays with you, in your browser, never sent anywhere.
The mood of the day — a third mode of entry: today I need to laugh at myself, to let go, to be a little insolent…
The resonances — each tale will open towards a poem of Rūmī, an Arabic root, a Divine Name. The site begins to dialogue with itself.

The sources of this work

Seven works, in four languages, traversed and compared to build this anthology:

Pertev Naili Boratav — Nasreddin Hoca

Kırmızı Yayınları, Istanbul, 1995 · Turkish + Ottoman · 547+ numbered tales

The absolute scholarly authority. Forty-two years of microfilming manuscripts from around the world. Canonical numbering, manuscript sources, cross-referenced variants.

Jean-Louis Maunoury — Sublimes paroles et idioties de Nasr Eddin Hodja

Phébus, Paris, 2002 (3 vol. combined) · French · ~541 little stories

The literary body of the site. Twenty years of research. Three registers: sublime words, lofty follies, divine insanities.

Anonymous — 101 histoires de Nasreddine Hodja

French · 101 thematised little stories

Brings the first thematic classification in French — woman, donkey, justice, Tamerlane, knowledge, thieves, naivety, logic.

Christophe Noël — Les Très-Mirifiques et Très-Édifiantes Aventures du Hodja

French · ~150 little stories

A compact style, a Rabelaisian tone. Useful for cross-referencing variants with Maunoury.

Raj Arumugam — Nasreddin Hodja: 100 tales in verse

2011 · English · 100 little stories in verse

A poetic adaptation. Precious for its long introduction on Nasr Eddin as a mirror of human multiplicities.

Michael Shelton — Once There Was, Twice There Wasn't

English (US) · ~50 narrated tales

The tone of the American storyteller — extended, narrative versions, suited to reading aloud.

Leonid Solovyov — The Tale of Hodja Nasreddin: Disturber of the Peace

1940 (Russian → English) · A literary novel

Not a collection — the great novel. Bukhara, oppression, resistance through cunning. It bears witness to the life of Hodja in the modern literary imagination.

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