Nasreddin Hodja was standing in the marketplace when a stranger stepped up to him and slapped him in the face, but then said, “I beg your pardon. I thought that you were someone else.”

This explanation did not satisfy the Hodja, so he brought the stranger before the qadi (Judge) and demanded compensation.

The Hodja soon perceived that the qadi and the defendant were friends. The latter admitted his guilt, and the judge pronounced the sentence: “The settlement for this offense is one piaster, to be paid to the plaintiff. If you do not have a piaster with you, then you may bring it here to the plaintiff at your convenience.”

Hearing this sentence, the defendant went on his way. The Hodja waited for him to return with the piaster. And he waited. And he waited.

Some time later the Hodja said to the qadi, “Do I understand correctly that one piaster is sufficient payment for a slap?”

“Yes,” answered the qadi.

Hearing this answer, the Hodja slapped the judge in the face and said, “You may keep my piaster when the defendant returns with it,” then walked away.

The Hodja and his wife made an agreement to fulfill their marital duties every Friday night.

“But with all my other obligations, how will I remember that it is Friday night?” asked Nasreddin.

“Each week I shall place your turban on the large chest, so you will know that it is Friday,” answered the wife.

One night, not on a Friday, the wife desired to make love, so she placed Nasreddin’s turban on the chest.

The Hodja said, “But wife, this is not Friday night.”

She answered, “It is Friday night.”

He replied, “Wife, in this house either Friday shall wait for me, or I shall wait for Friday.”

One night Nasreddin awoke, thinking he had heard a strange noise outside his window. Looking out, he saw a suspicious white figure.

“Who goes there?” shouted the Hodja.

Hearing no reply, Nasreddin reached for his bow, set an arrow to the string, took aim, and shot in the direction of the mysterious figure. Satisfied that the intruder now would do him no harm, Nasreddin returned to bed and slept until dawn.

By morning’s light he examined the scene outside his window, only to discover his own white shirt hanging on the clothesline and pierced by the arrow that he had shot during the night.

“That was a close call,” murmured the Hodja. “My own shirt, shot through by an arrow! What if I had been wearing it at the time!”

Nasreddin Hodja, having need for a large cooking container, borrowed his neighbor’s copper cauldron, then returned it in a timely manner.

“What is this?” asked his neighbor upon examining the returned cauldron. “There is a small pot inside my cauldron.”

“Oh,” responded the Hodja. “While it was in my care your cauldron gave birth to a little one. Because you are the owner of the mother cauldron, it is only right that you should keep its baby. And in any event, it would not be right to separate the child from its mother at such a young age.”

The neighbor, thinking that the Hodja had gone quite mad, did not argue. Whatever had caused the crazy man to come up with this explanation, the neighbor had a nice little pot, and it had cost him nothing.

Some time later the Hodja asked to borrow the cauldron again.

“Why not?” thought the neighbor to himself. “Perhaps there will be another little pot inside when he returns it.”

But this time the Hodja did not return the cauldron. After many days had passed, the neighbor went to the Hodja and asked for the return of the borrowed cauldron.

“My dear friend,” replied the Hodja. “I have bad news. Your cauldron has died, and is now in her grave.”

“What are you saying?” shouted the neighbor. A cauldron does not live, and it cannot die. Return it to me at once!”

“One moment!” answered the Hodja. “This is the same cauldron that but a short time ago gave birth to a child, a child that is still in your possession. If a cauldron can give birth to a child, then it also can die.”

And the neighbor never again saw his cauldron.

One night the Hodja looked into his well and saw there the reflection of the full moon.

“Oh no!” he exclaimed. “The moon has fallen from the sky and into my well!”

He ran into his house and returned with a hook attached to a rope. He then threw the hook into the water and commenced to pull it up again, but it became stuck on the side of the well. Frantically the Hodja tugged and pulled with all his might. The hook suddenly came loose, and the Hodja fell over backwards, landing flat on his back. Scarcely able to move, he looked up into the sky and saw the full moon above him.

“I may have injured myself in doing so,” he said with satisfaction, “but at least I got the moon back into the sky where it belongs.”

The Hodja purchased a piece of meat at the market, and on his way home he met a friend.

Seeing the Hodja’s purchase, the friend told him an excellent recipe for stew.

“I’ll forget it for sure,” said the Hodja. “Write it on a piece of paper for me.”

The friend obliged him, and the Hodja continued on his way, the piece of meat in one hand and the recipe in the other. He had not walked far when suddenly a large hawk swooped down from the sky, snatched the meat, and flew away with it.

“It will do you no good!” shouted the Hodja after the disappearing hawk. “I still have the recipe!”

Perhaps Nasr-ed-Din Hodja had been sitting too long in the warm coffee house swapping yarns with his friends. His boasts were growing bigger and bigger. None was bigger than the Hodja’s.

“I could stand all night in the snow without any fire to warm me.” The Hodja noisily gulped down one more hot cup of sweet black coffee.

“No one could do that!” One of the men shivered as he looked through the window at the falling snow.

“I could!” The Hodja spread his hands over the open pan of burning coals. “I’ll do it this very night.”

“You can’t!”

“I will! If I have so much as a glow of fire to warm myself, I’ll – I’ll – I’ll give a feast for you all at my house tomorrow!”

The wager was on.

The friends of Nasr-ed-Din Hodja went home to their warm beds, while he stood alone in the snow-draped market square. He had never realized how much the longer the hours were at night than in the daytime. He had never realized how many hours there were in the night. Once in a while a prowling dog or an adventuring cat would sniff at him, and then slink off to a snugger spot. The cold snow swathing his feet and tickling his neck was hard enough to bear. Harder still was the sleepiness that plagued him. It would never do to fall asleep in the snow. He must keep awake to stamp his cold feet and beat his cold arms. He found that it was easier to fight off sleep if he fastened his eyes on the flickering candle in Mehmet Ali’s house across the market square. There was something cheering about the wavering of that tiny flame, which helped his tired eyes stay open.

Morning came at last. Curious men met the shivering and yawning Hodja on his way home to a cup of hot coffee. They asked about his night and marveled at what he had done.

“How did you keep awake all night?” they asked.

“I fixed my eyes on a flickering candle in Mehmet Ali’s house,” he answered.

“A candle?”

“A burning candle?”

“Did you say a candle?”

“Of course!” The Hodja saw no harm in watching a candle.

“A lighted candle gives flame. Flame gives heat. You were warming yourself by the heat of that candle. You have lost your wager.”

At first the Hodja tried to laugh at their joke, but he soon found that they were not joking. For once, the Hodja was too tired to argue successfully. Try as he would, he could not convince his friends that a candle in a distant house could give no warmth to a cold man standing in a snowy market square.

“What time shall we come for the feast at your house tonight?” The laughing men gathered about the Hodja, insisting that they had won the wager.

“Come at sunset,” said the Hodja. He plodded drearily toward home. He was cold and very tired, but he was thinking – and thinking hard.

Just after the muezzin’s musical voice sent the sunset call to prayer trilling over Ak Shekir, a group of men knocked at Nasr-ed-Din Hodja’s street gate. It creaked open for them. They walked across the courtyard and left their shoes in a row beside the house door. They entered the Hodja’s house and sat cross-legged on the floor.

“Dinner is not quite ready.” It was the Hodja’s voice from the kitchen.

“Oh, that’s all right,” called the men. “We are in no hurry.”

They waited. There was an occasional footstep in the kitchen, but no sound of clattering dishes. They sniffed the air to guess what the feast might be, but they could smell no cooking food. They waited – and waited – and waited.

“I hope you are not hungry,” called the Hodja from the kitchen. “Dinner is not quite ready yet.”

“Perhaps we could help,” suggested a hungry guest.

“Fine,” called the Hodja. “You might all come out in the kichen to help.”

The men, glad of anything to do, stretched their cramped legs. As each man entered the kitchen, there passed over his face a look of surprise and then a sheepish grin.

There stood the Hodja earnestly stirring the contents of a big copper kettle which was suspended high in the air. Far below it burned one flickering candle.

“Just a few minutes!” The Hodja, standing a-tiptoe, peeered into the cold kettle. “It should boil before long. A candle gives so much heat, you know!”

Nasreddin Hodja had grown old and was near death. His two grieving wives, knowing that his end was near, were dressed in mourning robes and veils.

“What is this?” he said, seeing their sorrowful appearance. “Put aside your veils. Wash your faces. Comb your hair. Make yourselves beautiful. Put on your most festive apparel.”

“How could we do that?” asked the older of his wives, “with our dear husband on his deathbed?”

With a wry smile he replied, speaking more to himself than to them, “Perhaps when the Angel of Death makes his entry he will see the two of you, all decked out like young brides, and will take one of you instead of me.”

With these final words he laughed quietly to himself, happily closed his eyes, and died.

Nasruddin Hodja was strolling to market one day when he saw a strange, dark shape appear, blocking his path. “I am Death,” it said, “I have come for you.”

“Death?” said Nasruddin. “But I’m not even particularly old! And I have so much to do. Are you sure you aren’t mistaking me for someone else?”

“I only kill people who are not yet ready to die,” said Death.

“I think you’re wrong,” replied the Hoja. “Let’s make a bet.”

“A bet? Perhaps. But what shall the stakes be?”

“My life against a hundred pieces of silver.”

“Done,” said Death, a bag of silver instantly appearing in his hand. “What a stupid bet you made. After all, what’s to stop me from just killing you now, and thus winning automatically?”

“Because I knew you were going to kill me,” said Nasruddin, “that’s why I made the bet.”

“Hmmm . . .” mused Death. “I see. But . . . but, didn’t you also know, then, that I would not be able to kill you, because of the terms of our agreement?”

“Not at all,” said Nasruddin, and continued down the road, clutching the bag of money.

Once, when the Hodja was standing in for the village schoolmaster, he was sent a large box of baklava by the parents of one of his students. His mouth watered at the thought of eating them, but he put them away in the drawer of his desk. Shortly afterwards he was called out on urgent business.

He set his students a lot of work to do.

“And I shall expect you to get everything right,” he said, “or there will be trouble.” He glared at them. “Big trouble.”

“One thing more,” he said as he made for the door. “I have enemies. Many enemies. I keep being sent poisoned meats and poisoned sweets. Even,” he added fiercely, “poisoned baklava. I have to test everything before I eat it. So be warned. If you hope for a long life, don’t touch anything that has been sent to me. Especially baklava.”

As soon as he was gone, his nephew, who was one of his students, went to the desk and took out the baklava.

“Don’t!” his friends shouted. “They may be poisoned!”

The boy grinned at them.

Of course they aren’t,” he said. “He just wants to keep them for himself.” And he started in on the baklava. “They really are very good,” he said. He ate another one.

When his friends saw that he didn’t fall to the floor in a writhing heap, they gathered round the Hodja’s desk and shared out the baklava.

“But what will we tell him when he finds they’ve all gone?” one of them said, wiping the crumbs from his mouth.

The Hodja’s nephew just smiled.

When the Hodja returned, he went straight to his desk and looked in his drawer. He glared at his students.

“Someone,” he said, “someone has been at my desk.”

There was silence.

“Someone has been in my drawer.”

Silence.

“And someone has eaten the baklava.”

“I have,” said his nephew.

“ You have! After what I told you?”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps you have some explanation. If so I would like to hear it before you die.”

“Well,” said his nephew, “the work you set was far too hard for me. I couldn’t do any of it. Everything I’ve done is wrong. I knew you would be very angry and my parents would be very disappointed. I felt so ashamed I decided that the only thing to do was to…to…to put an end to my life. So I ate your poisoned baklava. It was the only way I could think of on the spur of the moment. But the funny thing is, nothing’s happened yet. I wonder why that is.”

The Hodja examined his nephew’s innocent expression minutely.

“Perhaps,” he said, “it’s just a punishment postponed. In which case I ought to have a look at work you have done.”

One day a man in Hodja’s village died, leaving seventeen donkeys for his three sons. According to his will the oldest son would receive one-half of his donkeys, the second one-third, and the youngest one-ninth. When the sons are unable to divide the donkeys according to their father’s wishes, they came to Hodja to resolve their differences.

“You are fighting over nothing,” said Hodja. “I will lend you my donkey and everything will be in order.”

Adding his donkey made the total eighteen, so he gave one-half, or nine donkeys, to the eldest son; one-third, or six, to second, and one-ninth, or two, to the youngest, making a total of seventeen.

He bowed to the three young men, climbed onto his donkey and headed for home.

One day Hodja was sitting in front of his hut searching in the dust when a neighbor came by and asked him what he was searching for.

When Hodja told him he had lost his gold coin, the neighbor kneeled down and started sifting through the dirt.

After a while, when he asked Hodja exactly where he had lost it, Hodja told him that it had disappeared inside the hut.

When the surprised neighbor asked why he was searching outside, Hodja replied, “Its much too dark inside the hut to look for it.”

Nasreddin Hodja was lying in the shade of an ancient walnut tree. His body was at rest, but, befitting his calling as an imam (Prayer Leader), his mind did not relax. Looking up into the mighty tree he considered the greatness and wisdom of Allah (God).

“Allah is great and Allah is good,” said the Hodja, “but was it indeed wise that such a great tree as this be created to bear only tiny walnuts as fruit? Behold the stout stem and strong limbs. They could easily carry the pumpkins that grow from spindly vines in yonder field, vines that cannot begin to bear the weight of their own fruit. Should not walnuts grow on weakly vines and pumpkins on sturdy trees?”

So thinking, the Hodja dosed off, only to be awakened by a walnut that fell from the tree, striking him on his forehead.

“Allah be praised!” he exclaimed, seeing what had happened. “If the world had been created according to my meager wisdom, it would have been a pumpkin that fell from the tree and hit me on the head. It would have killed me for sure! Allah is great! Allah is good! Allah is wise!”

Never again did Nasreddin Hodja question the wisdom of Allah.

Once when Nasreddin Hodja was serving as qadi (Judge), one of his neighbors came to him with a complaint against a fellow neighbor.

The Hodja listened to the charges carefully, then concluded, “Yes, dear neighbor, you are quite right.”

Then the other neighbor came to him. The Hodja listened to his defense carefully, then concluded, “Yes, dear neighbor, you are quite right.”

The Hodja’s wife, having listened in on the entire proceeding, said to him, “Husband, both men cannot be right.”

The Hodja answered, “Yes, dear wife, you are quite right.”