Arvo Krikmann
TALES ABOUT
HODJA NASREDDIN
From Language to Mind 4
Elva, 16. 09. 2010
Archival and other source materials can suggest and
support the hypothesis that the non-punchlined "ATU"Schwanks with their well-known subcategories (like
deception tales, tales about numskulls and another
fools, so-called tall tales, and tales of lucky accidents)
and punchlined jokes represent just two different
historical strata in the jokelore of many European
nations (including Estonians).
Some German folklorists (H. Bausinger, S. Neumann, L.
Röhrich, N. Neumann, etc.) have even attempted to
corroborate that many of contemporary punchlined
German Witzes are the direct typological descendants of
their older non-punchlined Schwank ancestors.
This can be well (at least partially) true for the European
(particularly Northern-European) area, and can be
supported by various more general theoretical
observations as well.
On the other hand, there are numerous old empirical
sources (like the notorious "Philogelos" and others)
consisting mainly of short punchlined jokes and thus
verifying that the punchline as such is altogether not a
historically recent invention in the development of
joke-making.
But the most serious empirical argument that has
totally confused me, vanished my faith in the strictly
bivalent distinguishabilty between the punchlined and
non-punchlined humorous narratives and completely
demolished my hitherto perception of what the
punchline "as such" is, was the existence of the huge
and extremely heterogeneous corpus of tales about
Hodja Nasreddin that have been, and continue to be,
very popular and productive in the very large area of
the Oriental word.
Besides, being perhaps the most well-known
representative of "wise fools" in the world folklore,
Nasreddin totally destroyed my earlier perception of
axiological rules governing humorous narratives, the
very concepts of "good" and "bad" in humour, of
relationships between the cleverness and stupidity,
between the philosophical depth and seriousness (Idries
Shah and others, as we know, consider Nasreddin an
outstanding Sufi poet and philosopher) and coarse
vulgar clownade, between the intentional and the
spontaneous in general, etc.
All versions of Aarne-Thompson folk tale registers
(including the last ATU version) are very eurocentric, the
share of Eastern material in them is inadequately low.
(Artem Kozmin’s distribution maps of ATU plots
demonstrate that eurocentricity very conspicuously):
http://starling.rinet.ru/kozmin/tales/
This also holds for the folktales connected with Hodja
Nasreddin. In the chapter of anecdotes and jokes of
Uther’s register the share of Nasreddin plots seems to
be relatively high, as it includes at least 126 references
to Albert Wesselski’s book "Der Hodscha Nasreddin" I–
II (1911), that is, almost ¼ of all Uther’s joke plots. But
one must bear in mind that in Wesselski's book,
particularly in volume II, the percentage of materials
originating from Southern Europe and other places
outside Turkey and other "core areas" of such plots is
quite high. In Kharitonov’s collection, which 2nd edition
(1987) includes 1238 different plots of 24 Eastern
peoples, I found only about 50 references to the older
versions by Aarne, Thompson, Andreev, the register of
Eastern Slavic peoples by Barag et al., that constitute
only ab. 4% of the sum of Kharitonov’s plots, at that
Kharitonov’s choice must be considered altogether
representative: about a half of his plots are indicated in
sources of at least two different Eastern peoples.
It is difficult to imagine what would happen if
someone attempted to merge that huge amount of
new international Eastern types into the present body
of the ATU. Or rather: nothing would happen, because
it is absolutely impossible to realize intentions of this
kind without completely demolishing the existing
system of ATU categorization.
The characters of humorous tales in the registers of
Aarne’s pedigree are bivalently divided to clearly
stupid (or worth of punisment for other vices) and
clearly clever ones, their system excludes any
possibility to reserve some special subdivisions for
"wise fools". Anyway, according to Uther (based on
Wesselski’s collection) Nasreddin is considerably more
frequently met in numskull stories than in tales about
a clever man.
Here are the numerical data:
Let us look at the following seven variants of Nasreddin
plots that seem to reiterate quite frequently in various
printed and Internet sources and, at the same time, are
indexed in ATU registers and thus should belong, on the
principle, to non-punchlined Schwanks, not punchlined
jokes.
But, when reading these examples, please contemplate a
little bit on some questions:
1) how "non-punchlined" do you really feel them?
2) how are stupidity and cleverness related in Hodja’s
behaviour in each of these stories (in Uther’s system the
first five stories belong to the category "The Clever Man",
the sixth – to the category "Other Jokes about Religious
Figures", and only the seventh – to the category "Stories
about a Fool" (previously Thompson’s "Numskull Stories")?
3) to what extent and sense is there possible to speak
about the "real winner" or "real loser" of the conflict arising
in each of the stories?
ATU 1594. The Donkey is Not at Home
One day, a friend of the Hodja came to him and asked if
he could borrow his donkey for two hours to go to the
town. The Hodja, not really wanting to lend his donkey,
thought for a while and then said:
"Dear friend, I would like to help you but I have lent my
donkey to another friend."
The man was turning to leave when he heard the donkey,
who was in the stable, bray. The braying became louder
and louder. Then the man turned to the Hodja with great
anger and shouted:
"You, Hodja, you have cheated me!"
The Hodja, in turn, was very angry and shouted back:
"You silly man, haven't you any sense, whom do you
believe, me or the donkey."
ATU 1558. Welcome to the Clothes
The Hodja was invited to a banquet. Not wanting to be
pretentious, he wore his everyday clothes, only to
discover that everyone ignored him, including the host.
So he went back home and put on his fanciest coat, and
then returned to the banquet. Now he was greeted
cordially by everyone and invited to sit down and eat and
drink.
When the soup was served to him he dunked the sleeve
of his coat into the bowl and said, "Eat, my coat, eat!"
The startled host asked the Hodja to explain his strange
behavior.
"When I arrived here wearing my other clothes,"
explained the Hodja, "no one offered me anything to eat
or drink. But when I returned wearing this fine coat, I
was immediately offered the best of everything, so I can
only assume that it was the coat and not myself who was
invited to your banquet."
ATU 1592B. The Pot Has a Child and Dies
Nasreddin borrowed a pot from his friend. The next day, he
gave the pot back to the friend, and also gave him another
smaller pot. The friend looked at the small pot, and said,
"What is that?"
"Your pot gave birth while I had it," Nasreddin replied, "so I
am giving you its child." The friend was glad to receive the
bonus and didn't ask any more questions.
A week later, Nasreddin borrowed the original pot from the
friend. After a week passed, the friend asked Nasreddin to
return it.
"I cannot," Nasreddin said.
"Why not?" the friend replied.
"Well," Nasreddin answered, "I hate to be the bearer of bad
news...but your pot has died."
"What!" the friend asked with skepticism. "A pot cannot
die!"
"You believed it gave birth," Nasreddin said. "So why is it
that you cannot believe it has died?"
ATU 1624. Thief's Excuse: The Big Wind
Cogia Efendi one day went into a garden, pulled up some
carrots and turnips and other kinds of vegetables, which
he found, putting some into a sack and some into his
bosom; suddenly the gardener coming up, laid hold of
him, and said, "What are you seeking here?"
The Cogia, being in great consternation, not finding any
other reply, answered, "For some days past a great wind
has been blowing, and that wind blew me hither."
"But who pulled up these vegetables?" said the
gardener.
"As the wind blew very violently," replied the Cogia, "it
cast me here and there, and whatever I laid hold of in
the hope of saving myself remained in my hands."
"Ah," said the gardener, "but who filled the sack with
them?"
"Well," said the Cogia, "that is the very question I was
about to ask myself when you came up."
ATU 1534E*. Good Decision
(usually connected with the character of Hershele in
Jewish jokes)
Nasreddin Hodja was named the kadi of Aksehir. One
day, two men with a dispute came to him and asked him
to resolve their conflict. The Hodja listened to the
plaintiff first.
"You are right!" he said when the plaintiff completed his
account.
Then, the Hodja listened to the defendant.
"You are right!" he said to the defendant as well.
Everyone in the room was perplexed.
One of the observers dared to protest.
"Kadi effendi," he said, "You agreed with both of the
parties. The dispute can't be settled if you say "you are
right" to both of them."
Nasreddin Hodja considered for a moment, then he said:
"You are right too!"
ATU 1826. The Clergyman Has No Need to Preach
Once, the people of The City invited Mulla Nasruddin to
deliver a khutba. When he got on the minbar (pulpit), he
found the audience was not very enthusiastic, so he asked
"Do you know what I am going to say?" The audience
replied "NO", so he announced "I have no desire to speak to
people who don't even know what I will be talking about"
and he left. The people felt embarrassed and called him
back again the next day. This time when he asked the same
question, the people replied "YES" So Mullah Nasruddin
said, "Well, since you already know what I am going to say,
I won't waste any more of your time" and he left. Now the
people were really perplexed. They decided to try one more
time and once again invited the Mullah to speak the
following week. Once again he asked the same question "Do you know what I am going to say?" Now the people
were prepared and so half of them answered "YES" while
the other half replied "NO". So Mullah Nasruddin said "The
half who know what I am going to say, tell it to the other
half" and he left!
ATU 1334*. The Old Moon and the Stars
One day Nasreddin Hodja and a friend were admiring
the sky and watching a new moon.
"Hodja Effendi," asked the friend, what do they do with
the old moons?"
"They cut them, trim them and turn them into stars!"
Stupidity and cleverness certainly cannot serve as
criteria to distinguish Schwanks from jokes, because
jokes abound in them not less than Schwanks.
Furthermore, the pairs of stupid and clever characters
conflicting and fighting with each other are very
frequent both in Schwanks as well as in punchlined
jokes.
The clever person always wins, and the victory can be
"real" or "material" (typically in non-punchlined
Schwanks) or verbal (typically in punchlined jokes).
Salvatore Attardo’s so-called GTVH (General Theory of
Verbal Humour) and other theories based on punchlined
jokes (be they ethnic, linguistic or other) can confine
themselves to identifying only one kind of joke
characters – the target ~ butt ~ object, etc.
In the works of different writers the meaning (read:
axiological marking) of this term tacitly fluctuates from
overtly "laughable at" (mockable, criticizable) persons
to persons met with total cynical indifference in black
humour to persons saying funny witticisms that are not
addressed directly against somebody "on the same
scene". More often, however, such witticisms do
function as repartees parrying the antagonist's previous
move.
Briefly, the GTVH has no terminological device to denote
the "positive hero" of the humorous narrative,
otherwise: no device to distinguish "silly punchlines"
from "witty punchlines".
For example:
 Emperor Charles the Bald: What separates an
Irishman from a fool?
Irish philosopher John Scotus: Just this table.
(Quoted from Veale, Tony, Kurt Feyaerts, Geert Brône. The cognitive
mechanisms of adversarial humor. Humor, vol. 19-3, pp. 318; see therein
also about the structure of so-called trumping humour in general)
Here Charles the Bald is evidently the target of the
verbal punch he gets from John Scotus. But how
should one describe the role left for Scotus
himself? Our intuitive knowledge of "joke
grammar" would suggest to us that the punchline
is usually said by the target ~ butt ~ object of the
joke, but that is not the case. How should one
describe the role of the clever winner in whichever
non-punchlined tale of deception? Are they
"sources" of humour, or if not, then what are they?
It is a well-known folkloristic fact that some strong
constituent (be it a date of the folk calender, a narrative
character, etc.) tends to attract and perpetuate to itself
certain content elements (beliefs and customs, plots etc.)
originally connected with other, weaker dates, characters
etc.
It is difficult, if not impossible to ascertain the origin and
age of plots that are nowadays known as stories about
Nasreddin or restore the main trends of historical
development of "Nasreddin repertoire" in general.
Anyway, as Nasreddin has become the Turkish national
hero and brand figure, the attempts have been made to
consider as "inauthentic" the stories where Nasreddin is
involved in bad deeds (drinks alcohol, or harrasses
women, or is shown as stingy or greedy, etc.) Further,
Idries Shah, the psychologist Robert Ornstein and others
have tried to qualify him as an outstanding Sufi poet and
philosopher and extract from behind the surface of his
seemingly foolish and absurd deeds and sayings some
deep-reaching philosophical content.
One perhaps the most well-known items of the kind is the
widely known contemporary joke about a drunkard looking
for his keys which had originally (and often has also in the
contemporary sources) Hodja Nasreddin as its target
figure, instead of the anonymous drunkard, which occurs
in innummerable printed and internet sources in many
languages.
Here is an example from Idries Shah:
 One day Mullah Nasruddin lost his ring down in the
basement of his house, where it was very dark. There being
no chance of his finding it in that darkness, he went out on
the street and started looking for it there.
Somebody passing by stopped and enquire: "What are you
looking for, Mullah Nasruddin ? Have you lost something?"
"Yes, I've lost my ring down in the basement."
"But Mullah Nasruddin , why don't you look for it down in
the basement where you have lost it?" asked the man in
surprise.
"Don't be silly, man! How do you expect me to find
anything in that darkness!"
And here are some Internet addresses:
In English: ring lost
http://aton.ttu.edu/narratives/wmVol_541690_The_Better_Light.pdf
http://forum.arbuz.com/archive/index.php/t-8401.html
http://forum.mevsimsiz.net/index.php?showtopic=10877
http://hem.bredband.net/hodja/neighbor.htm
http://kitapadresi.com/magaza/prddet.php?pid=19679
http://members.shaw.ca/fufon/pdfs/07-04-01_Humor.pdf
http://qd.typepad.com/23/2005/01/test.html
http://static.scribd.com/docs/ji77ladiu3e7p.swf?INITIAL_V
IEW=width
http://www.business-with-turkey.com/touristguide/jokes2e.shtml
http://www.experiencefestival.com/nasreddin__the_lost_key http://www.ingilizceforum.org/nasreddinhoca-fikralari-ingilizce-nasreddin-hoca-fikralari-t-813.html
http://www.karavantreasures.com/about.asp
http://www.mberkay.com/
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2884497/Nasrudin-JokesCompilation
http://www.shapeonline.net/articles071204/NasreddinHoca-Anectodes.html
http://www.story-lovers.com/listshodjastories.html
http://www.tumkitaplar.com/kitap/index.pl?kitap=92787
http://www.westender.com.au/stories.php?s_id=480
http://www.wordsinfo.com/jokes/disp.php?id=4
In English: key(s) lost
http://echan.thd-web.jp/e4877.html
http://www.blackcatcideb.com/main02/PDF/BC_Read_COL.pdf
http://www.danielfortunov.com/
http://www.duurzaamleren.org/download/preslindabooths
weeney.pdf
http://www.nellies.jp/shop/info.php?lang=en&isbn=97888
53006998
http://www.transformationaltherapy.com/a_sufi_story.ht
m
http://www.transformationaltherapy.com/a_sufi_story.ht
m
http://www.cideb.it/mp3/Nasreddin.doc
http://tomjm.blogspot.com/2005/11/want-to-laugh.html
http://tomjm.blogspot.com/2005/11/want-to-laugh.html
In German: ring lost
http://duepublico.uni-duisburgessen.de/servlets/DerivateServlet/Derivate163/document-142.txt
http://www.astrologix.de/forum/ForumID55/753.html
http://www.bmukk.gv.at/medienpool/15959/msz9.pdf
http://www.chatnoir.de/foren/w3.restrisiko.htm
http://www.grossrinderfeld.com/archgemblatt/volltext-2000-06-23.pdf
http://www.unimuenster.de/imperia/md/content/fachbereich_physik/d
idaktik_physik/publikationen/p_fragen1.pdf
In German: key(s) lost
http://bitimage.dyndns.org/german/WernerGitt/Wunder
_Und_Wunderbares_2005.pdf
http://www.klarheit.at/Einstimmung.htm
http://www.newaeon.de/index.php?act=viewTextPrintVe
rsion&textID=109211
http://www.oebv.at/erziehung_unterricht/archiv/08_01
/Akkus.pdf
http://www.quja.de/unter/pdf/nass_syst_struk.pdf
http://www.systemischeloesungen.at/newsletter/NewsO
kt01.pdf
http://www.transpersonal.at/5_files/fachbeitraege/Walc
h_TranspersPsycho.pdf
http://www.wandelweb.de/blog/?p=95
www.volleyball-training.de/material/texte/schluessel.rtf
In Russian: ring lost
http://echo.msk.ru/interview/10946/index.phtml
http://www.cir.ru/docs/http/www.budgetrf.ru/Publication
s/Magazines/papers/04092004/PAP_KP_20040904___040
90440.htm
http://www.vasilevsky.net/pritcha-v-dome-temno-ishchuna-ulice
In Russian: key(s) lost
http://ariom.ru/litera/2003-html/shakh/shakh-03.html
http://blog.shumoos.com/archives/category/oidhaaeaieaidhiaeoaie/
http://diary.ru/~aravis/?comments&postid=24777818
http://edu.of.ru/ezop/default.asp?ob_no=2917
http://ens-yoga.livejournal.com/15382.html
http://growtowin.blogspot.com/2008/05/blogpost_15.html
http://growtowin.blogspot.com/2008/05/blogpost_15.html
http://otvet.mail.ru/question/14807673/
http://ra.siteedit.ru/page8?razdel=1001&object=0
http://skazkoterra.rajaka.net/mm/science.htm
http://smartron.kiev.ua/content/view/257/78/
http://www.bazar-vokzal.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=90
http://www.cofe.ru/apple/article.asp?heading=10&article
=4216
http://www.cross-club.ru/RuPritchi2
http://www.dnovikov.nm.ru/passion0.htm
http://www.druzya.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5772
http://www.fapsyrou.ru/z2_strast.php
http://www.geocities.com/dms27.rm/science.htm
http://www.haha.te.ua/books/13.doc
http://www.haha.te.ua/books/13.doc
http://www.health-musicpsy.ru/index.php?page=psychologiya_zdorovya&issue=022007&part=7_romanin_lichnostnyi_rost_v_sufizme
http://www.jagannath.ru/users_files/books/TONKOSTI_MU
LLY_NASREDDINA.doc
http://www.kaspiy.az/rubrics.php?code=7437
http://www.kluchnikov.ru/konsuljtatsii-psihologa/kak-yaprovozhu-konsuljtatsiyu-6.html
http://www.kurorty.com.ua/2193
http://www.mosenzov.ru/forums/archive/index.php/t42.html
http://www.pritchi.net/modules/arms/view.php?w=art&idx
=95&page=4
http://www.prosmi.ru/magazin/practic/pr2/stati/
http://www.prosv-ipk.ru/demo/184033?page=6
This plot undoubtedly meets all conditions set for
punchlined jokes in the GTVH:
it is manifested linguistically (LA);
it represents a certain "genre", the actually narrated joke or
the didactical reference to it (NS);
it has the drunkard or Hodja as the target character (TA);
it has the situation (SI) where the hero's interlocutor with
his surprised question provokes a punchlining reply;
it reveals a sharp incongruity between the necessary (right
place) and complementary conditions (sufficient degree of
illumination), or between the rational optimum in applying
utilitarian vs. hedonistic motives of behaviour and acting in
general (SO);
and it has them in the reversed order of importance (LM).
But just this tale is frequently told or referred to in scholarly
and scientific contexts as a paragon of wrong reasoning,
wrong (or creative) methodology, or the like.
For example:
 A drunk man lost his keys one night, and was observed
to be peering at the ground under a street lamp to find
them. When asked why he was looking for them there,
when he had lost them in the dark bushes some distance
away, the drunkard replied, "I know, but it's easier to look
for them here."
This anecdote was told to me in 1983 by Carol Prutting in
order to illustrate that because some clinical issues are
difficult to tackle, the clinician may be dissuaded from
seeking relevant routes of understanding a problem and
choose instead a standard and well-worn approach to the
problem – easy but not necessarily effective. Such,
Protting maintained was the resistance of many clinicians
to adopting the paradigm of clinical pragmatics – an
observation I believe is as true today as it was then.
Penn, Claire. Clinical Pragmatics and Assessment of Adult Language Disorders:
Process and Product. Pragmatics in Speech and Language Pathology. Ed. by Nicole
Müller. Vol. 7. 2000. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 107.
Another example:
Not long after he [W. James] wrote those words, most of
psychology set off in quite a different direction, forcefully
rejecting introspection altogether as a method of
observation, and putting all its money on overt behavior.
That limitation still constrains much work on the nature
of the mind, and introspection still fails to be taken very
seriously. Much research on the mind thus follows the
pattern of the drunk who lost his keys in a dark corner,
but was looking for them by a lamppost because the light
was better there. The potential for understanding the
mind has thus been limited to searches under the bright
light of overt behavior.
Chafe, Wallace. Language and the Flow of Thought. The New Psychology of
Language: Cognitive and Functional Approaches To Language Structure. Ed. by
Michael Tomasello. 1998. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 95–96.
So the mode of functioning of the joke about looking for a
ring or keys – both in the drunkard's and Nasreddin's
version – also seems to corroborate its high cognitive and
heuristic value in general, as it has attracted the attention
of above-cited and many other contemporary modern
authors.
And in turn, it has been tirelessly reiterated by Idries Shah
and others that the tale (often qualified as a fable) can and
must be interpreted not just as a joke, but in deeper
sufistic, spiritual manner,
i.e. it allegedly suggests not to look for the eternal in
temporal and earthly;
that the (dark) house symbolizes the internal (mental,
spiritual) world of the human being and the space outside
of it, respectively, surrounding us environment;
thus the key for resolving many difficult problems should be
looked for inside the dark hideouts of our soul and mind,
not in the outer space;
that one must look for the God just where he had lost him
etc.
On the other hand, İlhan Başgöz has collected and studied
the oldest recordings of Nasreddin stories (in manuscripts of
the sixteenth century) – altogether 311 stories – that should
likely reveal the oldest layers and the most adequate "initial
stance" of Nasreddins’s character. In his work "A Thematic
Analysis of Hoca Stories in Historical Perspective" Başgöz
delineates the main thematic focuses in the corpus of these
earliest texts about Nasreddin:
1. Religious beliefs, rituals, places of worship, teachers or
students of religion, death and resurrection – 65 stories.
2. Hodja’s relationship with his family members (wife, son,
daughter, father and mother) – 62 stories.
3. Relationship with a donkey – 41 stories.
4. Needs for food or money and the petty thievery Hodja
commits to supply those needs – 17 stories.
5. Hodja’s behaviour in relation to an authority figure – 14
stories.
6. The justice system: courts, judges, false witnesses,
plaintiffs, defenders and Hodja’s temporary judgeship
without pay ( in the role of so-called "shadow judge") – 12
stories.
Başgöz’s general summary of the character of Hodja in
these oldest texts is briefly the followong:
Nasreddin is a antihero.
The Nasreddin stories cast challenges to practically each
component of Turkish political and social system of the
time.
Through absurd humour, they problematise many
fundamental aspects of human relationships and human
knowledge.
They ridicule established and petrified rules and traditions
and defy the authoroties.
The express distrust towards the ways of social and
individual functioning of human life and expose the folly of
human characters.
And what is especially surprising and seems, at first sight,
to be incompatible with the concepts of 'Islam' and 'Middle
Ages', this protest is often expressed in extremely crude,
overt and obscene forms.
Başgöz’s remarks that in the great majority of the
stories, Hodja’s humor is directed against two social
institutions: religion and family, and adds a fabulously
detailed statistics (quoted exactly from the original):
"Eighty-seven stories in the sixteenth-century collection
may be called obscene, which transcend all categories.
Fifteen of such stories refer to the penis,
sixteen to the vulva,
seven to the testicles,
three to testicles and penis,
and two to the anus;
eighteen stories refer to farting and defecating;
twelve to to having sex with a woman,
one with a cat,
one with a camel,
one with a man,
and eight with a donkey;
one story refers to a pimp
and one to a whore."
Here are some examples of stories allegedly
expressing Nasreddin’s attitude to religious matters
(quoted from Başgöz):
 One day when preaching in a mescit, a small
mosque, the Hodja said, "Muslims, I realized that
Sivrihisar has the same weather as our town because
my penis and testicles remained closely tied together
in both towns."
 One day while preaching in a mescit, the Hodja says,
"Muslims, you should be thankful to God. Do you know
why? Because he did not put your anuses on your face.
If he had, you would defecate on your face daily."
 One day Nasreddin Hoca sees a minaret. "What is
that?" he asks. "That is the town's penis," he is told.
"Do you have a behind to match it?" the Hodja
exclaims.
 A child defecated in front of the Hoca's house every
day. When questioned by the angry Hoca, the child
said, "I am the nephew of God, you cannot punish me."
The Hoca took the hand of the boy, brought him to a
mosque, and told him, "This is the house of your uncle.
Defecate there as many times as you like."
 The Hoca went to a mosque to pray. By chance, he
was wearing a short robe and happened to stand in the
front row of the worshippers. As he prostrated himself
in prayer, his testicles stuck out and a man behind him
took firm hold of them. The Hoca, in turn, took hold of
the imam's testicles. "Hey," said the imam, "what do
you think you are doing?" – "What do I do?" the Hodja
replied. "Are you not playing testicle tag here?"
The same holds for Hodja’s family relations. Başgöz
writes:
"Stories related to the family in sixteenth-century
manuscripts portray the Hoca either as a verbal aggressor
or as a resentful husband. The Hoca’s family does not
reflect the structure and interpersonal relations of a real
family. It is a hypothetical unit, a fantasy where all
constraints and taboos, sexual or social, collapse, where
traditional role models and norms governing family life
break down. Relationships within the Hoca’s family
exhibit primal human instincts unhindered by social
restrictions. The father’s or mother’s authority and power,
the axis that generates and maintains order in the family,
falls flat. The Hoca, who has no authority in the family, is
presented as the cause of that collapse. His wife and son
repay his behavior with disrespect. Disorder, disunity and
chaos ensue and dominate family life. Family members
are described in terms of the most vulgar expressions of
male and female genitals.
For example, the Hoca’s wife sits down and exhibits her
vulva [- - -].
His daughter entices her lover by showing him her
genitals [- - -].
The mother characterizes her daughter as a person who
has an untouched melon between her legs, to which the
Hoca objects, explaining that the melon is split, not
untouched [- - -];
the wife gives birth to a daughter and wishes that she
had two eggs between her legs, to which the Hoca
responds, "Don’t worry, soon enough, when she grows,
several eggs will be hung there" [- - -];
the mother addresses her vulva as "my treasure, the
cause of my wealth and fortune without which I could
not achieve anything"; the Hoca refrers to his penis as
the cause of his trouble and misfortune [- - -]."
Hodja’s behaviour is incredibly brave and arrogant also
in communication with authority figures, like beys,
padishahs and sultans. Başgöz remarks that in the
sixteen-century manuscripts they are, in general,
anonymous, not identified by individual names. Tales
about Hoca’s relationships with the notorious Mongolian
tyrant Timur (or Tamerlane) occur firstly not earlier than
in seventeenth-century manuscripts.
Please read some examples again.
 One day, the Hodja's wife went to a river to wash
clothes and insulted the padishah because his leers
embarrassed her. Upon learning that the woman was the
Hodja's wife, the padishah called the Hodja into his
presence and asked him if the woman was his wife. "Why
did you ask?" Nasreddin Hodja questioned. The padishah
responded, "I will defecate on her vulva." The Hodja,
turning the tables on the padishah, said, "Why don't you
defecate on my penis. Then I will place it in her vulva."
 One day, Nasreddin Hoca was sent to Arabia as an
envoy. During the feast given by the Arab notables, the
Hoca farted. Imad, his student, criticized the Hoca after
the feast, saying "What a strange thing you did. You
degraded us before the beys and agas." Nasreddin Hoca
replied, "Hey Imad, don’t worry. These Arabic speakers
would not understand farting in Turkish."
 In a Turkish bath, Tamerlane asked the Hoca how
much the Hoca would bid if he, the king, were to be put
up for sale. "Forty akçe," answers the Hoca. "But this is
only the value of my futa [silk bathing suit]," Timur
replies. The Hoca responds, "That is what I bid for.
Otherwise, a dirty Mongolian like you would not be
worth a penny."
An example about Hodja's relations with judges:
 One day Hoca and his student Imad saw a drunk
judge lying on the ground, his turban and cloak
thrown in the dust. They took the clothes for
themselves. The next day, the judge sent his men to
find the thief, and they found the Hoca wearing the
turban and cloak. Questioned in the court about
where he found the clothing, the Hoca said,
"Yesterday my student and I came across a person
who was deadly drunk. Imad and I screwed him twice
and then got these from him. If you are the person,
you can take them." The judge said: "No, no. These
are not mine. My turban was longer than this. You
can have them both."
Hodja’s relationships with his donkey (including sexual
intercourse with the animal) is a special topic very
thoroughly dealt with in Başgöz’s paper. I confine myself
with some illustrating examples again:
 The Hoca's donkey became very skinny, and a friend
advised the Hoca to smear yogurt around his penis and
feed the donkey through the vulva, which the Hoca
attempted. After a few times, he was surprised at having
had an ejaculation, and he said, "I have never had sex
with such a skinny donkey."
 One day, Nasreddin Hoca went to a village and had sex
with his donkey in a secluded place. Afterwards, he lay
down exposing his penis to the sun. Someone came
across the Hoca while he was reclining and said to him,
"What are you doing? Isn't it shameful to expose your
penis?" The Hoca responed, "Go on your way, you whose
tribe I fuck. Do you want me to leave my damp and wet
penis unexposed so it would get moldy?"
 The owner of a donkey caught Nasreddin Hoca
having sex with his donkey, which was lying on the
ground. The owner asked tha Hoca what he was
doing. The Hoca replied, "Don’t you see? I am lifting
your donkey up with my penis."
 A man came and spit in the face of Hoca while he
was having sex with a donkey in a small mosque. The
Hoca responded by saying, "If I were not busy with
important business, I would teach you a good lesson
because you spit in a holy place."
The following centuries have added a lot of new motifs,
dimensions and colours to the narrative repertoire
connected with Hodja Nasreddin’s figure.
As a result, as was already said in the beginning, this
corpus of tales turns out to be a huge mixture of
everything that thoroughly demolishes and blends
together any clearcut borders between the punchlined
and non-punchlined humorous narratives, violates all
axiological rules, all criteria for distinguishing "the
good" and "the bad" that work very well for Schwanks
and jokes of the "Western standard", including
cleverness and stupidity, coarse obscenity and
philosophical seriousness, All borders between the
intentional and the spontaneous, between sincere
speech and irony, between what happens "really" and
what is played seem to be ruined.
However, there is an empirical fact and some remarks
made by İlhan Başgöz that can indicate another,
perhaps more promising, aspect for structural division
of humorous narratives. It is the technical fact that in
the book "Двадцать три Насреддина" [Twenty Four
Nasreddins] (1986) by M. S. Kharitonov, the best
compendium of Nasreddin tales that I know, 83% of
texts are ending with a phrase said by Nasreddin, in the
Turkish material of Albert Wesselski’s book – even 94%;
the frequencies are similar in other sources as well
(e.g., by G. Borrow, P. N. Boratav, and others). Such
ending comment can include a critical or approving
evaluation of a situation, make a generalising conclusion
from it, be a witty retort to a verbal attack of some
other character, etc.
So, the main structural watershed seems to go not
between the non-punchlined Schwank as such and
contemporary punchlined joke as such, but
between the tales with a certain "real" or
"material" solution of a certain problem and tales
ending with somebody’s comment, i.e. the direct
speech. This ending remark can be considered as
one of the focal "points of dissemination" which,
according to the configuration of conditions, can be
qualified as an unintentional self-exposure of the
butt of the joke, a witty retort of the clever
antagonist, or just a "sub-punchline" humorous
comment of a neutral bystander (e.g., in
wellerisms), axiologically ambivalent or totally
asemantic saying of a "wise fool", a remark
reminding the moral conclusion in the end of fables,
etc. etc.
THANK YOU!