Among most peoples there arises, from time to time, a man who, without being at all entitled to the epithet great, represents so well the national character, especially on its more humorous and homely sides, that all sorts of sayings, jokes, bons mots and stupidities are attributed to him. He is even credited with a good deal of "sharp practice" which the modern city-dweller would call swindling, but which, for all that, is dear to the peasant's heart in every primitive land. The iconoclastic modern critic generally ascertains, it is true, that most of those jokes, stories, etcetera, date from a period far anterior to that of the personage to whom they are attributed; and, indeed, in some cases, doubts have been thrown on the very existence of the personage himself. Nevertheless he is so useful to the student of national characteristics that, to modify slightly a famous saying, if he never existed he would deserve to be invented. For, when due allowance is made for humorous exaggeration, he generally represents with consider able fidelity the mind of the average man in the country to which he belongs.

Many people will, I am sure, be shocked at this doctrine especially after they have read some of the ludicrous tales which are told in the present volume about Khoja Nasr-ud-Dín; but, after all, the average man in most nations is a simple, homely, humorous, good-natured, hard-working soul with no great enthusiasm for war-lords or politics or epic poetry, or even for religion; but with a taste for rough comfort, rude jokes, stimulants, and stories about horses and women. The cultured classes, and the cliques of gentlemen and gentlewomen who write, take a different view, because in most cases they know nothing of the millions who form the base of the pyramid whereof they themselves are, in a sense, the apex. Charles Dickens did know, and he was consequently able to give us in his Mr. Pickwick a nearer approach to the average English type than had, up to that time, appeared in literature.

In England we all know how Mr. Pickwick and John Bull originated, just as in Portugal they all know about the literary origin of Ze Povinho, just as in Germany the Michel of the caricaturists deceives nobody, and just as in France Jacques Bonhomme is a creation of yesterday. It is to illiterate countries that we must go for the typical character which is half real, half a creation of the popular mind, but wholly loved and wholly believed in. In some remote districts in Ireland, Dan O'Connell, – "the immortal Dan," – has to some extent suffered this kind of change. All sorts of witty stories are fathered on him. The same thing has taken place with regard to Father Tom Burke, a celebrated and very humorous Dominican preacher of the last century. It is to Turkey, however, with its splendid illiteracy and its mediaeval atmo sphere, that we must go for the best national personification of the kind I mean. And we find that personification in Khoja Nasr-ud-Dín.

Khoja Nasr-ud-Dín lived in Asia Minor towards the end of the fourteenth century of our era; but that does not prevent audacious story-tellers from making him a contem porary of Sultan Saladin, and from describing his trip from Constantinople to the Sweet Waters of Asia on the Bosphorus at a time when Constantinople and both shores of the Bosphorus were in the hands of the Greeks. I make no attempt, of course, to correct those delightful anachronisms, for this collection only undertakes to give specimens of the tales told by the common people in Turkey, and does not pretend to be in any sense a scholarly or critical production.

The word khoja, sometimes pronounced hoja by the Turks, who are as averse from the guttural kh sound as we are ourselves, means teacher or schoolmaster; and, in Turkey, it is used before the proper name, exactly as the word "Dominie" Is used in Scotland. But as in Moslem countries the teacher has an ecclesiastical character, the khoja is something more than a schoolmaster. He is, rather, a mixture of the "Dominie" and the curate. One story in the present collection tells of Khoja Nasr-ud-Dín preaching in a mosque. Several other stories show him teaching his pupils or disciples.

Khoja Nasr-ud-Dín was, it is said, a contemporary of the celebrated but heterodox Turkish poet Nesimi. The khoja seems to have likewise been affected by the Huriifi heresy, for he was solemnly cursed by his Sheikh to the usual accom paniment of bell, book, and candle. The poet was treated with greater severity, being skinned alive at Aleppo. Some of the poetry which he composed while that disagreeable operation was being carried out is given in Gibb's monumental "History of Ottoman Poetry" (edited by Professor E. G. Browne of Cambridge); but the best critics do not think it is quite up to Nesimi's usual standard.

Whether it was because he disappointed the public by his escape from being flayed alive also, or for some other reason, the fact remains that Khoja Nasr-ud-Dín became from this moment "the laughing-stock of the world." The phrase is that of Professor Browne; and Mr. E. J. W. Gibb is hardly less severe, for he describes our reverend friend as "a Turkish Joe Miller who is credited with endless comical sayings and doings." One thing certain is that "the terrible curse" launched at him by his ecclesiastical superior did not apparently make him feel "a penny the worse." On the contrary, it seemed to put new life into him, for it is from this time that we begin to hear of his jokes. Endless, indeed, are the stories which are told about this holy but ludicrous man; and, curiously enough, they seem to increase in number each year like American Civil War pensioners. In the Stamboul coffee-houses one still hears them narrated every day by grave, turbaned Turks, sitting cross-legged before their chibooks and their tiny cups of coffee. A very large number of them will not bear repetition, owing to what we of this fastidious age and nation would regard as their appalling grossness. And, unfortunately, a great many others will not bear translation owing to the fact that their wit lies in the Turkish manner of expression, or in some reference to local interests or religious rites or Oriental customs, which it would be tedious to explain. It is instructive to note, however, that the typical Turk, as represented by Khoja Nasr-ud-Dín, is as unlike the Terrible Turk of Christian legend, literature, and history as Mr. Bernard Shaw's usual stage Englishman is unlike the heroic Englishman of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, or as Mr. Pickwick is unlike General Gordon. It may surprise some of my readers to learn that, in religious matters, the Turk is rather inclined to be lax, obtuse, and tolerant. On that account the quick witted and fanatical Arab generally denounces him as prac tically an Infidel himself. No Turk ever becomes a "Mad Mullah." As a matter of fact the slow, heretical, and materialistic Osmanli suffer quite as much from "Mad Mullahs" as do the slow, heretical, and materialistic English. It must be admitted, therefore, that with his stupidity, his unconscious humour, and his good nature, Khoja Nasr-ud-Dín is far nearer the average Turk than any of the historical Osmanli with whose names we are all familiar.

It is pretty certain, indeed, that the average Turkish peasant knows precious little of the historical Osmanli – of Mohammed the Conqueror, for example, or Suleiman the Magnificent – while, on the other hand, there is no doubt that Khoja Nasr-ud-Dín has become literally a household word with him. In the village coffee-house he will repeat long stories about the khoja; and in the market, on the road, or when he is quarrelling with his wife, he will freely make use of the proverbs and pithy sayings attributed to the same holy but very human personage. Like the Spanish peasant, the Turk speaks in parables. Subtract from his discourse the wise saws wherewith he adorns it, and there will be almost nothing left. A few of those sayings may not, therefore, be out of place here. My first will show, by the way, that, with all his wisdom, the khoja never foresaw the advent of the aeroplane.

"O Brethren," said he, on one occasion, after having been so long in thought that his disciples expected some gem of divine revelation to drop from his lips, "O Brethren, give thanks to Allah the Most High, that camels have not got wings. For, if they had, imagine the condition of our roofs and houses, and what an unhappy state ours would be, if a pair of those brutes perched on the roof-top and we underneath!"

On another occasion a beggar knocked at the door of the khoja's house. The khoja, who happened to be upstairs at the time, called out to the visitor to come in. But, instead of entering, the beggar said, "Please come down," and when the khoja descended he pathetically solicited alms. The khoja listened attentively, and then said, "Please come upstairs." When they reached the top floor the khoja turned to the beggar and said in all solemnity, "May God give unto you!" – an Eastern expression, which, like the two words, "Have patience!" of the Portuguese, immediately silences the most persistent beggar.

The khoja once yoked a young calf to a light cart, but the animal strongly objected to its liberty being thus interfered with, and became quite unmanageable. The khoja then took a stout stick and, going up to the ox, proceeded to punish it severely for not having taught the calf how to behave itself when it was being yoked.

One day the khoja was seen to be standing on one foot at the hour of prayer. When asked why he stood like a stork, on one foot, he answered that the other foot had not performed the ablution, as he had not sufficient water.

A guest passing the night at the khoja's house called out to him to give him the taper which was at his right side, as the night-light had gone out. Unto whom the khoja promptly answered, in a voice slightly roughened by irritation and sleep, "How can I know which is my right side in the dark?"

One of the khoja's disciples was an Abyssinian, who once had the misfortune to spill a bottle of ink over his revered master. When the other Softas asked the khoja what had happened to him, he simply said, "It is only the tears my black disciple has shed over me!"

The khoja had a difference with his wife, who told him in great anger to go away, pointing the direction in which he was to go. The khoja immediately obeyed her, and set off in the direction she had ordered him to take. After a few days hard travelling he met a man coming in the opposite direction, whom he begged to go and ask his wife if he had travelled far enough, or must he continue to go on.

The khoja once travelled to a town at some distance, and when he reached the market-place heiwas much surprised and moved on finding that, in some respects, this foreign town reminded him of home. Mounting a chair, he said in a loud voice, "Friends, the air of this city is exactly the same as the air of my native city, and I see the same number of stars here as I saw there!"

One day the khoja went with a friend to the den of a wolf in order to see the cubs. The khoja persuaded his friend to go into the den and bring out the young wolves. The friend descended into the cave while the khoja kept watch. The mother wolf was abroad, but returned in haste at the first cry of her cubs. Just as the furious animal was disappearing into the hole, the khoja seized hold of its tail, and held on to it with all his might despite its desperate struggles. His friend angrily called out to him asking why he was throwing in so much dust and dirt on top of him, whereupon, in a choked voice, the khoja replied, "If the wolf's tail breaks you'll soon see what the dust and dirt mean!"

The khoja once entered a vegetable garden and helped himself generously to such vegetables as he felt he required at the moment or might require later on. The gardener happened to come upon the scene, however; and, speaking with considerable heat, he inquired what the holy man was doing there. Without any hesitation, the khoja replied mildly that the wind had blown him thither. The gardener then asked how it came to pass that those vegetables which belonged to him, the gardener, happened to be in the khoja's hands, and how a number of other vegetables had managed to get stowed away in the khoja's bosom. In a benignant voice, Nasr-ud-Dín answered, saying that the wind was so violent that, in trying to save himself from being overturned, he had caught at anything and everything which came in his way, with the result that those vegetables had got into his hands and into the breast of his garment.

"But what about those vegetables in the sack?" continued the gardener, whose manner was becoming decidedly impolite.

"Why now," quoth the saintly man, scratching his head in perplexity, "that's the very question I was asking myself just when you seized hold of me!"

Some boys, anxious to play a practical joke on the khoja, asked him to climb a tree, their object being to run away with his sandals. They informed the khoja that no one had ever been able to climb that particular tree, and the khoja, always a sportsman, despite his years and the restrictions imposed on him by his sacred profession, at once said that he could do it; whereupon the boys, of course, told him stoutly that he could not, and defied him to try. The khoja immediately accepted the challenge, and gathered up the skirts of his robe, which he tied round his waist to give his limbs freedom. Then taking off his sandals he placed them in his bosom and began to climb the tree. Naturally the boys were disappointed and hurt on seeing the sandals go up the tree as well as the khoja, and it was not without asperity that they asked the holy man what he was going to do with his sandals in the tree. "O," said the khoja, somewhat taken aback, "I – I need them. I may find a road up here and I don't want to get footsore. Always look well to your feet, my children! Whatever you do, don't get sore feet!"

The khoja was seen one day perched up in an apricot tree, enjoying the fruit. The owner, espying him, asked what business he had up there, and with whose permission he was eating the apricots. The khoja in answer said: "Don't you see that I'm a nightingale?"

The owner of the garden laughed, and told the khoja that nightingales were birds and that they sang beautifully. At this the khoja began to imitate a bird as best he could, but his vocal efforts only amused the gardener, who said: "Surely you don't call that singing?" "Well, you see, I'm a Persian nightingale (Bulbul) " said the khoja, "and this is the way in which all the Persian nightingales sing."

Such are the shorter tales told about Khoja Nasr-ud-Dín, that disreputable old clergyman whom the Court chroniclers of his time probably regarded as a most vulgar person or doubtful orthodoxy and still more doubtful sobriety. Yet, curiously enough, those tales have survived, while the pompous and inflated productions of the Stambuli historians have sunk into deserved oblivion. Of these Stambuli big wigs "Odysseus" says:

"I will not here enumerate the Stambuli chroniclers and poets. The curious reader will find their names in any history or encyclopaedia. But if I pass them by in silence, it is not from distaste, but from diffidence in recommending a study which can appeal to few. Their writings may be compared to the gateways of Dolma Bagche, or some triumph of caligraphic skill in which the letters and dots are arranged not in the positions which facilitate comprehension, but in those which produce the best artistic effect. Of late years it has become the custom to compose in a comparatively simple style, but the old ornate language can still be read in that column of the newspaper which has the felicity to contain the Court circular or the orders which have come forth from the centre of Majesty,' and which, 'honoured in their exit and their issue,' burst upon a delighted world. The com bination of dignity and fatuity which this style affords is unrivalled. [1] There is something contagious in its ineffable complacency, unruffled by the most palpable facts. Everything is sublime, everybody magnanimous and prosperous. We move among the cardinal virtues and their appropriate rewards (may God increase them!), and, secure in the shadow of the ever-victorious Caliph, are only dimly conscious of the existence of tributary European Powers and ungrateful Christian subjects. Can any Western poet transport his readers into a more enchanted land?"

"Odysseus" goes on, however, to say: "There is another kind of Turkish literature, if indeed that name can be given it, consisting of popular songs and stories, which is more natural, more interesting, and perhaps more important than the works of the Court historians and poets. A collection of them has been published [in Hungarian] by Dr. Ignacz Kunos, together with some plays and riddles, of which latter the Turk, like many other Turanian tribes, is peculiarly fond. Unlike the 'Tales of a Parrot' and the 'Forty Viziers,' which are mostly mere translations, these stories have a peculiar flavour of their own. They are rude and coarse, and smack somewhat of the barrack-room, or rather the camp-fire, but it is a camp-fire on some central Asian plain, and the soldiers gathered round it listen with pleasure to tales of miracles and magic; of kings, who, at the recommendation of dervishes, go down wells, and find at the bottom gardens, dragons, and beautiful princesses. In the same way I have heard an old country Turk relate to an appreciative audience, who showed no signs of incredulity, a story of his youth in which a Kurdish magician, who had three eyes and was invulnerable, played a conspicuous part. The jinns, peris, and dervishes certainly suggest the 'Arabian Nights,' but there is something dreamy and vast in the setting of the stories which reminds one rather of the 'Kalevala' and Samoyede legends. It is peculiarly interesting to note how often the hero is some nameless adventurer, who either by his own energy and intelligence, or by the timely intervention of some supernatural power, rises from nothing to the highest position. Such careers are characteristic of old Turkish life, just as the horseman who rides for ten years across a plain is characteristic of their ideas of physiography and the duty of man.

"Perhaps the most original quality of popular Turkish literature is its humour. The average Turk is distinctly a merry man and loves a joke, particularly a practical joke. Wit he has little, and refinement less, but a genuine sense of the ludicrous, and a special fondness for that class of absurdity known as 'a bull,' and peculiar, as far as I am aware, to Irish men and Turks. [2]

"The classical, exponent of this species of humour is Khoja Nasreddin Effendi [or, more correctly, Khoja Nasr-ud-Din] the author or hero of a collection of stories known all over Turkey, and constantly repeated, if not exactly read. The khoja is believed to have lived in Akshehir in the fourteenth century of our era, and is the type of the village Imam. In the printed edition of the stories he is represented as a stout man with enormous spectacles, riding on a donkey and carrying the saddle-bags on his shoulders, as he is said to have done on one occasion from a well-intentioned desire to relieve the animal of their weight. His mind is an extraordinary mixture of stupidity and shrewdness; the latter, however, is sufficiently predominant to generally secure him success in the end in spite of his blunders; and, besides, one is never sure how far he is really dense and how far pretending to be a fool.

"The following examples will give some idea of these stories.

"One Friday the khoja's fellow-villagers insisted on his preaching a sermon in the mosque, which he had never done, not having any oratorical gifts. He mounted the pulpit sorely against his will, and looking round at the congregation, asked in despair, 'Oh, true believers, do you know what I am going to say to you?' They naturally replied 'No.' 'Well, I am sure I don't,' he said, and hurriedly left the mosque. The congregation were, however, determined to have their sermon, and next Friday forced him again into the pulpit. When he again put the same question they replied by agree ment, 'Yes.' 'Oh then,' he said, 'if you know, I needn't tell you,' and again escaped. On the third Friday the villagers made what they thought must be a successful plan. They got the khoja into the pulpit, and when he asked what had now become his usual question, replied, 'Some of us know and some of us don't.' 'Then,' replied the khoja, 'let those of you who know tell those who don't.' After this the congregation resigned themselves to do without sermons. [3]

"One hot night the khoja slept on the verandah to be cool. He awoke, however, in a fright, and saw what he took to be a robber dressed in white climbing over the garden wall. He seized his bow and immediately sent an arrow straight through the imaginary burglar. On calm examination, however, he found that the white object was one of his own night-shirts which his wife had washed and hung on the wall to dry. The khoja accordingly began to call out 'Praise be to God.' and other religious exclamations, which awoke the neighbours, who mistook them for the morning call to prayer. Finding it still wanted several hours to sunrise, they surrounded the khoja and indignantly inquired what he meant by his untimely piety. 'I was thanking God,' he replied, 'that I was not inside my shirt when I shot an arrow through it.'

"The country Turk will spend hours in telling such anecdotes, and every new invention is fathered on Nasreddin Effendi. So great is his popularity, that it is said that one Sultan offered to maintain, at the Imperial expense, any of his descendants who would appear at Constantinople and prove their lineage. Many claimants presented themselves, but on exami nation were rejected. At last one evening came an uncouth figure with a Konia accent, mounted on an Anatolian pony. He dismounted at the Seraglio gate, and, not seeing clearly in the dusk, tied up his horse to one of the large drums used by the janissaries, which happened to be lying there. The horse, however, soon found out that he was not attached to a fixed object, and began to drag about the drum, kicking it with his feet. The guard rushed out, the drumming continued; the word spread in the palace that the janissaries were in revolt; among the janissaries, that the Sultan was going to massacre them, and only after a general uproar was the cause of the disturbance discovered. The claimant for State support was brought before the Sultan and explained the object of his visit and his error. The padishah and all his council were unanimously of opinion that no further evidence was needed, and that his action could only be explained on the principle of heredity. The allowance was granted at once."