''The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mullah Nasrudin'' is a book by the writer

Idries Shah Idries Shah (; , , ; 16 June 1924 – 23 November 1996), also known as Idris Shah, Indries Shah, né Sayyid, Sayed Idries el-Hashemite, Hashimi (Arabic: ) and by the pen name Arkon Daraul, was an Afghans, Afghan author, thinker and teacher in ...

, Article has moved and is now incorrectly dated 18 September 2011. based on lectures he delivered at the

University of Geneva The University of Geneva (French: ''Université de Genève'') is a public university, public research university located in Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded in 1559 by French theologian John Calvin as a Theology, theological seminary. It rema ...

Visiting Professor In academia, a visiting scholar, visiting scientist, visiting researcher, visiting fellow, visiting lecturer, or visiting professor is a scholar from an institution who visits a host university to teach, lecture, or perform research on a topic fo ...

in 1972–73. The book is a collection of tales, none more than two pages and almost all less than a page long,Idries Shah, ''The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mullah Nasrudin'', ©1968, paperback edition by E.P. Dutton & Co., New York, 1971, Table of Contents about the folkloric character Mulla Nasrudin. Published by

Octagon Press Octagon Press was a cross-cultural publishing house based in London, UK. It was founded in 1960 by Sufism, Sufi teacher, Idries Shah to establish the historical and cultural context for his ideas. The company ceased trading in 2014. Descriptio ...

in 1968, it was re-released in paperback,

ebook An ebook (short for electronic book), also spelled as e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in electronic form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. A ...

and

audiobook An audiobook (or a talking book) is a recording of a book or other work being read out loud. A reading of the complete text is described as "unabridged", while readings of shorter versions are abridgements. Spoken audio has been available in sch ...

editions by The Idries Shah Foundation in 2015.

Content

Part of a series of books, ''The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mulla Nasrudin'' is a collection of

teaching stories A teaching story is a narrative that has been deliberately created as a vehicle for the transmission of wisdom. The practice has been used in a number of religious and other traditions, though writer Idries Shah's use of it was in the context of Suf ...

anecdote An anecdote is "a story with a point", such as to communicate an abstract idea about a person, place, or thing through the concrete details of a short narrative or to characterize by delineating a specific quirk or trait. Anecdotes may be real ...

s and jokes drawn from Middle Eastern folklore and the

Sufi Sufism ( or ) is a mysticism, mystic body of religious practice found within Islam which is characterized by a focus on Islamic Tazkiyah, purification, spirituality, ritualism, and Asceticism#Islam, asceticism. Practitioners of Sufism are r ...

mystical Mysticism is popularly known as becoming one with God or the Absolute, but may refer to any kind of ecstasy or altered state of consciousness which is given a religious or spiritual meaning. It may also refer to the attainment of insight ...

tradition, which feature the

populist Populism is a contested concept used to refer to a variety of political stances that emphasize the idea of the " common people" and often position this group in opposition to a perceived elite. It is frequently associated with anti-establis ...

Middle East The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...

ern philosopher and wise fool, Mulla

Nasrudin Nasreddin () or Nasreddin Hodja (variants include Mullah Nasreddin Hodja, Nasruddin Hodja, Mullah Nasruddin, Mullah Nasriddin, Khoja Nasriddin, Khaja Nasruddin) (1208–1285) is a character commonly found in the folklores of the Muslim world, ...

. Thousands of stories have been written around this popular folk character over the centuries, since his purported birth in the 13th century.

Reception

Douglas Hill, Literary Editor of the

socialist Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...

Tribune Tribune () was the title of various elected officials in ancient Rome. The two most important were the Tribune of the Plebs, tribunes of the plebs and the military tribunes. For most of Roman history, a college of ten tribunes of the plebs ac ...

'' weekly magazine, wrote in 1969 that ''The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mulla Nasrudin'' contained “a great deal of timeless and universal wisdom made accessible and highly attractive with humour”, adding that “conventional responses and received frames of mind are challenged on every page.” In ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', future Nobel Literature laureate

Doris Lessing Doris May Lessing ( Tayler; 22 October 1919 – 17 November 2013) was a British novelist. She was born to British parents in Qajar Iran, Persia, where she lived until 1925. Her family then moved to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where ...

called ''The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mulla Nasrudin'' "perhaps the most shocking to our assumptions about ‘mysticism’” of Shah's books at the time. She said that this corpus of Nasrudin “jokes” was “deliberately created to inculcate Sufic thinking, to outwit The Old Villain, which is a name for the patterns of conditioned thinking which form the prison in which we all live." In an earlier review in ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. First published in 1791, it is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper. In 1993 it was acquired by Guardian Media Group Limited, and operated as a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' ...

'', Lessing said that most of the jokes in the book were new to the West while others could also be found in the written work of Sufis like

Rumi Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (), or simply Rumi (30 September 1207 – 17 December 1273), was a 13th-century poet, Hanafi '' faqih'' (jurist), Maturidi theologian (''mutakallim''), and Sufi mystic born during the Khwarazmian Empire ...

Attar Attar, also known as ittar, is an essential oil derived from botanical or other natural sources. Most commonly these oils are extracted via hydrodistillation or steam distillation. Attar can also be expressed by chemical means but generally n ...

and

Jami Nūr ad-Dīn 'Abd ar-Rahmān Jāmī (; 7 November 1414 – 9 November 1492), also known as Mawlanā Nūr al-Dīn 'Abd al-Rahmān or Abd-Al-Rahmān Nur-Al-Din Muhammad Dashti, or simply as Jami or Djāmī and in Turkey as Molla Cami, was a ...

. She said that " asrudin'santics are parallels of the mind's workings, designed to amuse the teahouses, but also for use on other levels". As an example she refers to their use at an international scientific conference to illustrate problems in physics that were otherwise difficult or impossible to verbalise.

Collections of Mulla Nasrudin stories

* ''The Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin'' (1966, 2015) * ''The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mulla Nasrudin'' (1968, 2015) * ''The Subtleties of the Inimitable Mulla Nasrudin'' (1973) Note: ISBNs refer to the original paperback editions, published by Octagon Press. For current ISBNs, see The Idries Shah Foundation.

References

External links

The Idries Shah Foundation official web site

ISF Publishing
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pleasantries of the Incredible Mulla Nasrudin, The Sufi literature Sufi fiction Books by Idries Shah Middle Eastern folklore Comedy books 1968 books Nasreddin Octagon Press books