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These seven stories, retold by Delshad Karanjia, turn comic reversals into pointed observations about vanity, power, inequality and self-deception. They come from Teaching a Horse to Sing: Tales of Uncommon Sense from India and Elsewhere, excerpted by Scroll in 2021—not from a single definitive version of the Nasruddin tradition.
Seven Nasruddin stories—and what each one turns upside down
In each tale, the joke begins with an apparently simple question or assumption. Its ending shifts the target: a ruler’s vanity, a husband’s inattention, political evasion or the confidence with which people judge the world. The summaries below follow Karanjia’s versions published in Scroll’s April 9, 2021 excerpt.
1. “Grey Matter”
A mayor asks attendants what they think of his hair. One answer leads to punishment, and the next attendant learns that honesty is dangerous when the powerful want flattery. Nasruddin sidesteps the trap by turning the exchange toward his own baldness. The comic escape exposes a no-win test: the mayor demands truth while punishing answers he dislikes.
2. “Falling on Deaf Ears”
Nasruddin asks a hakim how to find out whether his wife can hear him. He follows the advice by calling to her from increasingly closer distances. At last she points out that she has already answered. The supposed hearing problem turns out to be Nasruddin’s failure to listen.
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3. “A Title for the Sultan”
Asked to suggest an honorific for the sultan that includes the word “god,” Nasruddin offers “God Forsaken.” A request for praise becomes an insult, and the courtly premise supplies the punchline.
4. “God’s Servant”
Seeing a sultan’s servant dressed in finery, the poor Nasruddin asks God to notice the difference between the servant’s wealth and his own poverty. The joke makes inequality visible by setting the two men side by side and asking who appears to be receiving the better share.
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5. “Running for Mayor”
When asked whether he drinks, Nasruddin gives an evasive answer. He loses the mayoral election by a small margin and blames “accurate counting.” The self-serving excuse makes the candidate—not the count—the joke.
6. “God’s Wisdom”
Nasruddin wonders why large fruit grow on delicate vines while small fruit grow high in trees. An apricot falls and hits his bald head. He promptly reconsiders his confidence in how the world ought to be arranged. The reversal punctures the assumption that human judgment can easily improve on nature.
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7. “Two in One”
At a burial, someone says that an honest man and a politician have been buried. Nasruddin takes the statement literally and imagines two people sharing a grave. His response exposes the cynicism packed into the speaker’s contrast between honesty and politics.
Why the jokes can feel current
These are readings of the stories, not predictions about modern events. Their situations lend themselves to familiar subjects: leaders managing their image, people afraid to contradict authority, visible disparities in wealth and politicians making excuses. The humor works because a small reversal reveals what a character—or the person telling the joke—has overlooked.
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Not every tale makes Nasruddin the clever one. He may outmaneuver a mayor, miss what his wife is telling him, or expose his own faulty reasoning. That changeable role is part of the character’s appeal: the joke can land on the powerful, the complacent or Nasruddin himself.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Who was Mullah Nasruddin?
Mullah Nasruddin is best understood as a figure of folklore rather than a character with one settled biography or a single authoritative set of stories. Hassan Javadi’s Encyclopaedia Iranica account describes a tradition in which the character is sometimes wise, sometimes a practical joker and often a fool or the butt of a joke. Regional forms include Nasreddin Hoca in Turkey, Molla Nasreddin in Iran and Azerbaijan, and Joha among Arabs.
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Javadi says the tradition appears to combine story collections associated with Joha and Molla Nasreddin, figures whose historical identities are uncertain. Stories also accumulated and took on different characteristics across places and generations. As a result, Karanjia’s seven versions should be attributed to his retelling, not presented as the definitive originals or as representative of every regional tradition.
The publication history Javadi records illustrates that long circulation: the earliest Turkish version he identifies dates to 1837, the first Persian edition he describes to 1881, and an illustrated collection of 539 stories appeared in 1940. Those dates describe editions, not the age of every tale or the size of a modern audience.
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