Mulanasrudin

Mulla Nasrudin had an insatiable craving for knowledge, but did not seem to know what knowledge was. As a result he asked a local wise man the stupidest questions, always based upon random assumptions
One day the Mull a noticed that his donkey was Inissing. He ran to the wise man 5 house.
'Well, Mulla, what is it this time?'
'My donkey is gone! Where can I find it?'
The wise man was quite fed up with the Mulla. 'Nasrudin,' he said, 'the donkey has run off, turned into a man and been ap-pointed the magistrate in the next town.'
Thanking the wise man for his information, the Mulla trudged to the court. There sat the magistrate, and Nasrudin shook his fist at him:
'Come home at once, you foolish animal!'
The magistrate was furious. 'Who are you and how dare you talk to me like that? I'll have you sent to the cells!'
'I'm the well-known Mulla Nasrudin, and I have it on the best authority that you are my donkey.'
'That's ridiculous. Nobody in his right senses would credit such a thing!'
Nasrudin drew himself up to his full height. 'Say what you like he said, 'I prefer to believe the statement of a wise man rather than that of a donkey.'
Wisdom, according to the Sufis, can only be acquired when one is ready for it: though people insist on seeking enlightenment as and when they want it. The Sufi's task, however, includes trying to impart knowledge in the right way, at the right time, to the people who are able to receive it:

The King wanted a large number of gorgeous robes made for a special ceremony, and the Royal Tailor had to take on several assistants to cope with the work. Mulla Nasrudin was one of them. He was not very useful as a tailor, so the Master Tailor sent him out on some errand.
While the Mulla was out, the Palace sent a load of sweetmeats to be given to the workers to encourage them.
'Never mind about Nasrudin,' said the Master Tailor, when the confections were being distributed; 'he doesn't like halwa anyway. When the Mulla came back and his fellow-workers told him this, he decided to pay the boss back. A representative of the Court had been sent to oversee the work, to make sure that none of the valuable fabric was stolen, and to ensure that the robes were finished on time.
Nasrudin took him aside. 'It would be a tragedy,' he said, 'if my master's infirmity were to affect the completion of the work.'
'Infirmity? What do you mean?'
'Well, he is given to fits of madness. When one of these comes over him, he destroys everything in the place.'
'But that is terrible! This silk was brought from China, and specially woven...
'Then let me advise you, Intensively Glorious Ornament of the Court,' said Nasrudin, 'the Master Tailor must be seized and given a beating, as shock treatment, the moment he begins to show signs that the seizure is about to start.'
'What signs?'
'Well, he begins turning things over as if looking for something, and runs his hands over the material, as if seeking bumps.'
The courtier thanked the Mulla, and kept a close eye on the Tailor.
Nasrudin then took his master's scissors and hid them. Soon the Tailor was looking everywhere for them, running his hands up and down the cloth to seek a bump, lifting things up and looking underneath...
'Seize that man, tie him up and beat him, quickly!' shouted the supervising Courtier.
After this treatment, and when the reason had been explained to him, the Tailor rushed over to the Mulla, shouting, 'Since when was I insane?'
'Since I ceased to like halwa,' said Nasrudin.

The confusion of opinion and fact is one of the most common and most bewildering of human tendencies. We all know that other-wise perfectly rational people, from time to time, will show that they not only prefer opinion to fact: they will be unaware that they are making the preference.

Some Nasrudin stories attempt to improve this situation. By giving us a joke which can anchor the absurdity of this opinion-fact conflict in the memory, they make us think twice before saying absurd things.
One day Mulla Nasrudin said to his wife, 'Bring me a piece of cheese. Cheese is nutritious, pleasing to the taste, and easy to eat.'
'Mulla!' she cried, 'there's no cheese in the house.'
Nasrudin continued, 'Cheese can go bad and smell. It can give you nightmares - and it costs too much.'
'Now,' said Mrs Nasrudin, 'which statement is the right one?'
'It all depends,' said the Mulla, 'on whether you have any cheese or not.'

Mulla Nasrudin and a party of his friends went to listen to an address by a Sufi who was visiting his town to talk to a group of the Sufi's own disciples.
The visitor gave a long speech, and everyone listened respect-fully; though Nasrudin's friends could make neither head nor tail of it.
Walking home, one of his companions said, 'Mulla, what was he talking about?'
'Ah,' said Nasrudin, 'if he wouldn't tell, neither shall I!'
One of the tasks of a spiritual disciple is that he should overcome the deceitfulness in his mind, which constantly betrays him. This is an aspect of the 'commanding self', the accumulation of instinct and experience which clouds the perceptive faculty:

Some say that Nasrudin lived in the time of the great conqueror Tamerlane, and was one of his advisers.

One day, so goes the tale, Timur the Lame called the Mulla and said:
'Nasrudin, the Empire is full of slanderers. How can we stop their evil work?'
'You can never stop crime unless you punish all the criminals,' said Nasrudin.
'You mean the slanderers?'
'And their accomplices - those who listen to them,' the Mulla reminded him