Nasreddin
Nasreddin (also commonly spelled Nasrudin, Nasredin, Nasruddin, Nasr Eddin, Nastradhin, Nasreddine, Nastratin, Nusrettin) was a lower Muslim cleric who lived among the Turkic peoples in the Middle Ages. His name is often preceded or followed by the title "Hodja", "Hoca", "Hogea", "Hodza", "Mullah", "Mulla", "Molla", "Maulana", "Chotzas".Nasreddin was a populist philosopher and wise man, remembered for his funny stories and anecdotes. He often appears as a whimsical character of a large Arabic and Turkish folk tradition of vignettes, not entirely different from zen koans.
His exact country and lifetime are not known certainly but he is usually assumed to have lived in Anatolia between the 11th and the 14th century. However, he is well known among various Turkic peoples living in a wide geography between Anatolia and Xinjiang (in China, where Uighurs live). The city of Bukhara in Uzbekistan has a statue of him riding his donkey backwards and grasping its tail (as he is traditionally depicted), and journals bear his name in Baky and Tabriz.
The anectodes attributed to him reveal a satirical personality with a biting tongue that he was not afraid to use even against the most tyrannical sultans of his time. He seems to be the symbol of both the Cental Asian style satirical comedy and the rebellious feelings of people against the dynasties that once ruled this geography.
Some mystic traditions use jokes, stories and poetry to express certain ideas, allowing the bypassing of the normal discriminative thought patterns. The rationality that confines and objectifies the thinking process is the opposite to the intuitive, gestalt mentality that the mystic is attempting to engage, enter and retain.
By developing a series of impacts that reinforce certain key ideas, the rational mind is occupied with a surface meaning whilst other concepts are introduced. Thus paradox, unexpectedness, and alternatives to convention are all expressed.
That is what makes people laugh at the tales of Hodja Nasrudin.
The tales of Nasrudin are sometimes adapted and used in this way as teaching stories by followers of Sufism.
Mark Twain's Library of Humor includes a story attributed to Nasreddin Hoja.
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Examples
Two sides of a river
Nasrudin sat on a river bank
when someone shouted to him
from the opposite side: