The Subtleties of the Inimitable Mulla Nasrudin

The trend during the last few years towards stories about stupid people brought us such non-classics (but entertaining reads) as "The 776 Stupidest Things Ever Said", "The Darwin Awards", and others. But what few people know is that such stories were circulating 1000 years ago in the Sufi storytelling tradition. These stories are the equivalent of our "Urban Legends". Oddly enough, as I read this, I wish that I could view the world in such simple ways as the Mulla Nasrudin, who is the character in all these stories. His views, often twisted, very often completely at odds with his surroundings, are also very pragmatic, and make perfect sense in his mind. These stories are tremendous fun, and rather thought-provoking.Enjoy!

Mulla Nasrudin is akin to a Central Asian Charlie Brown or Dilbert. If you like humor that's funny, relevant and meaningful, this is for you.

This book is the perfect antidote for a mind that is caught up in its own world, ignorant of the possibilities that lie beyond its confines. The delightful stories bring to light those antics of the mind that distort vision. Once these inadequate mentations are exposed, the process of thinking becomes clearer and less muddled with speculation and confusion. I think any one who is interested in discovering within oneself the method for sifting fact from fiction will find these stories invaluable. In addition, the reader, freed from the strictures that bind ordinary thought, gets a glimpse of a greater world with greater freedom and greater potential.

Each one of Idries Shah's three delightful Nasrudin books - The Subtleties of the Inimitable Mulla Nasrudin, the Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin and The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mulla Nasrudin - is not only the perfect gift for any thinking person with a sense of humor, but a fitting antidote to the stress, pressure and confusion of modern life. For beyond the laughter lie deeper levels of meaning that reveal themselves at their own pace and can help broaden our perception and increase our understanding. The bite-sized jokes center around Mulla Nasrudin, an age-old Middle Eastern teaching figure whose antics mirror those of the human mind as he juggles the roles of wise man, fool and our own self. Calling these jokes "perfectly designed models for isolating and holding distortions of the mind which so often pass for reasonable behavior," author Idries Shah notes that they have been used for centuries by the Sufis as teaching exercises. Other specialists - from physicists to psychologists - have employed them to illustrate concepts that defy more straightforward explanations. I've not seen anything like them anywhere else.

I'm just back from a trip to Turkey, where I discovered that Mulla Nasrudin is almost as popular as PEANUTS is in the United States. In addition to providing amusement, however, the Nasrudin stories are also used there as exercises for spiritual development with children and adults alike, since they externalize in joke form common patterns of human thought and behavior that need to be identified and understood in order for a human being to make progress. Thus, the Turks, and interested Western readers as well, can laugh and learn, both at once, from these ancient Middle Eastern anecdotes.