Nasreddin

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 Central Asia and a hero of humorous short stories and satirical anecdotes. His adventures are celebrated in dozens of languages, starting with Turkish, and others such as Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, Persian, Arabic, Greek, Corsican, and Russian. There have been frequent claims about his historical existence, with some pointing to purported physical or archaeological evidence such as a commemorative tombstone in the city of Akşehir, Turkey. The specific date or place of Nasreddin's birth, and his historicity, remain an open question. Nasreddin appears in thousands of stories, sometimes witty, sometimes wise, but in many of which he is presented as a (holy) fool or as the butt of a joke. A Nasreddin story usually has a subtle humour and a pedagogic nature. The International Nasreddin Hodja festival is celebrated between 5 and 10 July every year in Akşehir. In 2022, "The tradition of telling comic tales about Nasreddin Khoja" was added in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list after it was jointly submitted in 2020 by the governments of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkey and Turkmenistan.