One day a Persian barber was shaving the Cogia’s head.  At every stroke of his razor he cut his head, and to every place which he cut he applied a piece of cotton.  Said the Cogia to the barber, ’My good fellow, you had better sow half of my head with cotton and let me sow the other half with flax.’

One time the Cogia went to the well to draw water, but seeing the face of the moon reflected in the well, he exclaimed, ’The moon has fallen into the well, I must pull it out.’  Then going home, he took a rope and hook, and returning, cast it into the well, where the hook became fastened against a stone.  The Cogia, exerting all his might, pulled at the rope, once, twice, but at the second pulling the rope snapped, and he fell upon his back, and looking up into the heaven, saw the moon, whereupon he exclaimed, ’O praise and glory, I have suffered much pain, but the moon has got to its place again.’

One day the Cogia going into a person’s garden climbed up into an apricot-tree and began to eat the apricots.  The master coming said, ’Cogia, what are you doing here?’ ‘Dear me,’ said the Cogia, ’don’t you see that I am a nightingale sitting in the apricot-tree?’ Said the gardener, ’Let me hear you sing.’  The Cogia began to warble.  Whereupon the other fell to laughing, and said, ‘Do you call that singing?’ ’I am a Persian nightingale,’ said the Cogia, ’and Persian nightingales sing in this manner.’

The Cogia, now with God, was master of all learning, and perfect in every art.  If some people should now say, ’We were in hope of receiving instruction from his sayings, but have read nothing but the ravings of madness’; and if they should require some other book of his utterances, we must tell them that he uttered nothing beyond what is noted here.  Some people say that, whilst uttering what seemed madness, he was, in reality, divinely inspired, and that it was not madness but wisdom that he uttered.  The mercy of God be upon him, mercy without bounds.

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