Perspective

The Perspective that these teaching stories of the Mullah Nasrudin take are similar to those of parables, jokes, and tales. They are presented as fables and rumors, in the manner that they happened 'long ago, and to somebody else'. This means that most of them all start with the premise that 'The Mullah Nasrudin was once walking....' etc. This style gives the tales a feeling of authenticity and even of authority, as they are all presented as historical fact.

The perspective of the tales themselves is generally hard to capture for all of the tales (as the Mullah Nasrudin stories have been translated and owned by many different cultures and nations throughout time). One enduring feature however, is that the narrator is almost always on the side of the Mullah. These tales are told as if by a friend of the Mullah's who is relating a particularly...