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Preface

Bismillahir Rahmaneer Raheem. In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. My salutation is also to our Prophet Muhammad sallal-Iahu alayhi wa sallam (S) [peace and blessings of Allah be upon him].

Civilization is often measured in terms of arts and literature and never in terms of might or strength of a nation to subdue other nations. That is why, we never hear about Hun, Scythian and Mongol civilization, despite the fact that savages of the past like Attila the Hun (the barbarian), Genghis Khan and Hulagu Khan were able to terrorize millions and kill hundreds of thousands of people and control vast territories. Fortunately, from very early on wherever Islam made an inroad it was able to either refine indigenous civilization of a nation that was already enjoying a certain level of civilization, or civilize a people that was hitherto drowned in savagery. That is why, it is not difficult to fathom why for nearly a thousand years (7th-17th century C.E. or 1st-11th century A.H.) while most of the European nations were sunk in savagery, Muslim nations in Asia, Africa and Moorish Spain were enjoying fruits of such a lofty civilization that was simply superb. Muslim nations were, therefore, able to breed a multitude of great scientists, philosophers, doctors, mathematicians, astronomers, social scientists, geographers, historians, writers, poets, novelists, linguists, artists and humorists. Nasreddin Hodja (Hoca in the letter ‘c’ is pronounced as ‘dj’) was one such Muslim humorist from Turkey (in the 13th century CE), a county not known for arts and literature in the era that preceded Islam.

Writing about elements of humor in Central The Example of the Journal of Molla Nasreddin in Az