Janet Afary and Kamran Afary, Molla Nasreddin: The Making of a Modern Trickster (1906-1911)

The trickster figure is a common cultural feature globally. A not-so-pious Muslim cleric, with foolish deeds and clever sayings, Nasreddin (Nasreddin Hoca in Turkish, Molla Nasreddin in Farsi, and Joha in Arabic) has been the most popular folk character and trickster figure in the Middle East for centuries. Molla Nasreddin: The Making of a Modern Trickster (1906-1911) investigates how a cartoon journal in South Caucasus, Molla Nasreddin, reproduced the trickster figure as a medium of social criticism, and how it reimagined “both the name and the persona of the trickster for modern political satire” to “disseminate a progressive discourse on power, religion, class, and gender”.