NASREDDİN HOCA AND TAMERLANE: ENCOUNTERS WITH POWER IN THE TURKISH FOLK TRADITION OF LAUGHTER NECMI ERDOĞAN ABSTRACT The article analyzes a crucial element of the Turkish folk tradition of laughter, the corpus of Nasreddin Hoca anecdotes, in terms of the narrative encounter between the powerful and the powerless. Examining the anecdotes about Tamerlane, it argues that the humorous folk representations of the relation of the common people with power revolve around what de Certeau calls the “art of making do with”. Contrary to the argument that he is a colleague of Diogenes the kynic, Nasreddin Hoca does not selfconsciously oppose and challenge the power of Tamerlane. He rather strives to cope with it through a wide spectrum of behaviors including avoidance, trickery, simulation, and repartee. Given that the Hoca is a fictional character, such anecdotes are to be taken as narratives of the predominantly evasive stance of the subaltern social classes and groups vis-à-vis the state in the Ottoman Empire. The study also refers to the grotesque imagery embedded in the Turkish folk laughter. Keywords: Nasreddin Hoca, Turkish folk culture, folk laughter, anecdotes, grotesque, making do with, kynicism. GROTESQUE IMAGERY IN NASREDDİN HOCA ANECDOTES Nasreddin Hoca is without doubt the most prominent and beloved comic figure of Turkish folk anecdotes, about whom hundreds of humorous narratives have been told in a vast geographic area – ranging from the Central Asia to the Balkans – and translated into many languages1. He is said to have lived in the central Anatolian town of Akşehir and died in 1284; and his alleged tomb is still visited by people. However, even the single fact that in some anecdotes he is depicted together with Tamerlane, the despotic Mongol emperor who invaded Anatolia at the beginning of the 15th century (died in 1405), clearly indicates that he is first and foremost to be taken as a folk narrative character, a product of folk imagination. Nasreddin Hoca appears as a generic figure around whom otherwise 1 Hoca is a honorific title, meaning “teacher”, “schoolmaster”, imam or preacher; and Nasreddin often figures as a poor imam or preacher. REF/JEF, 1–2, p. 21–36, Bucureşti, 2013 22 Necmi Erdoğan 2 amorphous and diverse humorous narratives of various origins and stylistic composition, such as anecdotes, proverbial sayings, aphorisms, and witticisms, are juxtaposed. While the earliest Hoca manuscript contains forty-three anecdotes, over the course of centuries, hundreds of humorous anecdotes have been attached to his name and incorporated into the collections. As is noted by Marzolph, the Hoca appears as a point of crystallization of a number of anecdotes originally not connected with his historical or even fictional character 2. Therefore, a single characterization would fail to encompass the full range of the Hoca’s traits as a narrative character3. This figure performs a wide variety of narrative functions: fool, trickster, wit, sage, and buffoon. His alternation between the wise man and the fool, the wit and the numbskull, both within and among anecdotes, produces a sense of ambivalence. Mostly he occupies an ambivalent and liminal space betwixt and between folly and wisdom, naïveté and ingenuity, stupidity and sagacity. Nasreddin Hoca anecdotes in which he encounters Tamerlane deserve special attention in so far as they enable us to understand the Turkish folk representations of the relationship between the low and the high, the weak and the strong, the ruled and the ruler. In this article, I will analyze the corpus of anecdotes in terms of the narrative encounter between the strong and the weak4. I will argue that the humorous folk representations of the relation of the common people with power revolves around what de Certeau calls mètis or the “art of making do with”; i.e. the ways of using, evading, coping with, and foiling the imposed order5. Unable to declare an open warfare against the law of the place, the Hoca makes do with what it provides by means of manipulation, trickery, simulation, disguise, and repartee. Contrary to the argument that he is a colleague of Diogenes the kynic, I will assert that Nasreddin Hoca does not self-consciously oppose and challenge the power of Tamerlane or social norms and conventions. Given that the Hoca is a fictional character, such anecdotes are to be taken as narratives of the predominantly evasive stance of the subaltern social classes and groups vis-à-vis the state in the Ottoman 2 Marzolph 1996: 492. Başgöz 1998: 4. 4 There are numerous editions of Nasreddin Hoca anecdotes available in Turkish. Here I will mainly draw upon Boratav’s (1996) and Duman’s (2008) editions of the manuscripts and printed collections dating back from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries. I will also refer to Burrill’s (1970) English translation of the sixteenth century manuscript at the University of Groningen; Barnham’s (1923) English translation of the 1909 edition of Bahai’s collection, Lata’if-i Hace Nasreddin; Gölpınarlı’s (1961) contemporary edition, and the English transcriptions of a few oral narratives collected and published in Walker and Uysal (1966) and Karabaş and Bear (1996). Here all references are, wherever possible, made to the numbers assigned to the anecdotes and not pages for the sake of convenience. 5 de Certeau 1984: xix. For the ancient Greeks, mètis “combine(s) flair, wisdom, forethought, subtlety of mind, deception, resourcefulness, vigilance, opportunism, various skills and experience acquired over the years. It is applied in situations which are transient, shifting, disconcerting, and ambiguous, situations which do not lend themselves to precise measurement, exact calculation, or rigorous logic” (Detienne and Vernant 1978: 4). 3 3 Nasreddin Hoca and Tamerlane 23 Empire. My analysis will also refer to the grotesque imagery embedded in the anecdotes. In Turkey, Nasreddin Hoca has both officially and publicly been exalted and promoted for his sense of humor, wisdom, and tolerance. It is to be underlined here that the high-style appropriation of the anecdotes has led to a gradual transformation of the figure of Nasreddin over centuries from a grotesque fooltrickster to a sympathetic folk philosopher, and recently, to an ambassador of the “Turkish culture”. As Boratav notes, a good many anecdotes within the corpus, often the strongest ones, are of an obscene and profane kind and their publishing is virtually forbidden by social mores6. Similarly, Marzolph suggests that Nasreddin in oral tradition is “an unrestricted hero, clever and nasty at the same time, sympathetic and drastic in his words and deeds, certainly less domesticated and adapted to officially valid moral standards than in many printed publications”7. Most Turkish folklorists tend to ignore the obscenity and coarseness of the Nasreddin Hoca figure8. Eliminating or discarding the anecdotes in contradiction with his supposedly pure identity, folklorists such as Sakaoğlu and Kurgan explicitly rule the grotesque ones out of the “genuine” anecdotes simply by saying that they do not suit a wise man of religion9. Actually such acts of elimination or suppression are the culmination of a long-standing “refined literary” tendency to cleanse the anecdotes of their grotesque imagery. The contrast between the manuscripts of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries and the editions of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries already evident in Boratav’s and Duman’s collections, proves that the attempts at refining, moralizing, and censoring the anecdotes date back to the late period of the Ottoman Empire. Başgöz observes that over the centuries Nasreddin Hoca anecdotes underwent a sea-change in their language and themes10. As a result of the influence of the writers of manuscripts educated in religious schools and of the elite listeners, they were cleansed of their coarse and obscene language while the blasphemous ones were either eliminated or modified so as to be in conformity with the orthodox religious credentials. Not surprising in this respect is the fact that coarse and obscene anecdotes are abundant in the early texts whereas they are minimized in the later ones by means of elimination or modification. Boratav’s collection includes roughly 90 coarse anecdotes out of 594, almost all of which are compiled from the early manuscripts and collections and a good many anecdotes (36 out of 76) of the sixteenth century manuscript at the University of Groningen translated by Burrill fall into that category. Whereas Bahai’s collection, translated into English by Barnham, almost 6 Boratav 1983: 295. Also see Duman 2008: 111–28. Marzolph 1996a: 146–7. 8 Boratav 1983 and 1996; Marzolph 1993; and Karabaş 1990. 9 Sakaoğlu 1996 and Kurgan 1974. 10 Başgöz 1998. 7 24 Necmi Erdoğan 4 totally excludes them, there are only a few of them in Gölpınarlı11. Henceforth, it is to be kept in mind that the following brief description of the grotesque imagery in the corpus largely draws upon the early texts. From the Nasreddin Hoca anecdotes to the shadow theatre, the Turkish folk tradition of laughter is indeed woven by a grotesque imagery. As is analyzed by Bakhtin in his analysis of Rabelais and Medieval European folk laughter, grotesque imagery is based on the degradation or lowering of all that is high, spiritual, ideal, and abstract12. Parodying high spiritual values and mocking authority, it turns the world inside out and inscribes the indivisible wholeness and positivity of the human body through the images of copulation, defecation, eating, birth and death, etc. The Nasreddin Hoca anecdotes, especially the early texts, are marked by the images of material bodily lower stratum (i.e. the lower parts and orifices of the human body including phallus, testicles, and vulva). He frequently sports his phallus, and is much preoccupied with it. For example, after copulating with his donkey, he sunbathes with his bare penis; and when a fellow reproves him, he replies: “Shall I cover my moist penis and let it turn moldy?”13. Bakhtin observes that the image of the monastic belfry or tower is the grotesque symbol of the phallus, being linked to the material bodily principle14. Similarly, in one of Nasreddin Hoca anecdotes, the minaret is said to be the phallus of the mosque: The Hoca sees a minaret and asks people what they call it; when he is told, “That's the town's penis”, “Do you have a behind to match it?” he exclaims15. Also the images of sexual intercourse are much accentuated by the narratives. Nasreddin Hoca frequently gets exhausted because of his wife’s insatiable lust 16. Yet he does not refrain from extra-marital relations as if there are no sexual prohibitions in his world. On the other hand, always associated with his donkey, the Hoca does not hesitate to copulate with it17. Often interwoven with sexual images, death becomes cheerful and regenerative. For instance, when he is ill in bed and the neighbor women ask him what they should say while weeping after his death, he answers, “Say that he died without having enough of vulva”18. On the other hand, banquet images play a crucial part in Nasreddin Hoca’s world as his motto is “better in our stomachs than our minds”. As the bridegroom he refuses to enter the nuptial chamber since he has not been invited to his own wedding feast and he cannot sleep at night while a good dish is awaiting him in the kitchen19. 11 See Boratav 1996; Burrill 1970; Barnham 1923; Gölpınarlı 1961. Bakhtin 1968 and 1981. 13 Boratav 1996, no. 25; Duman 2008, no. 152. 14 Bakhtin 1968, 310–2. 15 Boratav 1996, no. 31; Duman 2008, no. 156; Burrill 1970, no. 9. 16 See Boratav 1996, nos. 176, 262, 323, 331, 363; Duman 2008, nos. 98, 127, 420, 458. 17 See Boratav 1996, nos. 25, 64, 65, 66, 100 138; Duman 2008, nos. 208, 209, 402, 433; Burrill 1970, nos. 36, 38. 18 Boratav 1996, no. 122; Duman 2008, no. 94. 19 Boratav 1996, nos. 195, 513; Duman 2008, no. 108; Gölpınarlı 1961, no. 272. 12 5 Nasreddin Hoca and Tamerlane 25 The narratives also include parodic transgression of interdictions of Islam. For instance, when performing his ritual prayer in a mosque, the Hoca prostrates and a fellow takes hold of his testicles stuck out from behind. The Hoca in turn takes hold of the imam’s testicles, and when asked what he is doing, “I thought you are playing the game of testicles,” he answers20. Lastly, the images of the bottoms up, and the topsy-turvy, play a significant part in the folk laughter of the anecdotes. The Hoca wants to be buried upside down so as to rise upright when the world is turned upside down in the Day of Judgment21. Furthermore, he rides his donkey facing its tail22. In these ways, the dualities of high and low, top and bottom, and death and birth are thus turned inside out in a carnivalesque manner. The narrative encounters between the Hoca and Tamerlane are also to be considered within the context of grotesque imagery. “THE KING AND THE FOOL”: TAMERLANE AND NASREDDIN HOCA In the early Hoca manuscripts, rulers or sultans mostly appear to be anonymous except for the cases in which the Hoca is depicted with Alaeddin Keykubat, the Seljuk sultan (1210–1219), and Murad I, the Ottoman sultan (1325– 1389). The Hoca is respectful to the sultans mentioned by name but does not respect unnamed rulers, sometimes insulting them23. Tamerlane was introduced into the corpus as a new figure of political authority in the seventeenth century. Noticeably, Akşehir, the supposed hometown of the Hoca, is the place where Sultan Bayazid died in captivity after his defeat against Tamerlane in 1402. Stories about anonymous rulers being subsequently attributed to him, Tamerlane became a focus of anecdotes about despotic and unjust figures of political authority. Thereby, the pair of Nasreddin and Tamerlane served as “a focus and a generating force for anecdotes criticizing government and power”24. It can be argued that the “art of making do with” in its dissimulating aspect was employed in the naming of rulers as well. As Başgöz aptly remarks, “it was permissible and safer to condemn Tamerlane, a hated foreigner, than to condemn and insult an Ottoman sultan”25. In the anecdotes about his encounters with Tamerlane, the position of Nasreddin Hoca varies from a jester to a man of the common people. In some anecdotes, Nasreddin Hoca is cast as a jester at Tamerlane’s court, playing the fool and provoking laughter. He appears as the only person licensed freely to debase the emperor and to make fun of him. His jokes, jests, and witticisms also make him a beloved courtier of Tamerlane. Thereby, Tamerlane and Nasreddin Hoca constitute 20 Boratav 1996, no. 15; Duman 2008, no. 16; Burrill 1970, no. 27. Boratav 1996, no. 413. 22 Duman 2008, no. 87; Gölpınarlı 1961, no. 108; cf. Bakhtin 1968: 411. 23 For example, see Duman 2008, nos 373, 395. 24 Marzolph 1996b: 497. 25 Başgöz 1998: 27. 21 26 Necmi Erdoğan 6 a pair analogous to “the king and the fool” of European cultural history. Despite the diversity of narrative traditions and genres (whether it be theatrical, mythical or folk-comical) in which such pairings figure, there appear some conventionalized narrative-stylistic features: “Irrespective of the specific work in which such pairings occur, we respond, long before the details of argument clearly emerge, to a convention whose power rests upon its promise to subvert our notion of power and convention… At the center of the agon there is always a moment of absolute reversal, an exchange of positions”26. The status reversal here has much to do with grotesque imagery briefly examined above. Bakhtin argues that such narratives, like the medieval dialogues between Solomon and the cheerful rogue Marcolph, represent the “dispute between a dismal sacred word and a cheerful folk word”27. Thus the pair of Tamerlane and Nasreddin Hoca can be taken as part of the dialogue of the high and low, top and bottom, or life and death28. Grotesque imagery of anecdotes is also articulated into the ones in which the Hoca figures as jester: When the emperor wants him to divide five eggs cooked by his wife fairly among the three (the emperor, his wife, and the Hoca), the Hoca divides them in the following way: one for himself and one for Tamerlane, since they both have two below their waist, and three for his wife, since she has none below her waist29. Similarly, he dares to offer Tamerlane his own penis as a quickwitted reply to the emperor’s swearing at his wife – “shit on her hand”30. On the other hand, when Tamerlane, intended to check the Hoca’s courage, orders his archers to fire arrows so as to pass between his legs and under his arms, he comes off unscathed but defecates into his underwear31. Nasreddin Hoca’s mockery of Tamerlane also provokes laughter: Tamerlane was an ugly man; one of his eyes was blind, one of his legs iron-made (lame). One day while having a chat with the Hoca, he felt he needed a haircut; call his barber, and had a haircut. No sooner than he looked at his own image in the mirror the barber gave him, he started weeping for his ugliness. The Hoca too started weeping. They both shed tears for one or two ours. Afterwards, Tamerlane’s courtiers and buffoons consoled him by means of amusing anecdotes. Tamerlane stopped weeping; but the Hoca did not. Rather he started crying even more bitterly. Soon Tamerlane asked the Hoca, ‘I myself have had a look at my image in the mirror; and seen that I am utterly ugly notwithstanding that I am the sultan and have plenty of wealth and female slaves. I have wept for my own ugly look. Why have you yourself wept and still been weeping?’ The Hoca replies: ‘You looked at your face only once; and could not bear having a look at your own image. But we see your face day and night. Whoever would weep if we not? I’ve been weeping for that!’ Tamerlane was doubled up with laughter32. 26 Bernstein 1983: 283. Bakhtin 1981: 76. 28 Cf. Bakhtin 1968: 434. 29 Walker and Uysal 1966: 233. 30 Boratav 1996, no. 265; Duman 2008, no. 367. For another variant, see Duman 2008, no. 99. 31 Boratav 1996, no. 557; Duman 2008, no. 612; Barnham 1923: 141–4. 32 Boratav 1996, no. 326, Duman 2008, no. 478. 27 7 Nasreddin Hoca and Tamerlane 27 There are also directly satirical anecdotes in which Nasreddin Hoca dares to debase, devalue and criticize the brutal emperor. In the bathhouse, Tamerlane asks the Hoca how much he would be worth; and the Hoca says, “Sixty piasters.” When Tamerlane says angrily that even his bath towel is worth sixty, “Just so, I estimated its price,” answers the Hoca33. Similarly, when Tamerlane asks Nasreddin whether he would go to Heaven or Hell, the Hoca says that no sooner than he closes his eyes he will join the club of great emperors like Nimrod, Pharaoh, Alexander, and Chengiz Khan, alluding to Hell34. Nasreddin also ventures to question the legitimacy of the whimsical orders of the despot: A drunken soldier being brought to his presence, Tamerlane sentences him to three hundred blows of the bastinado35. Having noticed that Nasreddin Hoca smiles, he increases the number of blows to five hundred; and then, when the Hoca starts laughing, he again increases it to eight hundred at which the Hoca outrageously bursts into laughter. Angry with the Hoca, Tamerlane asks, “How dare you mock at me when I give sentence; I, a mighty conqueror who has made the world tremble! What a cold heart you must have to be still laughing!” The Hoca replies: “I fully admit that you are a cruel tyrant. But I am surprised that either you don’t know how to count or unlike us you are not a man of flesh and blood but iron as your name implies”36. Here his liminal status is his greatest help to the extent that he plays on his own ambivalent figuration in between folly and wisdom, and naiveté and ingenuity. By way of digression, the Hoca’s witticism and trickery are not only directed against Tamerlane but also his fellow villagers and neighbors: Tamerlane sends an elephant to the Hoca’s village for pasture as a form of taxation. Within a short while it eats all the crops of the villagers. When the people ask the Hoca to see Tamerlane and to have it sent back, he suggests that they all go and see him all together. They agree to this proposal and they all go to Tamerlane’s tent. But when the Hoca is about to enter into the tent, he looks behind and realizes that all the people have deserted him one by one for their fear of Tamerlane. Angry with his fellow villagers, the Hoca enters the presence of Tamerlane and says to the emperor, “I have come to tell you that the elephant you gave us is lovely. We wish that you would give us a female elephant too”37. Likewise, Nasreddin thinks that tyranny does not simply result from the whim of the monarch but is founded upon 33 Boratav 1996, no. 181; Duman 2008, no. 271; Barnham 1923: 221. In the earliest, sixteenth century versions of this anecdote, the protagonist appears to be the poet Ahmadi Kirmani (died 1413) who had been at the court of Sultan Bayazid. The Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi’s Seyahatname (Travel Book) is the first text that atributes the anecdote to Nasreddin Hoca. See Marzolph 1996: 486–9. 34 Boratav 1996, no. 591; Barnham 1923: 112–3. 35 Alcoholic drinks are strictly forbidden by sharia, the Islamic sacred law, violation of which requires a punishment by bastinado with a maximum of eighty blows. 36 Boratav 1996, no. 483; Barnham 1923: 83–49. “Tamerlane” means “iron leg” in Turkish. 37 Boratav 1996, no. 512; Walker and Uysal 1966: 229–32; Barnham 1923: 33–4; Gölpınarlı 1961, no. 232. 28 Necmi Erdoğan 8 and sustained by the very wickedness of the populace: When Tamerlane asks, “Am I a tyrant or a learned man?”, the Hoca replies, “Your majesty, you are neither a tyrant nor a learned man. It is we who have been such cruel tyrants that God has sent you to scourge us”38. Nonetheless, such satirical anecdotes are not typical of the corpus as most narratives thematize the avoidance of direct and open confrontation with Tamerlane. Being on the alert, the Hoca keeps his temper against a rude fellow until he makes sure that he has no connection with Tamerlane39. The avoidance of direct and open confrontation is best illustrated by the following anecdote: The tyranny of the Mongols led panic-stricken people to flee away from towns and the Hoca too went to a secluded village in the hills along with his wife and son. One day people gathered together before the village fountain start criticizing the brutal character of the Mongols. Accordingly, Nasreddin Hoca began to describe in detail the awful torments those tyrants would suffer in Hell. All of a sudden a dervish among the people burst out with a voice of thunder, denouncing them as a poor-blooded, lazy, woman-hearted folk. The people being startled and horrified, the Hoca gave the dervish a searching look and in despair dared to ask him questions about his identity. When he eventually realized that it was Tamerlane in disguise, he turned to the people and said, ‘People of Mohammed! Welcome to the funeral prayer for the dead!’40 Analyzing “hidden transcripts” of subordinate groups, Scott argues that the weak dare not contest power relations onstage but articulate an offstage dissent which is expressed in rumors, folktales, or jokes41. The above anecdote parodies such a critique of power behind the back of the dominant. Besides it is suggestive of why the folk tradition of laughter focused on Tamerlane, a hated foreign despot, and not Ottoman sultans. Given that anecdotes are part of oral tradition, it also warns us that folk storytellers might adopt a strategic pose and modify their stories when narrating in public. In many anecdotes, Nasreddin Hoca is cast as the only man of the people who is able to save the town and its terror-stricken inhabitants from Tamerlane’s disastrous despotism. Where the people are incapable of challenging or rebelling against tyrannical rule but have to survive, he appears as the savior who could manage to employ cunning methods of “escaping without leaving”42. Thanks to his ingenuity and wit, Nasreddin Hoca is able to devise tricks to cope with Tamerlane. He uses a vast repertoire of tactics such as avoidance, flight, simulation of obedience, dissimulation of dissent, and trickery. 38 Boratav 1996, no. 496; Walker and Uysal 1966: 229–32. Duman 2008, no. 716. 40 Boratav 1996, no. 559; Duman 2008, no. 658; Gölpınarlı 1961, no. 230; Barnham 1923: 147–9. Another variant of the same motif is told on the violation of the strict prohibition of drinking alcohol and smoking under the reign of Murad IV (1623–1640). It pairs the figures of Murad IV disguised as a dervish and a coffeehouse keeper. See Bayrak 1987: 115–6. 41 Scott 1990. 42 de Certeau 1984: 87. 39 9 Nasreddin Hoca and Tamerlane 29 As a resourceful figure, Nasreddin Hoca pretends to have flu when Tamerlane asks him if his palace stinks; for he knows that both positive and negative answers will cause death43. Also he resorts to flight to save his life from the arbitrary rule of Tamerlane: No sooner has he heard of the fact that Tamerlane kills those men who annoy him in his dreams than the Hoca flees to his village. When his fellow villagers wonder why he has left Tamerlane and come away despite he is the only man with whom the emperor never gets angry and who can manage him and save the people, Nasreddin answers: “By God’s grace I am able to cope with any situation when he is awake. At least I cautiously avoid and elude him as much as possible. But I am not capable of not appearing, or acting as he wishes, in his dreams”44. Unable to leave the place the law of which is set by the despot, he tries to accommodate it: Tamerlane decides to confiscate the property of the governor of Akşehir on the pretense that he had defrauded the tax authorities, and summons him to present his accounts. He makes the governor swallow the account papers, sequestrating his property. Then he orders Nasreddin Hoca to supervise the collection of taxes despite all his excuses. When, at the beginning of the next month, he calls him for a statement of accounts, he sees that the Hoca has written it on a thin and flat piece of bread. The Hoca explains: “Wouldn’t you make me swallow it sooner or later? I have not such an appetite as my predecessor had. I am an old man and can only digest this”45. Seizing on opportunities, the Hoca plays with language and meaning as well. For instance, when Tamerlane, flown into rage by the Hoca’s familiar manners in presenting the requests of the townspeople, thunders, “how dare you so insolently demand such serious things from a great sultan like me?”, he replies: “What matter? If you’re great, we’re small!”46 He also relies on his repartee in order to checkmate Tamerlane and thereby save his own life: One day Tamerlane sends a platoon of soldiers to invite the Hoca to his tent. Yet, knowing that the emperor killed those who were called before him, the Hoca is reluctant to go. Called again, he still does not hurry and finally Tamerlane himself decides to visit the Hoca’s village. When they meet in the middle of a narrow street surrounded by peasants, the emperor’s horse is frightened by the Hoca’s large turban and throws him off its back. Tamerlane orders his soldiers to have the Hoca hanged. When the Hoca wants to know what his offence is, Tamerlane says, “you brought bad luck to me”. “Who has brought bad luck? Is it you or I?” asks the Hoca, “You are the bringer of bad luck, for I am about to be hanged. If I had been the bringer of bad luck, you would have fallen off your horse on your head and died – and then there would have been reason to hang me”. Then the emperor forgives the Hoca because of his 43 Duman 2008, no. 707. Boratav 1996, no. 508; Barnham 1923: 163. 45 Boratav 1996, no. 554; Barnham 1923: 139–40. 46 Boratav, 1996, no. 553; Gölpınarlı 1961, no. 228. 44 30 Necmi Erdoğan 10 witty answer47. Marked by external occurrences, Nasreddin Hoca’s response thus seizes on occasions so as to subtly manipulate and reverse the unfavorable or hostile composition of the law of the place: “What the event inscribes, no matter how fleeting and rapid it may be, is reversed, reverts back to it in the form of a word or an act: a flash repartee. The vivacity and appropriateness of this repartee are inseparable from their dependence on the instants which occur and from the vigilance that they mark all the more because there is less of a proper place to protect oneself and oneself’s memory against their occurrence”48. The ways of making do with the powerful in Nasreddin Hoca narratives also include simulation of powerfulness and dissimulation of weakness. In order to escape the tyrant, Nasreddin Hoca adopts a swaggering and domineering behavior and yet he is always ever ready to dissimulate and deny his challenge. For instance, The Hoca got sick and tired of Tamerlane. He appeared in his presence, and said, ‘Look here! Will you or will you not take your army and go away from Akşehir?’ Taken aback by the Hoca’s question, Tamerlane said, ‘What are you talking about? What kind of question is it? The Hoca pursued his question adamantly: It is quite clear. Will you or will you not go away? That’s what I want to know. If you won’t, I know what’ll do’. Tamerlane flew into a rage: ‘I won’t’ What are you going to do?’ The Hoca replied: ‘What can I do but go away myself together with the townspeople49. The complex interplay of such tactics as simulation, trickery, resourcefulness, repartee in the Hoca’s making do with Tamerlane is also evident in the following anecdote: The people of Akşehir urges Nasreddin Hoca to prevent Tamerlane and his army from entering the town and thus save their lives. The Hoca wears a blanket wrapped around his head as a huge turban and rides his donkey to meet Tamerlane. When noticed the Hoca, Tamerlane is startled by his oversize turban. “Pardon me! It’s my nightcap,” says the Hoca, “I was in a hurry to meet you; and I forgot to change it. My turban for the day is being carried by cart”50. Here oversize turban is a comic pretense to having a high status. In another version of this anecdote, upon his fellow townsmen’s request to cope with Tamerlane, Nasreddin Hoca asks them for a green cloak, huge turban and a huge green pulpit to be set on the plain of Akşehir. Provided with all he wants, the Hoca settles down in the pulpit, his huge turban being held up by two men standing at his sides. When Tamerlane sees him, he sends a soldier to bring him before his presence; but the Hoca refuses to go, saying “I am the god of earth. That’s why I can’t be entering into his presence; quite the reverse, he should visit me.” Tamerlane is furious but comes along with his retinue and asks the Hoca who he is. “I am the god of the earth,” says the Hoca once again. When Tamerlane demands him to enlarge the 47 Walker and Uysal 1966: 229–32. For a variant of this anecdote, in which Tamerlane is replaced by an anonymous sultan, see Boratav 1996, no. 300. 48 de Certeau 1984: 88. 49 Gölpınarlı 1961, no. 234; Karabaş and Bear 1996, no. 106. 50 Boratav 1996, no. 229; Duman 2008, no. 270. 11 Nasreddin Hoca and Tamerlane 31 small eyes of young girls in his company to prove that he is truly a god, the Hoca replies, “Your Majesty, I am the god of earth. If they have got holes below the waist, I can enlarge them. It is the god of the heaven who can enlarge holes above the waist. None of my business!”51 Leaving aside the grotesque debasement through “material bodily lower stratum,” Nasreddin Hoca’s posing as a god here appear as a tactical weapon deployed so as to avoid or cope with the power of the ruler. The latter is indeed the strongest and occupies the highest point in the ladder of secular hierarchy in the realm. The only way for Nasreddin to defeat the seemingly infallible sovereign is to lower it in the hierarchy by simulating god, stronger than the strongest of worldly creatures, and thereby positing his own “divine” sovereignty high and above Tamerlane’s. As seen above, except a few satirical anecdotes in which Nasreddin Hoca tells Tamerlane the truth about his rule, most narratives on the encounter between the two recount humorous ways of making do with the powerful. Nasreddin Hoca’s tactics vary, ranging from playing the fool, the naive, the weakest, the most powerless, to posing as the strongest, the most powerful, or the highest. Yet he does not attempt to invert the hierarchical order but plays with it in order to cope with the overarching power of the despot. DIOGENES THE KYNIC AND NASREDDİN In his work on “cynical reason” where he develops his “post-ideological” argument of “enlightened false consciousness”, Sloterdijk contrasts two opposing forms of consciousness, the cynicism of power and the kynicism of resistance from below: The cynical reason of domination marked by “enlightened false consciousness” is counteracted by kynical response in the forms of satirical laughter, convivial self-assertion, strategic silence, somatic anarchism, and politics of defiant body action52. From Sloterdijk’s standpoint, the ancient Greek figure of Diogenes appears as an archetypal embodiment of kynical revolt. The well-known anecdote from the ancient Greece goes as follows: Alexander the Great, passing by the public square on his horse, stops before Diogenes who is sunbathing crouched in his barrel. Eager to prove his generosity as the sovereign, Alexander grants the dog-philosopher a wish: “What do you want, what do you desire? My glory and power are capable of giving you everything.” Diogenes answers: “Stop blocking 51 Boratav 1996, no. 324; Duman 2008, no. 417. Sloterdijk 1988. Also, following Sloterdijk, Zizek (1989: 29) makes a distinction between cynicism of the dominant and kynicism of the dominated: “Kynicism represents the popular, plebeian rejection of the official culture by means of irony and sarcasm: the classical kynical procedure is to confront the pathetic phrases of the ruling official ideology – its solemn, grave tonality – with everyday banality and to hold them up to ridicule, thus exposing behind the sublime noblesse of the ideological phrases the egoistical interests, the violence, the brutal claims to power.” 52 32 Necmi Erdoğan 12 my sun!” He wants Alexander to remove his shadow from the presence of the sun. Sloterdijk contends that the Alexander anecdote indicates the emancipation of the philosopher from the politician: “Here, the wise man is not, like the modern intellectual, an accomplice of the powerful, but turns his back on the subjective principle of power, ambition, and the urge to be recognized. He is the first one who is uninhibited enough to say the truth to the prince. Diogenes’ answer negates not only the desire for power, but the power of desire as such”53. At this point, Serres’ essay on Diogenes and the Alexander anecdote is also suggestive insofar as the subversive potential of Diogenes’ kynicism is concerned54. From his perspective, the shadow of Alexander that veils the sun unravels the geometry of power that designates the continuum from the lowest to the highest, the weakest to the strongest, the minimum to the maximum. Though having forsaken society, Diogenes, for Serres, is not a hermit and he deliberately resides on the public square so as to provoke and checkmate the king. What he does is nothing but playing the low, the victim, the powerless: “Playing the weak to be stronger than power. Forsaking society, pretending to forsake it, in order to checkmate the king. Pretending to be ignominious in order to ennoble himself above the prince”55. Hence, Diogenes wins by deploying his logical weapons against material weapons of the king but he loses since he obeys the rules of the game and remains within the space of the power. Alexander admits that if he had not been Alexander, he would have liked to have become Diogenes. In this way, admired by the king and by the people both at the agora and in the history classes, Diogenes climbs up the ladder of height and thus obeys the law of power. Contrary to Sloterdijk’s argument for the negation of power by Diogenes, Serres maintains that Diogenes and Alexander are inseparable twins who complement one another in reciprocating power and glory; and that inversion of hierarchy reaffirms the relation of order by leaving the relational path itself intact and invariant just like a see-saw or a merry-go-ground56. What is crucial and noteworthy for the purposes of this article is that Sloterdijk explicitly cites Nasreddin Hoca as a colleague of Diogenes the kynic57. Similarly, asserting that Asian humor is a kynical one, Hatemi regards Nasreddin Hoca as Diogenes of an Asian type58. Indeed, there is, at first sight, a striking resemblance between Diogenes’ and Nasreddin’s encounters with Alexander and Tamerlane respectively. Likewise are Diogenes’ animalist philosophy and Nasreddin’s 53 Sloterdijk 1988: 161. Serres 1989. For his similar arguments on the geometry of hierarchical ordering relations, developed by making an analogy between La Fontaine’s fable, “The Wolf and the Lamb”, and “Western man as a wolf of science”, see Serres 1982. 55 Serres 1989: 81. 56 Serres 1989: 88. 57 Sloterdijk 1988: 159–60. 58 Hatemi 1997: 62. 54 13 Nasreddin Hoca and Tamerlane 33 grotesque images of phallus, copulation, defecation, sodomy, etc. Nevertheless, Diogenes occupies a clearly defined philosophical standpoint whereas the Hoca is an amorphous figure of folk imagination that combines diverse narratives of various origins together. Furthermore, the positions of Diogenes and Nasreddin in their respective social spaces are different to one another. Diogenes the dog lives among the rubbish, being naked, dirty, and crouched in his barrel. Having forsaken all the things of the world and abandoned all social relations of value, exchange, mastership and servitude, he is outside society. Distancing himself from all needs for the sake of his freedom, he displays a spectacular poverty and does not let himself be made the fool of needs and riches. Unlike Diogenes who teaches that the wise man too eats cake but only if he can just as well do without it, Nasreddin devises all possible tricks to have a good meal. Again unlike Diogenes’s ostentatious poverty posited against the sacrifice of freedom, Nasreddin constantly strives for making a livelihood. Diogenes ironically and sarcastically mocks and makes fun of his philosopher colleagues; and he adopts an oppositional, critical stance vis-à-vis his fellow citizens as illustrated in the episode with the lantern. As a subversive figure, he advocates the ideas of the free and autonomous existence of the “citizen of the world”, the unfettered experience of the animal side of zoon politikon, the perversion of social norms and conventions; and launches a frontal attack against the politics of family. In contrast to him, Nasreddin is not simply the “outsider”; and rather dwells in the threshold between “outside” and “inside”. As I have shown above, he does not selfconsciously oppose and challenge the power of Tamerlane or social norms and conventions. He rather strives to cope with them by means of wit, stratagem, and naiveté. “Strategic silence” and “pragmatic procedures” of naively or wittily laying bare the truth of the dominant are part of his arsenal of tactical weapons. Yet he employs them as a form of making do with and not as a form of subversive challenge. Rather than forging an antagonism against the ruler or mores and conventions, he parodies and plays with them. In contrast to Diogenes, Nasreddin Hoca does not deliberately dwell in the public square to defeat Tamerlane and to reverse the relation of order between the strong and the weak or the high and the low. Instead he leaves the town to save his life from the disastrous consequences of Tamerlane’s dream. Or he is forced by his fellow people to save the town from the despot and devises a trick to “escape without leaving” by simulating the god of earth. Being well-aware of the logic of the ladder of hierarchy Serres unravels, he plays the almighty in order to evade Tamerlane; but in contrast to Serres’ remarks, he does not attempt to displace him. Having neither forsaken society nor had a “place” of his own from which he would wage a war against the ruler or the game itself, he dwells in the ambivalent and liminal space betwixt and between the affirmation of the law and its subversion59. 59 Cf. de Certeau 1984. 34 Necmi Erdoğan 14 The “art of making do with”, characteristic of Nasreddin’s encounters with the powerful can be observed in other forms of folk laughter as well. In this respect, the contrast between Nasreddin and Diogenes may also be illustrated with reference to a Turkish shadow theatre performance as described by a French observer of the 19th century, Gerard de Nerval: “When police regulations, for the first time, decreed that after the nightfall no one should go out without a lantern, Karagöz made his appearance with a lantern, suspended in an unusual manner, imprudently jeering at the authorities because the regulations did not say that there must be a candle in the lantern. When he was arrested by the police and released again after it had been ascertained that he was in the right, he appeared once more with a lantern containing a candle that he neglected to light”60. In contrast to Diogenes’ lantern episode, its Turkish folk narrative counterpart is not concerned with kynical revolt, but with evading the established order. As a final remark, one could argue that the metaphorical significance of such narrative figures like Nasreddin Hoca lies in their otherness in this world, reflecting and externalizing the common people’s mode of being61. Viewing folk narratives as “living museums” of popular art of speaking and of living in the other’s field, de Certeau asserts that they offer their audience a repertory of tactics for future use as well as reversing the relationship of power62. His argument implies that there is a homology between folk storytelling and quotidian tactics employed by the common people. To the extent that it is performed and disseminated in disguised, evasive, or gossipy ways, the very narration of folk humorous stories involves the “art of making do with” power. Significantly enough, studies on the social history of Ottoman peasantry and nomadic tribes note that they devised all sorts of means to trick, evade, escape, and cope with the apparently omnipotent state63. Much similar to Nasreddin’s flight away from the arbitrary rule of Tamerlane, when overburdened by taxation, Ottoman peasants often abandoned their land and settled in other regions. Faroqhi suggests that the availability of means of avoidance and evasion on the side of the rural masses provides an explanation for the fact that there were no violent peasant rebellions in Ottoman Anatolia in contrast to Medieval Europe64. Similarly, when discussing the rural unrest in the nineteenth century Ottoman Empire, Quatert observes that peasants avoided performing duties or paying taxes65. Put it briefly, the “art of making do with” was part of the social history of the subaltern social classes and groups in the Ottoman Empire as well as the representations of encounters with the rulers in the folk tradition of laughter. One can further claim 60 Quoted in And 1975: 53. Cf. 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