Idries Shah was an Afghan-born Sufi scholar and
author whose many books have brought Sufism
to the attention of the West

the Britannica Concise Encyclopedia defines Sufism
as, "a mystical movement within Islam that seeks to
find divine love and knowledge through direct
personal experience of God."

among Shah's works are three volumes of Sufi
teaching stories that feature the mythological
Mulla Nasrudin - a wise fool whose humorous
exploits are the subject of thousands of stories

these stories are more than just humorous

Shah describes them as, "perfectly designed models
for isolating and holding distortions of the mind which
so often pass for reasonable behavior."

further, he writes, " . . it is inherent in the Nasrudin
story that it may be understood at any of many
depths. There is the joke, the moral - and the little
extra which brings the consciousness of the potential
mystic a little further on the way to realization.”

Shah's three volumes of mind-altering Nasrudin
stories include:

The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mullah Nasrudin
The Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin, and
The Subtleties of the Inimitable Mulla Nasrudin –

illustrations, such as the one below, from
The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mulla Nasrudin
are provided by Richard Williams and Errol Le Cain