NASREDDIN HOCA

A Turkish folk sage. He was a pioneer of the humor genre, incorporating emotion and subtlety in the vernacular. He was born in the Hortu region of Sivrihisar and died in Akşehir. His father was Abdullah Efendi, the imam of Hortu village, and his mother was Sıdıka Hatun from the same village. He first received his education at a madrasa in Sivrihisar. After his father's death, he returned to Hortu and became the village imam. In 1237, he settled in Akşehir and attended the lessons of Seyyid Mahmud Hayrani and Seyyid Hacı İbrahim. He continued his studies on the Islamic religion. He was given the name Nasuriddin Hâce, which later became Nasreddin Hoca. Information about his life is mixed with rumors and has acquired extraordinary qualities in places, due to the excessive love the people had for him. Nasreddin Hoca's value is measured not by the events of his life, but by the subtlety of the meaning, satire, and irony in the humorous anecdotes, both those he told himself and those attributed to him by the people. An examination of the humorous anecdotes attributed to him, and an analysis of the words used in them, reveals that he reflected not a specific era, but rather the lifestyle, comedic elements, forms of mockery and entertainment, and the skills of praise and criticism of the Anatolian people.