of Timur
(Tamerlane), in the middle of the fourteenth century. The pleasantries
which are ascribed to him are for the most part common to all countries,
but some are probably of genuine Turkish origin. To cite a few
specimens: The Khoja's wife said to him one day, "Make me a present of a
kerchief of red Yemen silk, to put on my head." The Khoja stretched out
his arms and said, "Like that? Is that large enough?" On her replying in
the affirmative he ran off to the bazaar, with his arms still stretched
out, and meeting a man on the road, he bawled to him, "Look where you
are going, O man, or you will cause me to lose my measure!"

Another day the Khoja's wife washed his caftan and spread it upon a tree
in the garden of the house. That night the Khoja goes out, and thinks he
sees in the moonlight a man motionless upon a tree in the garden. "Give
me my bow and arrows," said he to his wife, and having received them, he
shot the caftan, piercing it through and through, and then returned into
the house. Next morning, when he discovered that it was his own caftan
he had shot at, he exclaimed, "By Allah, had I happened to be in it, I
should have killed myself!"

The Ettrick Shepherd's well-known story of the two Highlanders and the
wild boar has its exact parallel in the Turkish jest-book, as follows:
One day the Khoja went with his friend Sheragh Ahmed to the den of a
wolf, in order to take the cubs. Said the Khoja to Ahmed, "Do you go in,
and I will watch without;" and Ahmed went in, to take the cubs in the
absence of the old wolf. But she came back presently, and had got
half-way into her den when the Khoja seized hold of her tail. The wolf
in her struggles cast up a great dust into the eyes of Ahmed, who called
out to the Khoja, "Hallo! what does all this dust mean?" The Khoja
replied, "If the wolf's tail breaks, you will soon know what the dust
means!"

Several of the jests closely resemble "Joe Millers" told of Irishmen,
such as this: It happened one night, after the Khoja and a guest had
lain down to sleep, that the taper went out. "O Khoja Effendi," said the
guest, "the taper is gone out. But there is a taper at your right side.
Pray bring it and let us light it." Quoth the Khoja, "You must surely be
a fool to think that I should know my right hand in the dark." And this:
A thief having stolen a piece of salted cheese from the Khoja, he ran
immediately and seated himself on the border of a fountain. Said the
people to