Islam

Taken broadly as a culture or civilization and not narrowly as a religion with a set of cut-and-dried dogmas and fixed rituals, Islam would, like any other culture or civilization, appear to have a fairly rich element of humor. The subject of humor in

Islam can be approached in a variety of ways. One typology would distinguish between religious humor (including humor at the expense of religion), political humor, and folk humor; another, between wit, pun, irony, banter, repartee, parody, practical joke, satire, and burlesque. There are humorous anecdotes involving people from various walks of life, callings, and backgrounds, such as ascetics and saints (at times, prophets, too—especially the prophet Muhammad), scholars and sages, judges and jurists, theologians and philosophers, kings and courtiers, poets and writers, physicians and teachers, bedouins and townsmen, and women and children, and, of course, certain—usually stock—characters with a reputation for stupidity, avarice, miserliness, and the like. Islamic humor is “Islamic” because it reflects or makes reference to Islamic motifs, issues, and situations, but Islamic humor also includes adaptations or versions of universal themes in humor. Overall, humor in an Islamic setting, as in any other setting, religious or secular, serves several functions. It can point up a moral; question or criticize socially incorrect behavior—though, paradoxically, it may create space for such behavior as well; defuse, without necessarily eliminating, the tension arising from an awkward or anomalous situation (such as the tension due to a conflict between old and new customs or old and new generations); or simply provide fun or amusement.

A major formal medium of Islamic humor is anecdote. In his meticulously researched Arabia Ridens (Laughing Arabia), Ulrich Marzolph summarizes 1,247 texts, taken from a wide variety of sources. Another medium is short story, represented, on the one hand, by many a humorous tale in a work like The Thousand and One Nights, and, on the other, by the picaresque-style genre in Arabic known as maqama (literally, “station,” alluding to the place where an orator stands to speak), which, with its cadenced prose, has its protagonist go through a series of adventures that often have a humorous dimension. Yet another medium is treatise or essay. There exists an extensive amount of humorous, especially satirical, poetry on the failings and foibles of individuals and groups. There are, in several Islamic languages, compendia and anthologies of humorous literature. In view of its noticeable presence in the Islamic tradition, humor in Islam deserves greater scholarly attention than it has. This entry discusses humor in the foundational sources of Islam and in Islamic didactic literature, humor as critique of thought and conduct, witty [Page 403]humor, humor at the expense of religion, and the folk humor of Mullah Nasreddin.