One day a dispute ensued between Mulla Nasreddin and a dervish who pretended to be a sage.
The mullah asked him several questions, but the dervish did not answer any of them. Finally the dervish got angry and said:
“I can ask you questions that even your grandfather wouldn’t answer.”
“There is no such thing in the world,” answered Mulla, “that I would not know.”
“Do you know where the center of the earth is?” asked the dervish. The mullah stuck his stick into the ground and said:
- Here!
- Prove it! - shouted the dervish.
- If you don’t believe me, you can do the calculations. Dervish asked a second question:
— How many stars are there in the sky?
- As much as the hair on my donkey.
-Where is the evidence?
“If you don’t believe me,” answered Mulla, “go and count.”
- How many hairs do I have in my beard? - asked the dervish.
- As much as on the tail of my donkey. The dervish became furious:
-You're lying!
Mulla calmly replied:
- I'm not lying. Here is your beard, and here is the tail of my donkey. Pull a hair from your beard and from the tail of my donkey - and if the score doesn’t match, then blame me.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru