Birbal Looking for Five Idiots
What happened when a mighty emperor wondered what makes an idiot
Video not yet publicly available
This tale has been recorded and will be uploaded during 2025 to the video gallery, where it will be available to watch for free – together with many, many other tales.
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If you have a particular reason for wanting to watch the recording before it is publicly available, send a mail and we can discuss this.
One of many folk tales of the Mughal emperor, Akbar, and his wise and witty advisor. A regular audience member at my halbNeun Theater performances was kind enough to send me the tale. I was delighted to perform it the following year.
The Three Sillies is an English variant of the tale, including the motif of the cow.
More Nasruddin and Birbal tales, and resources
On my website:
Wikipedia:
Ioan Tenner’s splendid resource This Reminds Me of a Story, 111 Teaching Stories of Nasreddin Hodja, the Wise Fool of the East.
And here is Tenner’s extensive Bibliography of Nasruddin story books and publications.
A further collection which, in the publisher’s words, is “For Mature Readers only”: Extraordinary Adventures of Mullah Nasruddin: Naughty, unexpurgated tales of the beloved wise fool from the Middle & Far East (Revised Edition ~ collected & retold by Ron J. Suresha).
Not surprisingly, many of the over 2000 stories at the Turkish Oral Narrative Tales archive feature the Hodja.
Want to download the video?
Videos are provided free to view.
If you want to download one, I can arrange that. Just send me a mail telling me which story you’d like, and your reason for wanting a download.
The video clips here are all amateur quality, shot in various theatres or, as here, in my home studio.
Their intention is just to show the range of my storytelling and give a flavour of a live performance.
Permission is granted for use in non-commercial educational contexts.
The videos are © Richard Martin.
Professionally recorded CDs and DVDs are available here.
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For those who are teachers: Telling stories in the classroom: basing language teaching on storytelling