Turkish Nasreddin Hocaʹs Appearance as the Uzbek Afandi1

The article deals with the development of Turkish Nasreddin Hoca anecdotes in Central Asia. Compared with the Turkish tradition, the contribution of the Turkic peoples of Central Asia to the corpus of Nasreddin Hoca anecdotes is not yet sufficiently analysed. After the printed Ottoman version (Istanbul 1837) became the starting point for the Uzbek stories of Nasriddin Afandi or Afandi—as the figure is called in Uzbekistan—its basic stock developed quickly both in quantity and quality. Based on two Uzbek collections of Afandi latifalari (Tashkent 1968 and 1989), the relationship between the basic Turkish and the recent Uzbek corpus is looked at. One of the distinctive features of the Uzbek Nasriddin Afandi collections is the higher number of stories with a critical attitude toward the traditional authorities. Some examples from this part of the corpus are given to illustrate different ways of transformation.