Mullah Nasrudin and the lottery

The king wanted to build a most fantastic palace. He wanted to prove that he was truly the Shahanshah (King of kings) and he wanted his palace to be better than the Khalif’s in Baghdad, or that of the Khan in Rum (Rome or Byzantium – modern day Turkey).

Unfortunately the Shahanshah’s treasury was quite bereft of the huge amount of gold needed to build such a palace. So then, as now, he decided to take money from the poor and give to the rich (himself) by organizing a great lottery.

People would select numbers and the winner would be announced on Norooz (the first day of spring – the Iranian new year).

Everyone was excited and different people came up with ways of winning. The astrologers read the pattern of the heavens. The numerologists examined people’s names and dates of birth. Mathematicians came up with statistical analysis. Some used their dates of birth and those of loved ones.

As the winter was ending the excitement grew and grew and more people bought second, third and even up to fifty or a hundred tickets.

Eventually it was the thirtieth of Esphand**and all who could went to the Shahanshah’s current (already magnificent but not magnificent enough for his ego) palace. One by one the balls rolled out and the lucky winner happened to be present.

It was Mullah Nasrudin. He received his bags of gold and the bulk of the money went to the king’s treasury to build his newer, bigger, more magnificent palace.

A mathematician asked the Mullah about his secret method of selecting the numbers.

Nasrudin replied, “It is simple. Eight is my favorite number. So I selected eight, and multiples of eight. I selected eight, sixteen, twenty four, thirty one, forty…”

The mathematician screamed at him, “You fool! Thirty one is not a multiple of eight.”

Mullah Nasrudin thought to himself and replied, “I won!”

***

**the last day of the leap year – the Iranian calendar has thiry one days  in the first six months, thirty in the next five and twenty nine in Esphand the last month of the year except for leap years when it has thirty days.

Mullah Nasrudin and the lottery on youtube:

I’m just starting to do these videos and will do many more and redo the ones here so far to improve them

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