“The Satire and the Punditry of Molla Nǝsrǝddin: Selected Cartoons” featured a miscellany of twenty cartoons that appeared in the earliest issues of Molla Nǝsrǝddin, one of the first Turkic-language satirical periodicals published in the Russian Empire at the turn of the last century. The iconic character of the molla is able to say things that others cannot because of his public persona as something of an eccentric or fool. Molla Nǝsrǝddin brought this figure to life in cartoons and textual humor, often biting, as a form of social criticism in a modernist spirit that challenged economic, social, and political inequities as well as the debilitating entrenchment of traditionalists in the face of sweeping global changes of that era.
