The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mullah Nasrudin is a book by the writer Idries Shah,[1][2] based on lectures he delivered at the University of Geneva as Visiting Professor in 1972–73.

Published by Octagon Press in 1968, it was re-released in paperback, ebook and audiobook editions by The Idries Shah Foundation in 2015.

Part of a series of books, The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mulla Nasrudin is a collection of teaching stories, anecdotes and jokes drawn from Middle Eastern folklore and the Sufi mystical tradition, which feature the populist Middle Eastern philosopher and wise fool, Mulla Nasrudin.

[5] Douglas Hill, Literary Editor of the socialist Tribune weekly magazine, wrote in 1969 that The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mulla Nasrudin contained “a great deal of timeless and universal wisdom made accessible and highly attractive with humour”, adding that “conventional responses and received frames of mind are challenged on every page.”[6] In The New York Times, future Nobel Literature laureate Doris Lessing called The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mulla Nasrudin "perhaps the most shocking to our assumptions about ‘mysticism’” of Shah's books at the time.

"[7] In an earlier review in The Observer, Lessing said that most of the jokes in the book were new to the West while others could also be found in the written work of Sufis like Rumi, Attar and Jami.