Mushkil Gusha Thursday

As I mentioned several posts ago I thought it might be good to designate Thursdays as ‘Mushkil Gusha’ day and post a story for consideration and comment.

It is possible that many people in the west do not know of Mushkil Gusha so perhaps it is best to start off with Mushkil Gusha’s own story. I post the whole story below but first reproduce some background info courtesy of Aaron Shephard. Note that in the historical Persian tradition Mushkil Gusha’s day is the Muslim Holy Day, Friday. I am, however, following Idries and Omar Ali Shah’s modern usage of Thursday as the day for the telling of Mushkil Gusha’s story. A bit of background from Aaron’s site:

The custom of invoking Mushkil Gusha is practiced in Iran especially among traditional Muslim women. The tale is told each week on Friday eve, the beginning of the Muslim holy day. Muslims measure their days from sunset to sunset, so ‘Friday eve’ would come before Friday morning just as ‘Christmas Eve’ comes before Christmas Day. Along with telling the story goes the sharing of a special snack food with the poor. Sometimes called aajeel and sometimes nokhod kishmish, it is a mixture of things like roasted chickpeas, raisins, dried dates, dried figs, nuts, and seeds.

The name Mushkil Gusha is Persian for “Remover of Difficulties”. But exactly who and what is he? If you ask Iranians, you get differing answers. Some say he is Ali, the prophet Muhammad’s cousin, son-in-law, and ‘true successor’ as he is considered by the Shiites, whose sect of Islam predominates in Iran. But one Iranian woman told me simply, ‘It is God, isn’t it?’.

Others say Mushkil Gusha is the prophet Khidr, the ‘Green One’, the patron saint of the Muslim holy men called dervishes. (Khidr is the Arabic name. In Iran he is called Khezr, and in Turkey, Hizir.) Khidr is portrayed in many Muslim tales as the bearer of fortune—a role he shares with the prophet Elijah, about whom many of the same stories are told by the Jews.

This tale was retold chiefly from ‘The Story of Mushkil Gusha’ in Persian Tales, collected and translated by D. L. R. and E. O. Lorimer, Macmillan, London, 1919. This was supplemented by my personal email correspondence with Kave Eshgi of Bristol, England, whose grandmother told him the tale every Friday eve as he grew up in the Iranian city of Kerman. Still another version is ‘The Tale of Mushkil Gusha’ in World Tales, collected by Idries Shah, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York and London, 1979, which first introduced me to the story.