Juha stories for kids: four gentle classics, retold

Four Juha tales can be told to children without changing them: Juha Counts His Donkeys (ages 2–4), and Juha, His Son and the Donkey, Juha's Pot and Juha at the Feast (ages 5–8). Juha, called Goha in Egypt and Nasreddin Hodja in Turkey, is the wise fool of the whole Arab world: his anecdotes are anonymous oral tradition, printed in Turkish, Palestinian and Egyptian collections from the 1880s on, still used as shared references in newspaper columns in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the Emirates and Oman, and the subject of a Moroccan television series. We list only the four we verified in three or more independent sources each; a fifth favourite, the moon in the well, is left out because we found only one. Azizan (azizan.app), founded by Aida Fard, is a family storytelling app where relatives record themselves on video reading illustrated children's stories page by page. Its stories are in Persian today; it has no Arabic stories. This page is a free guide for Arabic-speaking families, written in our own words from sources we opened and checked.

Azizan (azizan.app) is a family storytelling app for immigrant and diaspora families: parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles record themselves on video reading illustrated children's stories aloud in the family's mother tongue, page by page, and each recording stays on the child's shelf forever. Real family voices — never AI narration. Persian (Farsi) first.

Who Juha is

Juha is the name the Arab East gives to a figure of jokes about a man who is foolish and wise at once. The same tales are told of Nasreddin Hodja in Turkish and of Giufà in Sicily, and they travel: the donkey-counting tale is in a thirteenth-century Syriac collection, and the feast tale is in Italian and Indian collections too. In Arabic the classic printed source is Abbas Mahmoud al-Aqqad's Juha the Laughing Jester (Egypt), and the oldest Palestinian recordings are in Hanauer's Folk-Lore of the Holy Land (1907). An old anonymous Arabic book was titled The Anecdotes of Juha, His Donkey and His Son, which tells you which tales people loved most.

Juha is secular. Some tellings give him a religious title; for a child, plain Juha is enough. Modern Juha picture books, the cartoon series and the apps are copyrighted; the anecdotes themselves are not, so retell from the old collections.

The four tales

Juha Counts His Donkeys (ages 2–4)

Juha goes to the market and buys ten donkeys. He climbs onto one and drives the others ahead. He counts: nine. One is missing. He gets down and counts: ten. He climbs back up: nine. Down: ten. He scratches his head and tries once more, slowly. Nine. He decides it is better to walk with ten than to ride with nine, and walks home behind ten donkeys.

Notes: the counting is the refrain, so this is the one for the youngest. The numbers differ by version (eight, ten, twelve) and so does the ending (in Palestine his master makes him walk; in the common Arabic telling he decides). Nothing to remove. The illustration must always show the donkey he is sitting on; that is the whole joke for a three-year-old.

Juha, His Son and the Donkey (ages 5–8)

Juha and his son set off for town with a donkey. Both ride; the first village says: poor donkey, two on its back. Juha gets down and the son rides; the second village says: the boy rides while his old father walks. The son gets down and Juha rides; the third village says: the father rides while the little boy walks. Both walk beside the donkey; in the town, in the heat, people laugh: the donkey rests while the two of them walk. Juha looks at his son, the son looks at Juha. At the market they sell the donkey.

Notes: the Aesop line of this tale has father and son carry the donkey on a pole until it falls off a bridge and drowns; the Arabic tellings end with the sale, and four independent modern Arabic versions end on the sale with no speech. Nearly every version adds a proverb about pleasing everyone; leave it out and let the last page be the picture. Keep the criticism in the villagers' mouths, aimed at the arrangement, never at the boy, and do not let the narrator call them fools.

Juha's Pot (ages 5–8)

Juha has guests coming and his pot is too small, so he borrows his neighbour's big copper pot. He returns it with a little pot inside: your pot had a baby. The neighbour laughs and keeps both. Days later Juha asks for the big pot again, and the neighbour hurries it over, hoping for another baby. Days pass; no pot. The neighbour knocks: where is my pot? Juha: I have sad news; your pot has died. A pot cannot die. You believed it could have a baby.

Notes: the tale is in Egyptian (al-Aqqad), Palestinian (Hanauer) and Turkish (Borrow) collections with the same shape. Juha keeps the pot in every version; do not invent a return. The Arabic children's tellings make the neighbour stingy and eager, and that beat is what lets a child read him as greedy rather than Juha as a thief. The "death" is of an object and the condolences are the joke.

Juha at the Feast (ages 5–8)

Juha is invited to a feast and comes straight from work in old clothes. Nobody greets him; he sits by the door and the trays pass him by. He slips home, puts on his finest robe and comes back. Everyone stands; he is seated at the head of the table and the best dishes are set in front of him. He dips his sleeve into the dishes one after another: eat, eat, my sleeve, for without you I would not have reached this food.

Notes: the sleeve line is the one printed in al-Aqqad's collection and reprinted in a UAE newspaper's Juha column in 2023; the Turkish version feeds a fur coat and the Sicilian stuffs his pockets. End on Juha's line. The tale was a 2010 episode of a Moroccan Juha television series, so Maghrebi grandparents know it too.

Left out, honestly

Juha and the moon in the well (he fishes the moon's reflection out of the well): a perfect tale for ages 2–4, but we found only one independent printed source, so it waits.
Tales with a religious frame (a sermon, a judge quoting scripture) and tales where the joke is on a wife or a beggar: not for this list.
The moral lines. Many Arabic versions end "pleasing people is a goal never reached" or a line from a jurist. The old texts themselves push the proverb; a child's version does better to stop at the last event.

Reading Juha aloud

Juha works read by someone the child knows, because the humour is in the voice: the slow recount, the pause before "your pot has died". Grandparents who grew up with these tales in Cairo, Amman, Riyadh or Casablanca rarely need the text. A recording of one of them reading a tale page by page can be replayed at bedtime across any time zone; Azizan does exactly that for Persian stories today, and the method works for Arabic with any book and a phone. More tales by age: Arabic bedtime stories for kids; the fables: Kalila wa Dimna for kids.

Related guides

Questions

Who is Juha?

The wise fool of Arabic folk humour, called Goha in Egypt and Nasreddin Hodja in Turkey. His anecdotes are anonymous oral tradition, first printed in collections in the 1880s and 1900s and, in Arabic, in al-Aqqad's Juha the Laughing Jester.

Which Juha story is best for a toddler?

Juha Counts His Donkeys. Counting from one to ten is the refrain, nobody is hurt, and the joke (he forgets the donkey he is sitting on) is one a three-year-old can see in the picture.

Are Juha stories religious?

No. Some tellings give him a clerical title or end with a line from a jurist; the tales themselves are secular jokes and can be told without either.

Does the donkey die in Juha, His Son and the Donkey?

Not in the Arabic tellings, which end with the donkey sold at market. The Aesop version of the same tale has the donkey fall off a bridge and drown; use the Arabic ending.

Is Juha a thief in the pot story?

He keeps the neighbour's pot in every version. The Arabic children's tellings make the neighbour greedy, eager for another 'birth', and that is what makes the trick fair in a child's eyes. Keep that beat.

Does Azizan have Juha stories in Arabic?

No. Azizan's stories are in Persian today. This page is a guide; the four retellings are summaries for parents who want to tell a Juha tale tonight.

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Updated: 2026-11-03 · By Aida Fard

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