It happened once upon a time that Mullah Nasruddin was travelling through a region where bandits were active, and according to the Will of Providence, a group of them ambushed the Mullah as he was walking along near a field of cucumbers.

“Hand over everything you have,” snarled the chief of the bandits.

Nasruddin spread his garments wide to show he was carrying nothing. “I am a simple mullah,” he said. “I have nothing but knowledge.”

“Knowledge!” scoffed the bandit chief. “You claim to have knowledge? We will test what you know.” And he seized a large cucumber from the field beside them and waved it under Nasruddin’s nose.

“Tell us how much this weighs,” he demanded, “and if you are wrong by even an ounce we will beat you with a hundred lashes of the rope!”

Nasruddin took the cucumber, weighed it in his hand, and then said, “By the Grace of the Almighty, it seems that this cucumber weighs exactly the same as your excellency’s heart. If you place them on opposite sides of a scale, the beam will be perfectly level.”

As the bandit chief did not want to test Nasruddin’s statement, the Mullah walked away unbeaten.