I came across this on the internet while researching the Pamir.  It is a very common legend that I have heard several times and each time it has been about a different country.  I have even used it myself to refer to my home county of Cumbria.  All the same I like it and who knows it may have originated in the Pamir.

When God created the world, he asked all the people to form a line so that he could distribute the lands of the earth to them.

Now everyone knows that the Pamiri is not big, he is very polite and does not use his elbows. So the Pamiri representative found himself at the end of the line.

When it was his turn, God looked surprised: “It seems I miscalculated,” he said. “I don’t have any land left for you.”

The Pamiri began to cry – and everyone knows that when a Pamiri cries, even God cries too.

God put his arm around the Pamiri. “It was my fault,” he said. “Actually, I do have one little piece of land left that I was going to keep for myself as my garden. But since I made such a foolish mistake I will give it to you. It is called Badakhshan.”

I also very much like this one.

When God created man, he gave him a life of thirty years. Man was not happy with this and complained to God.

God replied that He had already allocated life to all living beings – to give man a longer life He would have to take years from the life of other animals. Man insisted.

So God gave man ten more years from the donkey, ten from the dog and ten from the monkey.

That is why man lives without care until thirty; then he begins to work like a donkey; after ten more years he starts to fight like a dog; and his last ten years are spent playing games with his grandchildren.

They just keep on coming.

When God created the world, he did not make a monkey. The monkey came about in this way:

In the first days of the world, a woman had baked a flat loaf of bread. Just then a poor man knocked at her door. She let him in but did not want to share her bread with him and so she sat on it. After a while the poor man left.

When the woman got up the flat bread stuck to her and she had been changed into a monkey because of her meanness. Since then the bottom of the monkey looks like a flat loaf.

And…

Luqman-i Hakim was a wise man who had a reputation as a healer. One day a man complained to him of a headache. Luqman-i Hakim told him it was the result of old age.

Another man complained of a pain in his legs. Luqman-i Hakim again answered, that it is caused by old age.

Yet another started to tell Luqman-i Hakim about a pain in his stomach. Again, the diagnosis was old age. The man became angry with Luqman-i Hakim and told him his advice was useless and he was a fool.

Luqman-i Hakim answered him: “If you were not an old man you would not speak these words.”

Credit to Robert Middleton http://www.pamirs.org