 As originally conceived in the 1960s, the film began as an  adaptation of the stories of Mullah Nasrudin, a wise fool from  Middle Eastern folklore. Richard Williams (I) (qv) had illustrated  a collection of the Nasrudin tales by Idries Shah (qv) and decided  to adapt them to the screen. Work stopped in 1972 when the Shah  family threatened to sue Williams for copyright infringement. So all  references to Nasruddin were scrapped and production resumed on what  was now titled "The Thief and the Cobbler." Nasrudin does make a  cameo on the final film, however. Hes in the crowd, sitting  backwards on a donkey, as Zigzag enters the city.