Molla Nasreddin: The Making of a Modern Trickster, 1906-1911 9781474499521

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MOLLÅ NASREDDIN

For Ron Suny

MOLLÅ NASREDDIN THE MAKING OF A MODERN TRICKSTER (1906–1911) Janet Afary and Kamran Afary

Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting ­importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress. com © Janet Afary and Kamran Afary, 2022 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road 12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in Trump Medieval by Cheshire Typesetting Ltd, Cuddington, Cheshire and printed and bound in Turkey A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 9950 7 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 9952 1 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 9953 8 (epub) The right of Janet Afary and Kamran Afary to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).

Contents

List of Figuresvi Acknowledgementsxv Map of Safavid Empirexix Map of Russian Expansion in Caucasus, 1878–1914xx Google Map of Region (2021)xxi INTRODUCTION1 PART I  THE WORLD OF THE JOURNAL CHAPTER 1  South Caucasus at the Turn of the Twentieth Century CHAPTER 2  The Staff and Major Contributors CHAPTER 3  Tiflis and its Hybrid Artistic Community

21 64 112

PART II REIMAGINING THE FOLK TRICKSTER AND RETHINKING GENDER NORMS CHAPTER 4  The Wise Fool and the Trickster Nasreddin CHAPTER 5 Recreating the Trickster Tales and Tropes in Azerbaijani Language  CHAPTER 6 A Champion of Women’s Rights

163 187 228

PART III  THE INFLUENCE OF EUROPEAN GRAPHIC ARTS CHAPTER 7  A Dialogue with Goya and Daumier CHAPTER 8 A Conversation with Punch, Simplicissimus and the World of Art

283 324

EPILOGUE361 References 370 Index384

Figures

I.1 I.2 I.3 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6

‘Why are you hitting me?’ 3 Members of the Second State Duma 5 ‘Border Crossing’ 6 Crossing the border at Aras River 23 Bowing to Russian authorities 25 Bowing to Russian police 27 ‘Tatars in the Mosque’ 27 Members of Tiflis charities selling theatre tickets to Muslims 30 ‘We swear we thought it was a (taziyeh) passion play, otherwise we would not have cried so much’ 30 1.7 Mirza Fath Ali Åkhundzådeh31 1.8 Husseingulu Sarabski as Majnun, in Leyli and Majnun, 1908 32 1.9 Khurshid Bånu Nåtavån and her children 32 1.10 ‘The officer was so angry he was almost going to kill the dead’ 35 1.11 Baku oil industry 37 1.12 Wealth disparities in Baku 37 1.13 Attack on workers’ strike 38 1.14 Cartoon of H. Z. Taghiyev, 1907 39 1.15 First boarding school for girls in Baku 40 1.16 Girls on the stairs of the school 40 1.17 Muslim clerics and Russian officers 43 1.18 Excessive obsequiousness to the clerics 44 1.19 Muharram Festival 44 1.20 Muharram procession of flagellants and Russian military procession45 1.21 Flagellants 46 1.22 Tomb of Seyyed Ali Åqå in Shamåkhi47 1.23 Pilgrims at a saint’s shrine 48 1.24 New Methods being blocked by representatives of old methods of education and old traditions 49 1.25 While Sultan Abdul Hamid is preoccupied with twirling dervishes, the West is modernising 50 1.26 Europe: ‘Oh boy! One by one Muslims are waking up and getting out of their cradle’ 52 1.27 Fighting inside the Iranian and Ottoman ships of state 53

figures

1.28 1.29 2.1 2.2

Support for Girls’ Schools 54 Armenian–Muslim civil war of 1905 58 Mollå Nasreddin and its avid readers 65 ‘God, I am wondering what the paper is saying about me today?’ 65 2.3 ‘Get Lost! What is the benefit of New Methods schools for us?’ 68 2.4 Father preventing his son from attending a New Methods school 69 2.5 Fatwa against Ismail Gasprinski, publisher of Tarjomån69 2.6 ‘Brothers, I was not created without my own tongue!’ 70 2.7 Calendar of auspicious days of the month 71 2.8 Mollå Muhammad Amin issues a fatwa against Mollå Nasreddin72 2.9 The Muslim quarter of Tiflis known as ‘Shaitån Bazaar’ 73 2.10 ‘Crossing the renowned Aras River on Earth’ 74 2.11 A page from The Travel Diary of Ebrahim Beg75 2.12 Commemorating the death of Leo Tolstoy 76 2.13 Breakdown of the Ottoman Empire 77 2.14 Colonial powers leaving Macedonia after the 1908 Young Turk Revolution78 2.15 Muharram gathering 79 2.16 ‘The illustration was not allowed and there was no time for another illustration to be drawn’ 80 2.17 Mirza Jalil Memedqolizådeh  80 2.18 The Eulogisers in Yerevan, Ganja, Ordubad, Baku and other cities81 2.19 ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if our houses also had windows like these?’ 82 2.20 Bastinado 83 2.21 ‘You think you are part-owner of my son, to take him to school?’ 84 2.22 Gheyrat Printshop building 85 2.23 Mirza Jilal and employees at Gheyrat Printshop 86 2.24 Armenians and Muslims making peace 87 2.25 ‘The Awakening’ 88 2.26 ‘For God’s sake, see how Mollå Nasreddin embarrasses people’, ‘Damn you, well done! Love your artistry!’ 90 2.27 Ömar Fåeq 91 2.28 Ömar Fåeq hears about the threats to the editor 92 2.29 Hamideh Khånum Javånshir93 2.30 ‘Get lost you creatures of God’ – the locusts leave the province 94 2.31 ‘Get lost you cursed being! All we need is for you to sell newspaper to the women in their courtyards!’ 95 2.32 Two ways of living 96 2.33 ‘What kind of creatures are these?’ 97 2.34 Newspaper sellers in Baku 98 2.35 Ali-Akbar Såber101 2.36 ‘Oh, Auntie, don’t let him come!’ 104 2.37 ‘He’s been cursed by God because of his blasphemy!’ 105 2.38 Haqverdiyev 105 2.39 At the Muslim Theatre 106

vii

viii MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN 2.40

‘Progressives of Iran: Mirza Jalil, Editor-in-Chief of Mollå Nasreddin’107 2.41 Azim Azimzådeh107 2.42 Cartoon by Azim Azimzådeh: the birth of a girl 108 3.1 Old Tbilisi 113 3.2 Old multicultural Tbilisi 114 3.3 The Georgian National Opera and Ballet Theatre of Tbilisi 115 3.4 Poster of the Russian Revolution of 1905, from L’Assiette au beurre, 1905 116 3.5 Russian customer buying carpets from a Persian merchant 117 3.6 Bathhouses of Tbilisi 118 3.7 ‘Preoccupations of Muslims throughout the year’ 119 3.8 Shaitån Bazaar in Tiflis 120 3.9 St Petersburg Academy of Arts 122 3.10 Munich Academy of the Arts 122 3.11 Capture of Imam Shamil, by Franz Roubaud 124 3.12 Scenes from the bathhouses 126 3.13 Anis al-Dowleh, a favourite wife of Nåsir al-Din Shah 127 3.14 Administering bastinado at a textile shop 128 3.15 Constitutionalists gather outside the British legation in Tehran, 1906 129 3.16 Mousha with a Wine Skin and Mousha with a Keg, by Niko Pirosmåni130 3.17 Iran emblem from Qajar newspaper 131 3.18 Iran emblem from Pirosmåni, lion and sun emblem of Iran 131 3.19 Shamil with bodyguard and Prince Bariatinsky 132 3.20 Caucasian Caravan, by Karl Zommer 132 3.21 The Market, by Gigo Gåbåshvili133 3.22 Oskar Schmerling 134 3.23 One of Schmerling’s signatures 135 3.24 Painting by Schmerling from the Georgian National Museum136 3.25 ‘Husband and wife’ 137 3.26 ‘The strong rules!’ 138 3.27 Worker with a Wineskin, by Oskar Schmerling 139 3.28 Watermellon Seller, by Oskar Schmerling 139 3.29 Photo of a barber 140 3.30 Barbershop, by Oskar Schmerling 140 3.31 Reading Newspaper in Alexander Gardens, by Oskar Schmerling141 3.32 Fresh News, by Oskar Schmerling 142 3.33 Four prayer postures 143 3.34 A drawing of Joseph Rotter; and Rotter’s signature 143 3.35 The Parade of Khåtåbålå Contributors 144 3.36 Iran and Ottoman cattle harnessed to plough 145 3.37 ‘It would be stupid to flatten the mountains and burn down the cities! We still can’t get rid of these guests’ 146

figures

3.38 ‘England and India’ 147 3.39 ‘The Macedonian Question’ 148 3.40 Constitutionalism and the Ottoman Empire 149 3.41 The World of Harvest 150 3.42 ‘In front of the City Hall’ 151 3.43 Kyrgyz Hajjis at Orenburg Station 152 3.44 ‘Friday, the day stores are supposed to be closed!’ 153 3.45 The Audience at a Baku Theatre, by Joseph Rotter 154 3.46 Muhammad Ali Shah as a fruit seller 155 3.47 A kinto fruit hawker 155 3.48 Scene from Shåhnåmeh: ‘Rostam and Sohråb’155 3.49 The Donkey of Dajjål, by Joseph Rotter 156 3.50 ‘The Angel who was gifted to Karbalåi Haqverdi’ 157 4.1 A seventeenth-century miniature of Nasreddin 163 4.2 Nasreddin Hodja statue in Bukhara 164 4.3 Nasreddin Hodja in Ankara 164 4.4 A Gohå (Jåha) story-cloth, by Ahmed Yossery 166 4.5 Looking for a sane human being 167 4.6 ‘I beg you, please, don’t cut the tree. It will crush your head’ 168 4.7 Nasreddin (Mollå Shukur) riding his donkey backwards 169 4.8 ‘The cat and the meat’ 170 4.9 Till Eulenspiegel, by Hans Baldung Grien 172 4.10 ‘New clothes’ 175 4.11 ‘The all-knowing God!’ 177 4.12 ‘The pot that gave birth!’ 181 4.13 ‘Don’t pay heed to what people say!’ 182 5.1 Police officers in Tiflis confiscating weapons from Iranian workers188 5.2 Caucasus Philanthropic Society 189 5.3 Iranian peasants who owe a debt to Russian citizens 190 5.4 Club of Muslims, Baku 191 5.5 Departure of the old consul; arrival of the new one 192 5.6 Endowments in Mashhad 193 5.7 Collecting donations at a mosque 194 5.8 The (devilish) Europe and the Ottomans 195 5.9 Book of Adornment of the Believers and Book of Adornment of the Shaitån196 5.10 ‘Oh God! Why is this owl hooting? God protect me from its evil!’197 5.11 Eclipse of the sun. But the officers think the killings have once again begun 197 5.12 Guarding your weapon is essential, so you can use it during highway robberies and Muharram rituals 199 5.13 Russian Army; Homeland’s (Iran) Army 200 5.14 ‘Mother, I’ve been hungry for several days. Give me some bread’202 5.15 The day of Ashura in a village near Baku 203

ix

x MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN 5.16 5.17 5.18

‘New Method’ funerals in Transcaucasia 204 Iranian consul and flagellants 205 Receiving a hundred lashes for eating in public, Ramadan in Tabriz205 5.19 Preoccupations of Rajab, son of Bailam, during Ramadan 207 5.20 ‘I’m fasting. Leave me alone, or I’ll wreak havoc.’ 208 5.21 Privately eating during Ramadan 209 5.22 Leaving for hajj; returning from hajj 209 5.23 Pilgrimage to Mecca 210 5.24 Highway bandit on pilgrimage to Karbala 211 5.25 Eid Qurban 212 5.26 ‘Don’t take our public expressions of solidarity seriously. Listen to our sermons in the mosques.’ 213 5.27 Sidewalk cobbler in front of Jewish reading room, Tiflis 214 5.28 Trip to the bathhouse 217 5.29 Mollå Nasr Bey tattoos a prayer onto a woman’s stomach 218 5.30 Husband and wife 218 5.31 Dancing boys (Bacheh Bazi) 220 5.32 Panels from the biography of Ali Efendi Osman Båbåzadeh222 5.33 Dancing boys 223 5.34 Dreams at the ages of 25, 50 and 80 224 5.35 ‘Mollå officiates a brotherhood vow ceremony’ 225 6.1 Death of Leila Khånum Shahtakhtli 229 6.2 Masthead of Mollå Nasreddin’s Editorial Page 229 6.3 A woman’s burden 231 6.4 Birth of a son; birth of a daughter 232 6.5 ‘My daughter, enough, you have grown up. It’s time to get married. No more studying.’ 233 6.6 Women eat last 234 6.7 ‘What a beautiful girl’; ‘Oh my God! This is not that girl!’235 6.8 Uncle Borj Ali, the girl and the girl’s brother 236 6.9 ‘Hey, hey girl, quickly get up! A man is coming’; ‘Whenever a man enters a house, he must cough loudly.’ 236 6.10 Twelve-year-old Jewish girl goes to school; twelve-year-old Muslim girl gets married 237 6.11 Congratulating the groom and peeking into the newly-weds’ chamber238 6.12 ‘Wives and socks are the same, one size fits all.’ 239 6.13 ‘She’s my wife, I get to decide! None of your business (in Ganja)!’240 6.14 Elopement 241 6.15 Kidnapping the bride 242 6.16 Forced marriage 243 6.17 ‘Marriage’ 244 6.18 Rich hajji and impoverished teacher 245 6.19 Trip to the bathhouse 246

xi

figures

6.20 6.21 6.22 6.23 6.24 6.25 6.26 6.27 6.28 6.29 6.30 6.31 6.32 6.33 6.34 6.35 6.36 6.37 6.38 6.39 6.40 6.41 6.42 6.43 6.44 6.45 6.46 6.47 6.48 6.49 6.50 6.51

‘They told me he won’t live more than two years and I will inherit a fortune.’ 247 ‘Lady of the house and the servant’ 248 An affair 248 ‘You impertinent girl! Who gave you permission to go to the yard?’249 ‘Mother, I swear if you don’t give me money to buy candy, I will tell father when he comes home that you were looking out the window!’ 250 ‘Aunt, they are showing Leili and Majnun at the theatre.’ 251 ‘Respect for the new bride’; ‘Respect for the bride after a month’ 252 ‘Open up your face so I can check your throat’; ‘Let the mollå write a prayer on my naval.’ 253 ‘Taking as many wives as one can afford’ 254 Using recently collected charity funds to get a second, younger wife255 ‘Four is enough.’ 256 ‘Sometimes it happens like this!’ 257 Fighting of co-wives 258 ‘Temporary Marriage in Khorasan’ 259 ‘The Tale of One Woman’ 260 ‘If you don’t come willingly, I will take you by force’; ‘In God’s name, I will marry you to this man.’ 261 Abducting a mother of four children; ‘Damn your father!’ 262 ‘Don’t be embarrassed!’ 264 ‘Man, have some decency! It has been years since you took a second wife. Divorce me, so I become free!’ 265 City of Tokyo’s office of Hochi Shimbun newspaper 268 ‘My darling, such a pretty girl, why isn’t she married yet?’ 268 ‘For heaven’s sake, stop reading this rubbish. I am bored!’ 269 ‘Will you marry me?’ 269 ‘My dear lady, please tell me which one of us you prefer?’270 ‘When the lady of the house is Muslim, this is what goes on with the maid’; ‘When the same guy marries a Russian woman, this is what goes on with the servant.’ 270 Baroness Rosen agreeing to convert to Islam 271 ‘Mothers of Muslim sons are tormented by their sons marrying Russian women.’ 272 Female teacher and her student 272 Muslim gentleman and his wife in Paris, and back in the Caucasus273 ‘This is one of the legacies Iran has left us!’ 274 Clothing of Caucasus Azerbaijani women at the turn of the twentieth century 275 Women and men’s clothing 275

xii MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN 6.52

Comparing European women’s clothing with Muslim women’s clothing277 6.53 Masquerade ball for Muslims 278 6.54 Azerbaijani women walking without an elder or man accompanying them 279 6.55 ‘God help us! Even the sheikh al-Islam sends his daughters to take the entrance exam at St Nino’s School.’ 279 7.1 ‘Caucasian Muslim Theological Seminary’ 288 7.2 Behind the mask 289 7.3 Praying for a beautiful wife 290 7.4 The Majles as a puppet show 292 7.5 Que Pico de Oro, by Francisco Goya 293 7.6 Seyyid Mohammad Tabataba’i revives the ailing Iranian nation 294 7.7 A 14-year-old, a 24-year-old, a 44-year-old and a 64-year-old 295 7.8 Members of the Third Gathering of Muslims of Baku; Ahmad bey Åghayev296 7.9 ‘Listen, the newly educated want to abandon the old pagan rites. Brothers, don’t allow this!’ 297 7.10 The foolish Armenian, the foolish Muslim and the shaitån298 7.11 ‘In Nakhchivan, Shamåkhi and elsewhere’ 299 7.12 Tu que no puedes, by Francisco Goya 300 7.13 The hajj pilgrimage 301 7.14 Things we see every day 302 7.15 No hay quien nos desate? by Francisco Goya 303 7.16 ‘The result of the hijåb’304 7.17 Que hai que hacer más? by Francisco Goya 305 7.18 The dismemberment of Fez 306 7.19 Kurds and Shåhsevens of Iran 307 7.20 ‘European Diplomacy; Regarding the Carnage’ 308 7.21 Atropos, by Francisco Goya 309 7.22 ‘Don’t worry, we have your back!’ 310 7.23 Esto es lo verdadero, by Francisco Goya 311 7.24 Female symbol of justice 311 7.25 Si quebró el cántaro, by Francisco Goya 312 7.26 ‘Bastinado’ 312 7.27 A Naples – Le meilleur des rois (1851), by Honoré Daumier 313 7.28 Anticipating an attack on the Iranian parliament 313 7.29 ‘For this head, one hundred thousand tumans? Astonishing!’ 314 7.30 Actualités, by Honoré Daumier 315 7.31 Seven ideologies 316 7.32 Balance of powers 317 7.33 Balance of power and competition among Europeans and the resulting profit for Muslims 317 7.34 1871: Dismayed with Her Heritage, by Honoré Daumier 318 7.35 Muslim village cemetery 318 7.36 The Legislative Belly, by Honoré Daumier 318 7.37 Speech by Hajji Nasrollah in the Iranian parliament 319

xiii

figures

7.38 7.39 7.40 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 8.8 8.9 8.10 8.11 8.12 8.13 8.14 8.15 8.16 8.17 8.18 8.19 8.20 8.21 8.22 8.23 8.24 8.25 8.26 8.27 8.28 8.29 8.30 8.31 8.32 8.33 8.34 8.35 8.36

Qué sacrificio! by Francisco Goya 320 Linda maestra! by Francisco Goya 320 Sympathy for impoverished women and families 321 The Shah’s Holiday325 Helping the Young Idea326 The Harmless Necessary Cat327 Whitborough. Low Tide. Arrival of the Scarby Steamer328 ‘Passengers disembarking in Astara’ 328 ‘Monopoly may do in screws, but not in fowl-runs, if I must talk shoppily.’ 329 Cleric of Qazvin as a giant rooster 329 Shooting scene (Britain) 330 Shooting scene (Iran) 330 ‘John Bull brings pressure to bear on the irrepressible Mullah’ 331 ‘Catching flies’ 331 ‘Let me quickly cover FREEDOM so the fly does not cast a shadow on it.’ 331 ‘An Easter Review’ 332 Prayers for the young Ahmad Shah 333 The British Lion and the Russian Bear bickering over Afghanistan336 The Irish Devil-Fish336 Hold on!337 Nurse Gladstone: ‘Oh the little ducky-wucky!’ 337 ‘No hurry!’ The Sultan. ‘Dear, dear! How they do dawdle! Such a time in coming to a decision!’ 338 Greece acknowledging defeat 338 A scene from Kelileh va Demneh339 ‘In the Austrian newspapers, we read that the Balkan nations have drawn weapons against Ottoman officials.’ 340 ‘The Balkan Question’ 341 ‘The Balkan Issue’ 341 Enticing Morocco and Iran 342 ‘Arab attacks on Europe in the past’; ‘European attacks on Arabs today’ 343 ‘Islamic Caliphate: The Monarchy of Sultan Abdul Hamid’ 344 Ensnaring the mighty Iranian lion 345 ‘From the world of politics’ 346 Fight between the Iranian lion and the Ottoman tiger 347 The Lion’s Just Share347 Prostitutes returning to the Muslim Quarter of Tiflis 349 Poster from Simplicissimus, 1896 349 Anticipating the coup in Tehran 350 ‘In front of dragons I am a bull, but to manage such assemblies (Majles) I’m a dragon!’ 350 ‘Listen, the newly educated want to abandon the old pagan rites. Brothers, don’t allow this!’ 351

xiv MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN 8.37 Landlord and peasants 352 8.38 Exploiting the peasants 352 8.39 ‘Feast’ 353 8.40 ‘Poor (hungry people) of Qarabåkh and Zangezur and Generous Nobles’354 8.41 ‘Drink and Be Merry, to Hell with Decency’ 355 8.42 Cover of Satire, 1906 355 8.43 Government bureaucrats putting on the brakes and preventing FREEDOM from moving towards LAW and JUSTICE 356 8.44 The meat grinder 357 8.45 Constitutionalism and its enemies 357 8.46 Cover of Signaly, 1906 358 8.47 ‘How will I deal with so many dead?’ 358 8.48 Fragment of a Muharram street battle 358 E.1 The new editorial masthead 364 E.2 The new name of the periodical, Allahsiz366

Acknowledgements

Research for this book was conducted gradually, over a period of two decades, in the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Republic of Georgia, Russia, Iran, Germany and the United States. Travels to Baku, Tiflis, Moscow and Tehran in 1997, 1998, 1999, 2003 and 2005 were made possible with a series of fellowships and grants from the SOROS Foundation, Purdue University Faculty Incentive Grants, Purdue University Research Foundation Grants, MUCIA travel fellowships, Extramural Purdue University Grants for International Exchange, and IREX travel grants. Janet, who started the project, received a year-long NEH fellowship in 2002–3. After arriving at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) in 2009, she was also aided by the Duncan and Suzanne Mellichamp Endowed Chair funds. In 2015, Kamran joined the project, when it became clear that this book would never be completed without the two of us working together for several additional years. We are especially indebted to a network of scholars and translators from South Caucasus and Iran, as well as from Europe and the United States, who provided access to restricted archives; translated materials from Azerbaijani, Georgian and Russian; and located hard-to-find secondary sources on the history of the Republics of Azerbaijan and Georgia. In the Republic of Azerbaijan, we are particularly grateful to Hamlet Isaxanli, President of Khazar University in Baku, and Solmaz RostamovaTohidi, a member of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences, who each opened many doors for our research. We are also indebted to Aref Ramazanov from the Institute of Manuscripts of Azerbaijan, who in the course of nearly five years painstakingly translated hundreds of pages of materials from Azerbaijani periodicals and secondary sources. Saif al-Din Ma’sum Oghli, also from the Institute of Manuscripts of Azerbaijan, photographed cartoons and graphics from the first six years of Mollå Nasreddin. Gulhayat Jabrailova from Khazar University was a visiting scholar at Purdue University and helped with research and translation both during and after her stay. Isa Habibbeyli, Vice-President of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences, and the foremost Azerbaijani biographer of Jalil Memedqolizådeh, sent us his publications and answered various queries through email. In 2020, Nigar Gozalova, also from the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences, agreed to help us at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic had made additional travel to the region impossible. She provided invaluable assistance and graciously aided

xvi MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN us with translation, as well as with finding secondary sources on Azerbaijani history. In the Republic of Georgia, we were aided by art historian Paola Urushadze, who was a visiting scholar at Purdue, and who welcomed Janet into her home in Tiflis. Several other Georgian scholars, with intimate familiarity with Georgian art of the early twentieth century, were instrumental in our research. Among them were Nino Tchoghoshvili, from the Tbilisi State Academy of Art, whose PhD dissertation on the art of Tiflis proved invaluable, as well as Irene Gvantseladze and Teona Jikia, who helped with translations and locating documents. Elene Akvlediari from Pirosmåni Museum introduced us to the work of the brilliant artist Niko Pirosmåni. Joseph Grishashvili and Salome Bochorishvili, both from the Georgian National Museum, and Tamar Lekveishvili from Ilia State University, helped locate paintings by Oskar Schmerling from the museum. Marina Alexidze from the Institute of Manuscripts of Tiflis, which has a large Persian collection, helped with information about Iranians who lived in Tiflis at the turn of the twentieth century. In Russia, we were assisted by a good friend, Karina Ter-Akopian, librarian at the Fundamental Library of Moscow State University, who agreed to find and translate materials from Russian. For information on Mollå Nasreddin’s coeditor Ömar Fåeq, who was practically erased from history during the Soviet period, we relied on Ulvi Pepinova and her website Ömar Faig Nemanzadeh. A number of historians in Iran, among them Elham Malekzadeh and Rahim Raisniya, provided access to archival materials in Tehran and Tabriz, as well as secondary Persian sources. Rahim Raisniya, author of several valuable books on the relationship between Tabriz and South Caucasus during the Constitutional Revolution, graciously shared his work and guided us via email exchanges. Finally, Brynn Lyerly and Ashley Passmore translated the materials from German. Research on the illusive artists of Mollå Nasreddin was conducted at a number of archives in Saint Petersburg, Tbilisi, Baku and Munich, including the Munich Academy of the Arts. We are grateful to Suel Huseynzadeh of Azerbaijan for his tireless help with this research. Naomi Caffee, from Reed College, and Robert Denis, independent scholar based in Tiflis, gave us permission to use materials from their website Beyond Caricature: The Oskar Schmerling Digital Archives. For editorial assistance we are indebted to several people. Tina Guirguis read early drafts of the manuscript and helped render the work more accessible to the general public. Sam Brawand diligently read the entire manuscript and made hundreds of suggestions before we submitted the manuscript to the Press. Damien Delfin, Yusif Hamza, Teoman Aktan and Nicholas Murphy made many valuable suggestions to the page proofs. At Edinburgh University Press, our profound thanks go to Chief Executive Officer Nicola Ramsey, who encouraged us to submit our manuscript to the Press. We are also most appreciative to our editor Louise Hutton who worked patiently with us, and to other members of the Press, Eddie Clark and Caitlin Murphy, as well as Lel Gillingwater who copy-edited the work. Thanks also to Susan Tricklebank who produced the index

acknowledgements

Many colleagues helped us by sending additional materials and reading segments of the work as it was in progress, including: Sheila S. Blair, Elliot Gorn, Minrose Gwin, Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, Nikki Keddie, Peg Strobel, Warren Walker and, especially, Ulrich Marzolph, who got us started on the history of Middle Eastern folklore. Janet benefited from Sam Kinser’s rich seminars in Chicago on medieval European carnivals and tricksters. Evan Siegel, who conducted pioneering work on the Mollå Nasreddin periodical in English, graciously shared his work with us, some of which appeared earlier in Siegel 1992 and 1994. Several wonderful friends and colleagues read large parts of the manuscript and made numerous valuable suggestions: Ronald Suny (to whom this book is dedicated) pioneered the study of South Caucasus in the United States. He inspired Janet with his engaging seminars at the University of Michigan, and also read several chapters of this book and made valuable suggestions. Kelsey Rice read the early chapters on the history of South Caucasus. Claudia Yaghoobi shared her work on the Armenian diaspora and drew our attention to the growing literature on transnational diasporic communities. A few dedicated colleagues read the whole manuscript: John Perry was a source of constant support as Janet relied on him whenever she got stuck with terms, definitions, or just wanted moral support. Hasan Javadi, who is the foremost scholar of Iranian Azerbaijan, and has an encyclopedic knowledge of the periodical Mollå Nasreddin, generously checked the manuscript against images and corrected our mistakes. He also gave us permission to quote his translations of Ali-Akbar Såber’s poems and other works of his on Mollå Nasreddin. Nigar Gozalova corrected our translations of the captions, as she read the manuscript, and at the last minute sent us better images of the graphics when ours were of low resolution. Touraj Atabaki, from the International Institute of Social History, organised a joint conference at the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences in Baku, where Janet met many leading Azerbaijani scholars. Later, Atabaki provided crucial information on the migration patterns of Iranian workers in the region as he read the manuscript. Willem Floor, who also read the entire work, asked many probing questions, which made us rethink some sections. We want to thank our research assistants at UCSB, California State University Los Angeles, Purdue University, University of Chicago and Northwestern University, including Chris Eklund, Sarp Kurgan, Mohammadreza Mirzaei, Ali Papoliyazdi, Rita Sindelar, Sergey Saluschev, Mesadet Maria Sozmen and Leila Zonouzi. Throughout this book we have adopted a modified transliteration of Persian, Azerbaijani, and Arabic terms based on the Encyclopedia Iranica and the International Journal of Middle East Studies. We omitted most diacritical marks except hamzeh and ain, which we have kept, as well as the å sound (that is, Båbå). We reverted to the New York Times style of transliteration for commonly known words. Draft chapters of this book were presented at UCLA, University of Illinois at Champaign–Urbana, University of Wisconsin–Madison, University of Oxford, University of Tehran and the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences in Baku.

xvii

xviii MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN The final stretch of this work was completed when COVID-19 had shut down international travel and libraries were closed. We are grateful to Collin Holtz and librarian Heather Hughes at UCSB, who made access to libraries and private collections possible in this period. For digitising the graphics, also amid the pandemic, we relied on Hadi Sharekian, who worked tirelessly for months as he scanned the graphics and cropped the images, while the three of us observed social distancing in rooms with open windows! A longer version of Chapter 4 appeared in Iran Namag 2, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 2–28; and parts of Chapter 7 appeared in the British Journal of Middle East Studies (September 2019), DOI: 10.1080/13530194.2019.1659130. We are grateful for the continued love and support of our family in the many years we have worked on this book, especially our mother Anvar, as well as Mona and Taghi, Frieda and Lena. Kevin learned all about Mollå Nasreddin tales, which were common dinner conversation. He carefully read the entire manuscript and helped us with some aspects of the history of Russian social democracy. Leila grew up with Mollå Nasreddin tales as she walked back from school with her Nanet. When she got a bit older, she provided last-minute technical support in ­digitising some images.

Map 1  Map of Safavid Empire. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_Safavid_persia.png#file.

Map 2  Map of Russian Expansion in Caucasus, 1878–1914. Source: Wikimedia Commons. File:164BeforeWWI1878-1914s.gif.

Map 3  Google Map of Region (2021).

Introduction

Many of the caricatures and graphics in Mollå Nasreddin about our public lives are not in fact caricatures, not a fiction or likening. I would dare say these are the true photos of people and realities. Ömar Fåeq Nemånzådeh (Gurbanov 1992: 16) The reinterpretation of myths and folklore has been an essential genre in literature. From Sophocles and Euripides to Maxine Hong Kingston and Toni Morrison, poets and writers have reinterpreted old tales to forge new social criticism. This book is a historical exploration of such a genre among Azerbaijani-speaking people of South Caucasus, a region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, which was once part of the Russian Empire, and today comprises the countries of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia, as well as parts of Southern Russia (Dagestan). In 1906, a group of artists and intellectuals reinterpreted the tales of the Middle Eastern trickster, Mollå Nasreddin, to construct a progressive anticolonial discourse with a strong emphasis on social, political and religious reform. The founder and editor of the new periodical, Mollå Nasreddin, was Jalil Memedqolizådeh.1 Commonly known as Mirza Jalil, he was an Azerbaijani educator and playwright. His wife, Hamideh Khånum Javånshir, was an early Azerbaijani feminist and a philanthropist. Using folklore, visual art and satire, their eight-to twelve-page weekly, which had full-page lithographic cartoons in colour, reached tens of thousands of people across the Muslim world, impacting the thinking of a generation. The present study will look at the milieu in which the periodical Mollå Nasreddin was born, the manner through which the journal recast the trickster trope for its audience, and the influence of European graphic artists on its cartoons and illustrations. The key to this successful cultural mélange was the editor’s creative use of the trickster figure as a medium of social criticism, and the sophisticated appropriation of both the name and the persona of the trickster for modern political satire. To this end, the folk tales of the original trickster figure, including some highly transgressive ones, became grist for the mill of the social d ­ emocratic writers and artists of Mollå Nasreddin. The traditional wise fool, the trope of the folk character Nasreddin, had long succeeded because of its grotesque realism. It had broken conventional boundaries of thought and morality, revealing the hypocrisy of the existing social reality

2 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN while also ridiculing the overbearing theologian, the conceited scholar, the indolent aristocrat and the autocratic king. Using this folk character and other tropes, powerful and ­high-placed targets of the journal’s humour were likewise brought down to earth, undressed actually or metaphorically, debased and symbolically killed off, levelling the ground so something newer and better could emerge. By adopting the satire and other rhetorical devices of the trickster, the early twentieth-century weekly Mollå Nasreddin was able to disseminate a progressive discourse on power, religion, class and gender in South Caucasus, Iran and other neighbouring Muslim regions and nations. Although the inspiration to use the format of an illustrated satirical journal came mainly from Russia and Europe, the legacy of Nasreddin, the beloved wise fool, allowed Mollå Nasreddin to present its critique as a voice from within the Muslim world, thereby dramatically increasing its chances of acceptance and success. The original folk tales of Nasreddin often involved critiques of orthodoxy and of orthopraxy. But in the pages of the periodical, and especially in the contributions of its major poet, Ali-Akbar Såber, this type of cultural self-critique developed into fully fledged social and political satire of the religious and political establishment. In an unprecedented manner, the journal criticised the orthodox Shii culture at a time when Shiism was the dominant branch of Islam in both South Caucasus and Iran. It thus contributed to a more progressive discourse on Islam in both regions. Thematically, the classic Nasreddin tales dealt with the injustice of kings and emirs and justice for ordinary people. In a similar manner, the periodical Mollå Nasreddin defended the oppressed and marginalised classes, calling attention to the plight of the impoverished and migrant Muslim communities in South Caucasus. The classic trickster had subverted gender norms, revealing the absurdity of marital norms and conventions. He had also exposed prevalent but covert sexual practices, including sex by men with underage boys. These became the basis for the weekly’s radical discourse on gender and sexuality, and its criticisms of traditional patriarchy, child marriage and pederasty. The periodical was first published in Tiflis (Tbilisi) from April 1906 to 1917 (340 issues). In 1921, the editor and his wife moved to Tabriz, Iran, where the journal briefly reappeared (eight issues). They returned to South Caucasus and resumed publication in Baku from 1922 to 1931 (400 issues). However, the most creative period of Mollå Nasreddin was its formative years of 1906 to 1911, when a highly talented group of artists, writers and poets comprised the staff. The 1880s oil boom in Baku, and the spurt of industrialisation in certain parts of the Caucasus, brought European and American investors, as well as migrant workers from Iran and the Ottoman Empire to the region, leading to significant economic growth. But as more wealth was generated, economic inequality of the region widened, particularly in Baku. Tiflis, where the periodical was first published, was then the administrative and cultural capital of Tsarist Russia’s south-western peripheries, and a magnet for artists. The majority of the city’s residents were Armenians, with large numbers of Georgians and Russians. The city also had a small Shii Muslim population,

introduction

composed of both long-term Caucasus Azerbaijanis and migrant workers from Iran. Tiflis was a vibrant centre of politics and an eclectic cosmopolitan city where various artists, playwrights and journalists of these diasporic communities interacted and added to the city’s cultural diversity. Mollå Nasreddin soon captured the imagination of a wide sector of the Muslim world. Historians of South Caucasus and Iran have called the birth of the periodical a ‘historic moment’ in the annals of the region. Edward G. Browne, the contemporary British scholar of Iran and the Middle East, called it ‘one of the best and most entertaining papers of this sort, and indeed, unrivalled in the Oriental world’ (Browne 1914: 16). However, Mollå Nasreddin also faced immediate and implacable opposition. South Caucasian and Iranian clerics issued fatwas (religious edicts) against the journal, which was nonetheless smuggled into Iran and other countries. With a starting circulation of 1,000 copies a week, which rapidly grew to 25,000, the journal reached a wide audience in the coffee shops and bazaars of South Caucasus, Iran and the Ottoman Empire, and as far away as Egypt and India. It was read aloud in these spaces to diverse groups, including many illiterate urban workers and rural peasants. Thus, the circulation rate of the journal was only a fraction of the actual number of people who regularly and avidly followed it.2

Figure I.1  ‘Why are you hitting me?’ Source: MN 4, 28 April 1906.

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4 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN Many writers of Mollå Nasreddin worked closely with the social d ­ emocratic Himmat (Endeavour) Party and were committed to its platform of fighting for social reform and against political despotism and religious orthodoxy. The periodical promoted secular education and criticised many sacrosanct Shii rituals, such as self-flagellation during the festival of Muharram. However, the journal was not anti-religious. Rather, it was the first publication in the Muslim South Caucasus, and the first publication available to Iranians, to unapologetically reinterpret Quranic verses in light of modern social norms including gender equality. Through satirical stories and poems, Mollå Nasreddin challenged both the prevalent European colonial discourses and the conservative social and political practices of Muslim communities. The fact that it linked itself to the earlier folkloric traditions of the trickster Nasreddin was the primary reason for its survival as well as its enormous popularity. All of these new ideas were communicated in the Azerbaijani language, which was common to Muslims of South Caucasus and those living south of the Aras River in the Iranian province of Azerbaijan and several other Iranian regions.3 The periodical also replaced the stylised Persian and Ottoman texts, which until then had been the preferred forms of written literary discourse, and initiated a modern Azerbaijani-language one. The visual art of Mollå Nasreddin is an important focus of this book, and the artists of the periodical played a crucial role in its success. In its pages, the confluence of modern traditions of graphic arts, critiques of Shii rituals of penance, and Azerbaijani poetry, created a new cultural and artistic discourse. Often, Mollå Nasreddin’s artists and writers mingled modernist and social democratic influences with the older humanist traditions of classical Persian poetry in order to highlight the violence and hypocrisy of the European powers and to critique indigenous social and cultural practices. The graphics and cartoons of Mollå Nasreddin belong to a tradition of satirical arts that stretches back to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European lithographic art. The periodical was influenced by Francisco José de Goya and Honoré Daumier, but it also drew upon both newer forms of caricature in British, German and Russian satirical publications and the Critical Realist school of art. The Azerbaijan Republic recognises Mollå Nasreddin as a founding contributor to modern Azerbaijani nationalism and as a classic literary work. Iranian historians have also claimed the periodical as ‘one of their own’. They have pointed out that many members of the staff belonged to immigrant Iranian families, and call attention to the large volume of articles and graphics about Iran in the periodical. The Georgian Republic also has a claim on the periodical, as it was published in the city of Tiflis. Moreover, what made the journal a sensation was its illustrations and cartoons, which were primarily drawn by its two Georgian-German artists, Oskar Schmerling and Joseph Rotter. Both had studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, Germany, and their mastery of the lithographic arts was an essential factor in the popularity of the journal. It may be that we have been defining the contributions of Mollå Nasreddin and these South Caucasian intellectuals and artists in national terms, when,

introduction

Figure I.2  Members of the Second State Duma of the Russian Empire. Mustafa Mahmudov (d. 1937) is holding Mollå Nasreddin 17, dated 28 April 1907. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Members_of_the_2nd_State_ Duma.jpg.

in reality, they belonged to a transnational milieu, one that more aptly fits our contemporary description of a transnational diasporic society. In this region, Russians, Azerbaijanis, Georgians, Germans, Armenians, Iranians, Jews, and other ethnicities of a variety of religious, cultural and political persuasions mingled on a daily basis and shared a common territory. Indeed, the theme of diaspora, of living in transition between cultures and of crossing borders, is a very prominent one in Mollå Nasreddin. As a transnational and social democratic publication, Mollå Nasreddin never limited itself to the local concerns of the of the Azerbaijani Muslims of South Caucasus. Rather, from the beginning, the publication saw itself as a mouthpiece for other persecuted Muslim populations, and even other colonised peoples around the globe. The editor and several writers for the periodical grew up in A ­ zerbaijanispeaking Shii communities. Mirza Jalil was born in Nakhchivan in South Caucasus to a family that heavily identified with Iranian culture, at a time when Azerbaijani national identity was in its infancy. Various contributors to the periodical travelled to Iran to visit, to start new businesses, or occasionally to flee from dire political situations in the Russian Empire. As a result, it is possible to think of the journal as a transnational diasporic journal that was heavily influenced by Iranian cultural and social practices. Like many other

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Figure I.3  ‘Border Crossing’. Source: MN 8, 26 May 1906.

diasporans, the writers felt torn between their close religious, cultural and ethnic bonds to Iran, their desire to assert their Azerbaijani language and cultural heritage, and the need to further assimilate within the greater Russian society to succeed professionally. This feeling of in-betweenness, of wanting so deeply and passionately to belong to one place or the other, and yet finding that there really was no one place where one could find oneself ‘at home’, vividly comes through in many columns and poems. In its initial six years, the writers and artists of the periodical witnessed four major social and political events: (1) the Russian Revolution of 1905–6, which led to constitutional reforms and a free press in Russia, but ended tragically with massive repression; (2) the Armenian–Muslim Wars of 1905–7, which saw the devastation and pillage of hundreds of Armenian and Azerbaijani villages; (3) the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906–11, which brought a parliament and constitution to Iran for the first time, before being suppressed; and (4) the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, which restored the Ottoman constitution and brought about a multiparty regime. These key events were analysed in the pages of the periodical. Later, Mollå Nasreddin lived through World War I, the February and October 1917 Russian Revolutions, the Russian Civil War (1918–21), the birth and demise of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (1918–20), and finally

introduction

the establishment of the Soviet Union. As the authority of Joseph Stalin, also from Tiflis, grew more draconian in the mid-1920s and the 1930s, the fate of the contributors to the periodical was sealed. Some perished in the turbulent 1920s. Mirza Jalil died of natural causes, but with a broken heart, soon after the journal stopped publication. Some remained quiet, or conceded and became propagandists for the Stalinist regime in order to survive. Others tried to protest, and as a result faced brutal confinement in the labour camps of the Gulag, or were executed. Terminologies and definitions In writing this book we tackled a number of thorny issues related to terminologies, definitions and theoretical approaches. The major players ­ in our story were Russian citizens who were residents of South Caucasus. Many were Muslim Azerbaijani speakers. The tsarist state used the term ‘Tatar’ to refer to Muslims of South Caucasus. But the term that the Muslim Azerbaijani-speaking people of South Caucasus, as well as Mollå Nasreddin, used to refer to themselves was ‘Muslim’. Since contemporary academics of the modern Republic of Azerbaijan disapprove of the term ‘Azeri’ for this period, and since the term ‘Muslim Azerbaijani-speaking people of South Caucasus’ was too long to repeat throughout this volume, we settled on the term ‘Muslims of South Caucasus’ or ‘Caucasus Azerbaijanis’, the latter to distinguish them from ‘Iranian Azerbaijanis’ or Azerbaijani-speaking people who lived in Iran. The second question we faced was how to define the ethnic identities of the staff. In recounting the story of Mollå Nasreddin, we relied on the pioneering work of several historians of the journal and the region. Isa Habibbeyli’s (1987; 1999; 2003) biographies of Mirza Jalil remain the most valuable source on the history of the journal and its contributors. Tadeusz Swietochowski’s (1985) Russian Azerbaijan, 1905–1920: The Shaping of a National Identity in a Muslim Community, pioneered the study of the Azerbaijani national identity and nationalism, and provided a detailed discussion of the Himmat Party. Audrey Altstadt’s (1992) The Azerbaijani Turks: Power and Identity Under Russian Rule, also focused on Azerbaijani n ­ ationalism and brought forward valuable information on the Russian state’s control of the Muslim clerical establishment in the region. In the decades that followed, this subject has been addressed in some detail by Robert Crews (2006) For Prophet and Tsar, Firouzeh Mostashari’s (2017) On the Religious Frontier: Tsarist Russia and Islam in the Caucasus, and Dobrostawa Wiktor-Mach’s (2017) Religious Revival and Secularism in Post-Soviet Azerbaijan. Ronald Suny’s (1988) The Making of the Georgian Nation, and several of his other studies on the formation of national identities in South Caucasus, have provided valuable ­background on the cities of Tiflis and Baku at the turn of the twentieth century (Suny 1972; 1983; 1986). While some of these studies have focused on the rise of new national identities, and the evolving nature of religious identities in South Caucasus, others have emphasised the more fluid identity of the residents of this region.

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8 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN Holly Shissler’s (2003) intellectual biography Between Two Empires: Ahmet A©ao©lu and the New Turkey, examined the ease with which Muslims of South Caucasus moved between their Russian, Muslim (often Shii but also Sunni), Iranian and Turkish identities. Kelsey Rice (2018) has pointed out that there was no attempt to abandon one set of identities in favour of another. Instead, residents moved easily among their multiple identities and had no qualms about holding on to several ethnic identities at the same time. The hybrid identities of the contributors to Mollå Nasreddin have been of great interest to Iranian-Azerbaijani scholars. Rahim Rezazadeh Malik’s (1979) Zaban-i Barå-ye Enqelab: Hop Hop (Language for Revolution: Hop Hop), emphasised the deep ties between Såber and Iran. Rahim Ra’isniya’s (1979) ‘Aziz va do Enqelab (‘Aziz and Two Revolutions) covered the life of  the  Azerbaijani composer ‘Aziz Hajibekov, including his close ties with Mollå Nasreddin, and their interactions with Iran. Samad Sardarniyå’s (1991b) Mollå Nasraddin dar Tabriz (Mollå Nasreddin in Tabriz), focused on the year 1920–1, when Mirza Jalil, his wife and his brother moved to Iran and published the journal in Tabriz. Hasan Javadi and Willem Floor’s (Javånshir 2016) translation of Hamideh Khånum’s memoir, and Javadi’s other essays on Mollå Nasreddin and Såber in this volume and elsewhere, have emphasised the great continuity between the Iranian-Azerbaijani and CaucasusAzerbaijani cultures. With regard to other more theoretical concerns, studies on migration and on ethnic identities have shed great light on our subject matter and the cross-fertilisations that took place. Recent works in cultural studies and ­ diasporic studies have moved beyond an earlier binary notion of diasporic communities as either ‘transmitters of ideas’ or locations for cultural assimilation. Instead, they have explored migrants from India, China, Africa and the Middle East who settled in the more industrialised metropolitan cities of Europe and the United States, or in postcolonial Caribbean societies, and formed several generations of diasporic societies marked by constant dualities. These migrants no longer anticipated a day when they would go back ‘home’ and resume their ‘normal’ lives. But neither were they fully integrated into their new communities. Such a diasporic community abandoned much of its old culture without assimilating to the new one. Cultural theorists Hamid Naficy (1993), Stuart Hall (1996), and Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Triffin [1995] have argued that diasporic communities are suspended in this in-between place and face a daily clash of cultures, which they constantly have to negotiate. The collision of cultures, including religious precepts, and the contestations of traditional modes of thought and also of modernity, can generate defensively intolerant reactions, with which we have become all too familiar in the twenty-first century. However, it can also lead to refreshingly innovative, complex and progressive perspectives and practices, a form of cross-fertilisation that does not fully replicate the binary of East and West. This, we suggest, is what happened in the case of Mollå Nasreddin. Thomas Faist, Margit Fauser and Eveline Reisenauer (2013), Janine Dahinden (2010), Claudia Yaghoobi (2018), and Ziba Shirazi and Kamran

introduction

Afary (2020) have shown the diversity that can exist within a particular diasporic community and its relationship to the home of origin. Dahinden suggests four different relationships between the migrants, their community of origin (sending country) and their new homeland (receiving country): (1) diasporic transnationals who are long-time migrants, or children of immigrants, with deep anchorage in the receiving country; (2) mobile or exilic transnationals who are often first-generation immigrants with strong familial ties to the receiving country; (3) seasonal workers with visas who go back and forth annually; and (4) asylum seekers and undocumented migrants who are unable to sink roots in either country. These are not hard-and-fast categories, and people might move from one to another of them in the course of their lives. In viewing the biographies of the contributors to the journal, we see that a few were from families that were native to South Caucasus, while most belonged to the first and second categories – diasporic transnational and mobile transnational families. Mirza Jalil’s grandfather had immigrated from Iranian Azerbaijan, making him a third-generation immigrant. He was deeply anchored in South Caucasus and was influenced by its Russified culture. Mirza Jalil had not visited Iran until he was forced to leave Russia in 1920, and did so with great reluctance and as a matter of survival. However, he grew up in a family with deep ties to Iran and he also expressed longings for the land of his ancestors, making him a diasporic transnational. Hamideh Khånum, wife of Mirza Jalil, who should be considered a financial backer of the periodical, belonged to a Caucasus Azerbaijani family that had ruled the Kåråbåkh Khånåte. Indeed, she and her family never immigrated from Iran. Rather, their territory was incorporated into the Russian Empire in the early nineteenth century. Some members of Mollå Nasreddin’s staff, such as Såber, had been mobile transnationals at one point in their lives. Såber was born in Shamåkhi in South Caucasus. He travelled to Iran frequently, and for a while worked in its eastern city of Eshqabad, Khorasan, before returning permanently to Tiflis. Mirza Jalil’s younger brother, Mirza Ali Akbar, was also a mobile transnational, living in Iran for several years and even taking part in its Constitutional Revolution. He became close friends with Sattår Khån, the national hero of that revolution’s Tabriz Civil War, and was later arrested and exiled by the Russian authorities for his political activities. Political events toppled the seemingly secure position of the more anchored diasporic transnationals. During the Russian Civil War of 1918–21, Mirza Jalil and Hamideh Khånum used Mirza Ali Akbar’s connections to seek refuge in Tabriz. They might have settled there if the radical nature of their journal had not rattled the deeply conservative local government of Iranian Azerbaijan. In her memoir, Hamideh Khånum points to the troubles she and her husband had in reconciling themselves with the more conservative culture of Tabriz and its Persianate orientation. The authorities in Tabriz asked Mirza Jalil to publish Mollå Nasreddin in Persian, which he refused to do. Likewise, Hamideh Khånum, who had never worn the veil, was pressured to do so, which she also refused.

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10 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN Such transnational connections were not limited to Iran. The associate editor, Ömar Fåeq, had relatives in Turkey where he had studied for several years and where he might have stayed had the Ottoman police not chased him out for his political activities. The artist Oskar Schmerling grew up in Tiflis but belonged to a migrant German community, which had settled there for decades. He went back to Munich to study for a few years, as many members of the mostly Protestant Georgian-German community did. But the other German artist, Joseph Rotter, a Jew, was a more recent migrant who returned to Germany when World War I started. Finally, the Iranian migrant workers of Tiflis, Baku, Yerevan and other cities, who were discussed in the pages of Mollå Nasreddin, belonged to the category of seasonal or undocumented workers. As Janine Dahinden (2010) has pointed out, the cultural distance between the diasporic transnationals and the last two categories of seasonal and undocumented workers is often immense. Little, if any, socialising takes place between them. Diasporic transnationals are deeply anchored in the receiving land. They live a more comfortable, often middle-class life, their children speak the language fluently, and they are more integrated into the local structures. Their ties to the sending land are often merely symbolic. These ties manifest themselves in cultural efforts such as establishing bilingual education for children, or charities and benevolent associations, as well as in journalistic, literary and artistic activities. They usually mingle with other diasporans, as well as with the native population of the receiving land, who share their social and class concerns. The seasonal workers and the undocumented ‘remain on the margins of these communities, as genuine outsiders, rarely, if ever, participating in [their] ­communal life’ (Dahinden 2010: 39). Thinking about the relationships and interactions among different types of diasporans living on the same territory helps shed light on the close ties between Mirza Jalil and Oskar Schmerling, despite their very different communities of origin. It also suggests that the journal’s preoccupation with migrant Iranian workers stemmed from the writers’ desire to keep up ties to their Iranian-Azerbaijani homeland, in an attempt to maintain some of their ‘ethnic, national or religious boundaries over generations’ (Dahinden 2010: 29). The journal’s tendency to address the needs of seasonal workers most probably stemmed from the political leanings of its staff, particularly its loose commitment to social democracy, and the desire to ameliorate the lives of impoverished and marginalised members of the Muslim South Caucasian society at large. A third question was whether we could use several other terminologies and definitions with regard to the colonial status of South Caucasus. As Firouzeh Mostashari (2017) has shown in her work, On the Religious Frontier, Russian colonialism differed from its British and French counterparts in important ways. Hence, terms that have been coined in the field of postcolonial studies need to be used judiciously when discussing Russian colonialism and its Muslim subjects. Crews (2006) has argued that the tsarist state settled on a policy of toleration towards minority communities instead of retaining control through either forced religious conversion or expulsion. Administrative offices

introduction

worked closely with clerics to implement sharia law in Russian Muslim communities, and in the process created an ‘Islamic Church’ for a religion that historically did not have a centralised doctrinal authority. However, this did not mean equality among various religious denominations. Muslims of South Caucasus, together with Jews and other non-Christians, were considered third-class citizens, after Orthodox Christians and then second-class Catholic/Protestant denominations. They were subject to numerous restrictions on holding any high position. They could not serve on most local elected councils. They faced restrictions on the sale of their property and could not be shareholders in a corporation. In any legal dispute between a Christian and a Muslim (or a Jew), the Christian would be favoured by the court. These limitations suggest that we can use terms such as colonialist or Orientalist to refer to the conduct of the tsarist authorities, since they regarded the subject populations of South Caucasus as exotic, backward, uncivilised and even dangerous, as people who needed to be disciplined and educated by the state. However, the use of other common terms in postcolonial studies such as subaltern may be more problematic. By 1905, there were a number of extremely wealthy cosmopolitan Muslim industrialists in Baku who wholeheartedly supported the religious and educational reform movements of the period. Muslim ­communities in South Caucasus had established their own newspapers and journals, theatres with strong groups of playwrights, multiple charitable societies and their own private school for girls, as well as many other modern institutions. The cultural renaissance of the Muslims of South Caucasus was an indigenous p ­ henomenon and by no means a colonial enterprise. Indeed, the tsarist regime was reluctant to support efforts at religious reform, especially the education of Muslim girls, for fear of a backlash from the clerical establishment with which it closely worked. It was through the steadfast efforts of Muslims of South Caucasia, and especially their own funding, that such new schools and institutions, including adult educational programmes, were created, and women’s education was emphasised. We thus agree with Kelsey Rice (2018), that while use of the term subaltern might be appropriate when speaking of destitute Iranian migrants of South Caucasus, the answer to Gayatri Spivak’s question, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ should be a resounding ‘yes’ when we speak of the Muslims of South Caucasus in general. Indeed, as historians, we come across thousands of pages of documents that confirm the agency of the Muslim population, both men and women, noting their remarkable accomplishments in ­reforming their societies, which were becoming more diverse, multi-ethnic and multicultural, this some years before the establishment of the Soviet Union. Through these efforts, the intellectuals of the community selected what they perceived to be the best aspects of their Shii-Iranian-Azerbaijani culture, and blended it with the educational, literary and artistic cultural products of the Russian and European societies in which they had lived, or were acquainted with, to create an indigenous and modern Muslim-Azerbaijani culture. A fourth question was how to analyse the graphic art of the journal. South Caucasian artists of the late nineteenth century were trained by European artists or were inspired by European artistic conventions while creating their

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12 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN own local forms. German and ethnic Russian artists, among other Europeans, played an important role in the artistic renaissance of Tiflis. A new generation of art instructors, many of them German or Polish, taught painting, drawing, sculpture and architecture at art schools in Tiflis. Gradually, a triangular relationship developed among the Tiflis Fine Arts Society, the St Petersburg Academy of Arts and the Munich Academy of the Arts. Students would start at the Tiflis school, continue their education in St Petersburg, and if very proficient then go to Munich to complete their education. Many South Caucasian artists began their careers by producing large ­paintings commissioned by the tsarist state, works that glorified the Russian conquest of the region. Gradually, these artists – and literary critics – became uncomfortable with their projects and reacted negatively to the celebration of Russian conquests. They grew impatient with the state’s desire for a stereotypical depiction of the people of South Caucasus, and its lack of attention to the ethnic diversity of the population. Artists who came of age in the late nineteenth century, both those who were born and raised in Georgia and those who migrated from Europe to the region, were instead inspired by ‘The Wanderers’ (Peredvizhniki), a radical Russian school of art, as well as various left-of-centre progressive movements. Following these new ways of thinking, they broke with the colonial artistic mindset and became pioneers of Critical Realism. Their work began to show a greater affinity for a wide variety of cultures and people. The artists of Mollå Nasreddin belonged to this generation of artists. They were critical of colonial Russian and European domination, while also inspired by the European artistic heritage. At the same time, they remained attuned to the sensibilities of their South Caucasian and Central Asian societies. While holding on to progressive Enlightenment values which called for greater tolerance of others and that reacted against the intolerance of traditional religious institutions, the artists of Mollå Nasreddin also followed some problematic European conventions of caricature, even incorporating the pseudo-science of physiognomy into some of their cartoons. How do we explain this contradiction? The idea behind physiognomy was that one’s appearance determined one’s character. European artists of the period catalogued the face and various parts of the body to suggest that an individual’s character could be predicted based on various resemblances with animals. People with physical deformities were seen as morally corrupt, while those endowed with European definitions of beauty were seen as inherently ethical and moral. Satirical illustrated European journals, including the British Punch, used elements of physiognomy to suggest that there was a racial and ethnic hierarchy among nations and peoples. In contrast, the application of physiognomy in the pages of Mollå Nasreddin was along ideological rather than racial lines. Clerics, merchants and political leaders who opposed modern education and women’s rights were drawn with typically unflattering features, such as angry eyes, long chins and corpulent bodies, suggesting they were conceited, gluttonous, corrupt and generally untrustworthy. But clerics, merchants and political leaders more supportive of democratic ideals were drawn with large transparent eyes and handsome

introduction

features. In this way, despite its appropriation of the flawed conventions of physiognomy, the artists of Mollå Nasreddin differed from European cartoonists who applied physiognomy in the service of racist ideologies. Outline of the chapters This book consists of three parts. Part I looks at the history of South Caucasus and the milieu in which Mollå Nasreddin was born. Part II explores the literary contribution of the journal and the ways in which it attempted to reproduce the classic trickster trope for its contemporary moment and also introduce a new discourse on women’s rights. Part III turns to the artistic contributions of the periodical and the degree to which it was influenced by European and Russian traditions of graphic art and cartooning. Chapter 1 looks at the history, politics and sociocultural ­ dimensions of the region, with an emphasis on Baku and Tiflis from the 1850s until 1906. Tsarist colonial policies in South Caucasus, starting with the era of Catherine the Great (r. 1762–96), were aimed at the conquest and Russification of the population through a mixture of coercion, education, integration and cultural concessions. Many state officials realised the empire could not be preserved through military force alone. Instead, they tried to convince the local population of the superiority of European, and especially Russian, cultural and religious values. Theatre became one of several vehicles through which the colonial regime introduced European and Russian culture to the local populations in order to accelerate Russification. Starting with Mirza Fath-Ali Åkhundzådeh, a new generation of Azerbaijani-speaking playwrights emerged, founding the modern art of theatre among Muslims of South Caucasus. They borrowed elements from European and Russian culture while addressing issues that were of concern to their own populations. The cultural renaissance of Baku in the late nineteenth century was aided by the city’s new oil wealth and the concomitant rise of an indigenous industrialist class. A few of these businessmen became philanthropists and aided the educational reform movement in South Caucasus. Some Muslim intellectuals adopted radical European ideas, such as trade unionism, socialism and anti-imperialism, and created a new critical literary discourse that addressed the powerful grip of the Muslim religious establishment. After the Russian Revolution of 1905, and the Muslim-Armenian ethnic conflict of the same year, many radical intellectuals argued for an alliance among the ethnic minorities of the Russian Empire. They channelled their newly released revolutionary energy into building a modern Azerbaijani culture and towards educational reforms, especially education for girls. Chapter 2 discusses Mollå Nasreddin’s broad journalistic concerns. It also looks at its contributors, and the challenges and obstacles they faced. The journal never limited itself to issues concerning the Muslims of Tiflis. Rather it addressed ethno-linguistic, religious, regional and international concerns of the Muslim community at large. At the local level, the journal called for the use of Azerbaijani language at home and in schools. With regard to religious practices, it advocated a closer alliance between the Shii and Sunni

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14 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN communities of South Caucasus and for the reform of Islamic practices. At the regional level, the journal wholeheartedly supported the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, the Young Turk Revolution and the democratic reforms that were introduced in both Iran and Turkey. Finally, at the international level, the periodical was a champion of the rights of Muslims in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, and exposed the imperialist designs of the European powers, including Britain and Tsarist Russia, on the region. The remainder of this chapter looks at the biographies of contributors to the journal. Mollå Nasreddin was not the organ of a particular political party, though the editor and nearly all of its staff leaned towards social democracy. Many were talented and accomplished individuals in various areas, including several playwrights who both wrote for the periodical and staged plays. Chapter 3 looks at the diasporic artistic community of Tiflis. It exemplified a transnational community that housed many different ethnicities and witnessed a dramatic degree of artistic cross-fertilisation. We examine the city’s history and politics and its different diasporic groups – the Iranian, Armenian and especially German-Georgian communities. Tiflis provided a remarkably fertile ground for the publication of Mollå Nasreddin. The city had an impressive theatre industry, where the latest plays were brought in from St Petersburg and Europe, while its artists routinely travelled to academic art centres in St Petersburg and Munich. The city’s newspapers and literary circles discussed state-of-the-art developments in Europe and encouraged similar appropriations at home. In addition, Tiflis was home to a number of Armenian photographers who helped disseminate the latest techniques in photography and sparked a new interest in Realist paintings in Tiflis, Tabriz and Tehran. Tiflis was also home to a new generation of Georgian Realist painters who were able to overcome the divisions among Orientalist, Colonialist and Realist paintings of their time. They created a new form of Critical Georgian Realism that bridged East and West, one that was sympathetic towards local populations of Muslims, Georgians and Armenians, while also highly critical of their social and political realities. Chapter 4 looks at the folk trickster Mollå Nasreddin, whose name was the inspiration for the periodical. Nasreddin was a not-so-pious Muslim cleric, whose foolish deeds and clever sayings turned him into the most popular Ottoman, Iranian and Azerbaijani folk character. Carl Jung ([1959] 1992), Michel Foucault ([1961] 1988), and Mikhail Bakhtin ([1965] 1984) showed how the European trickster figure broke conventional boundaries of rationality, morality and artistic creativity, revealing the hypocrisies of the existing order and its norms. Lewis Hyde’s (1998) Trickster Makes This World, argued that tricksters violated and erased the line between the sacred and the profane, allowing the reader to either engage in activities that were deemed irreverent and unholy, or to imagine doing so. Tricksters turned the hierarchical order upside down, if only momentarily, and provided psychological release. In this way, they opened a door to the world of imagination and to other ways of envisioning human relationships and social hierarchies. One of the skills of the Middle Eastern trickster Nasreddin was his guile, meaning his ability to negotiate and interpret language and context deftly, and

introduction

his mastery of interpersonal relations even when dealing with a higher authority (Beeman 1986). Here we look at four ways in which the folk character Nasreddin used guile and conducted ‘dirt-work’ in order to turn conventional social hierarchies upside down. These included (1) attacks on the corruption and greed of the elite; (2) critiques of orthodoxy and orthopraxy; (3) tales of gender subversion; and (4) stories of sexual transgressions. Chapter 5 is based on a close reading of the first six years of the journal, in order to examine the extent to which the tropes of the classical trickster Nasreddin were also employed in the periodical. It becomes obvious that the title of the periodical was no mere appropriation of the folk character. Rather, in addition to reproducing some original trickster tales, the editors recreated the trickster trope for their time and place. The weekly imitated the plots of classic folk tales, presented updated versions of the characters, and created new stories that addressed modern concerns. Sometimes the connections were obvious. We see this in tales that revolved around the folk Mollå and his wife living in Tiflis or Baku at the turn of the twentieth century, and dealing with contemporary issues of their time. At other times, the relationship to the folk trickster was not so obvious, but the stories or columns performed a type of ‘dirt-work’, where Mollå exposed the hypocrisy and corruption of his social milieu. There were also occasions when the stories were far more explosive than a typical trickster tale, especially when Mollå Nasreddin named and revealed the actions of highly influential living people in South Caucasus and Iran. In this process, the periodical duplicated the tropes of the folk mollå for its own time. It (1) turned the reader’s attention to the suffering of the impoverished workers and migrants; (2) pleaded for the reform of Shii and other Muslim rituals; (3) criticised more traditional women who turned to charms and incantations to achieve their goals; and (4) attacked pervasive practices of sexual abuse of boys and girls. In recreating these trickster tales, the periodical also used a variety of l­ iterary forms. A common device was the fictional epistolary exchange, usually in the form of ‘Letters to the Editor’. Other forms included humorous journalistic investigative pieces, mock interviews, fake advertisements, gossip columns about famous people in town, reports of the latest fashions, witty epigrams and, of course, cartoons. In constructing these narratives, this truly intertextual publication employed a variety of genres, from respectable forms of classical poetry to supposedly more inferior ones of cartoons and caricature, in order to recreate the trickster for contemporary South Caucasian society. Chapter 6 examines the journal’s ground-breaking discourse on girls’ and women’s rights. Unlike other publications of the period, Mollå Nasreddin did not limit itself to the subject of women’s education under the limited argument that to have a modern nation, women must be educated to become better wives and mothers for their children. Rather, the weekly adopted a deeply sympathetic view of the girl child, and for the first time in the region’s history, explored the many abuses that girls and women endured through the course of their lives. These included the birth of the girl, malnourishment, denial of education, segregation and veiling, child marriage and forced

15

16 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN marriage, domestic violence, polygamy, easy divorce (repudiation) and the hard life of discarded women. To give a sense of the explosive nature of these ­articles and graphics, this chapter provides a composite narrative of the columns and the vignettes, one that walks the reader through the many stages of a woman’s life, providing a broad overview of the many gender-related subjects the periodical tackled. Chapter 7 looks at the impact of nineteenth-century lithographic art on the journal, especially the work of Goya and Daumier. In spirit – and to some extent, in style – some cartoons of Rotter and Schmerling resembled the dark satire of Goya, whose influence had become part of the extensive discursive tradition of protest art in Europe and Russia by the early twentieth century. Political and social caricatures were influenced by both physiognomy and the more universalistic ideals of the Enlightenment, and this can also be seen in the pages of Mollå Nasreddin. Sometimes the periodical adopted the propagandistic tone of the artists of the French Revolution, who portrayed their leaders as heroic figures. At other times, it adopted the moralistic tone of the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British satirists William Hogarth and Thomas Rowlandson, who condemned gambling, drinking and prostitution with harsh pedantic images, and who mocked the hypocrisy of the aristocracy and religious leaders. Sometimes Mollå Nasreddin followed the tradition of Daumier, belittling the monarchy and the court’s political corruption. Often, the artists of Mollå Nasreddin tried to combine their adherence to Western ideals of the Enlightenment, modernity and social democracy with their criticism of imperialist nations – pointing to the violence, greed and hypocrisy of colonial powers. While this chapter looks at the stylistic appropriations from Goya and Daumier, it also shows where Mollå Nasreddin parted company with these artists, most notably in the periodical’s highly sympathetic portrait of older women. Chapter 8 looks at the influence of more contemporary European ­traditions of graphic art on Mollå Nasreddin. In addition to Goya and Daumier, the artists of the periodical drew upon newer forms of caricature, as seen in publications such as the British Punch, the German Simplicissimus, and the Russian revolutionary periodicals of 1905–6 such as Leshii, Plamia, Adskaia Pochta, Signal and Zritel. Many of these publications were themselves influenced by Goya and Daumier as well as by Critical Realism in art. Punch was one of the most important stylistic influences on Mollå Nasreddin. However, Mollå Nasreddin also tapped into traditional forms of Persian and Turkish literature and miniature art, to recreate the experience of Punch for its Muslim, Azerbaijani, Iranian and Turkish readers. In this process, the periodical developed a whole cast of characters whose deployment showed sharp differences from the hegemonic, Eurocentric and racist imagery of Punch, and helped foster a sense of dignity and awareness among the people of South Caucasus and the Middle East. Mollå Nasreddin incorporated other stylistic appropriations from the work of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and the new French art of the belle époque, and the aforementioned Russian periodicals. Through these varying stylistic adaptations, the artists of Mollå Nasreddin recreated aspects of the Critical Realist school for their transnational Azerbaijani community,

introduction

pioneering a form of art that focused on the everyday lives of the popular classes, especially peasants, women and children. A future second volume will look at Mollå Nasreddin’s coverage of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution and the influence of Iranian culture on the periodical. There exists a large body of articles, cartoons and illustrations covering the major turning points of that revolution, from its ­inception in 1906 to its suppression in 1911. Through their work, Mirza Jalil and his colleagues left us with an unparalleled illustrated documentary of the Constitutional Revolution, some of which will be reprinted and analysed in that volume.

Notes 1. His name has also been transliterated as Mohammadqolizådeh or Mammadquluzådeh. 2. It gradually gained readers in London, Berlin, Paris, Rome and even New York. 3. Even today, the people of the Azerbaijan Republic and Azerbaijani Iranians continue to communicate easily in the Turkic Azerbaijani language.

17

PART I

The World of the Journal

CHAPTER 1

South Caucasus at the Turn of the Twentieth Century Russian colonial policies in South Caucasus were aimed at the greater ­integration of the population through a combination of military force, public education, civil service employment and accommodation of non-Orthodox religious practices. But how did these policies affect the Muslim South Caucasian community? This chapter will focus on some of the political, economic and cultural ramifications of Russian colonialism in the region. We will see that theatre was an important vehicle through which the state introduced Russian and European culture to local South Caucasian communities. Baku’s oil wealth aided the rise of a new generation of indigenous Muslim industrialists, some of whom became philanthropists and helped pioneer a new educational reform movement in South Caucasus. Shii and Sunni institutions of learning also underwent a profound change as the state prohibited its citizens from attending theological seminaries in Najaf and Karbala and instead created state-sponsored madrasas inside the Russian Empire. By the turn of the twentieth century, a variety of radical discourses emerged among Muslim intellectuals, including Pan-Turkism, Pan-Islamism, liberalism and a variety of socialist ideologies. Following the Russian Revolution of 1905, and the Muslim–Armenian ethnic conflict of the same year, many radical intellectuals channelled their revolutionary energy into building a vibrant press and greater educational reforms for Muslim institutions, including for girls. Russian conquest of South Caucasus South Caucasus refers to the territory located between the Caucasus Mountains (to the north), the Black Sea (to the west), the Caspian Sea (to the east) and the Iranian Plateau (to the south). Today, it is home to the three republics of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia. The region, including Dagestan, became part of the Safavid Empire (1501–1736) in the sixteenth century. The Safavid ruler, Shah Ismail (1487–1524, r. 1501–24), gained control over the region north and south of the Aras River and declared Twelver Shiism the official religion of his new state.1 Shiism gradually became the dominant religion through both coercion and lavish expenditure on Shii religious festivals. Tabriz and Ardabil became centres of theological and philosophical training for the Safavids. Accounts differ on the financial administration of the Safavid era and whether the two regions, north and south of the Aras River, were part

22 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN of the same administrative unit. In some accounts of revenue collections, the area called Azerbaijan included four beglarbegi (senior provincial governors) that were located south and the north of the Aras River. In other accounts, the region is divided into Azerbaijan (the area south of the Aras River) and Shirvån, or modern-day South Caucasus.2 Despite brief and intermittent periods of control by tsarist Russian and Ottoman states, South Caucasus remained under Iranian suzerainty until the death of Nader Shah (d. 1747). In the late eighteenth century, independent kingdoms, known as khånåtes, asserted their authority in the region. Below the ranks of the khåns, who governed the kingdoms, were beys, who provided them with military services. In return, the beys were exempt from taxes and enjoyed local autonomy. Meanwhile, these khåns tried to maintain their autonomy by playing the big states around them against one another (Shahvar and Abramoff 2018: 25). Still, Qajar rulers of Iran continued to consider this region a part of the Iranian Empire. In 1795, Åqa Muhammad Khån Qajar (1742–97) led a large military attack on the region. Most of the khånåtes of South Caucasus, except parts of modern Georgia, submitted and recognised the sovereignty of the Qajar ruler. The resistance in Tiflis to the Iranian forces resulted in the devasting destruction of that city in 1795 and the re-subjugation of the area.3 Tsar Alexander I (1777–1825, r. 1801–25) of Russia soon entered into an aggressive campaign of conquest in South Caucasus. First, the tsar proclaimed the Kingdom of Georgia a province of Russia. Next, he annexed the khånåtes between the Caspian Sea and the Aras River. Iran’s Qajar rulers pushed back in two Russo-Iranian Wars but were defeated both times. Following the Treaties of Golestan (1813) and Turkmanchåy (1828), Iran renounced its sovereignty over seventeen khånåtes north of the Aras River (modern day Republic of Azerbaijan, and parts of the modern-day republics of Georgia and Armenia), resulting in the loss of about five million people from the Iranian population (Amanat 2017: 212). Russia’s victory over Turkey the following year led to the Treaty of Adrianople (1829), which solidified and extended Russian ­colonial rule over the area that stretched from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea. The territory inhabited by Turkic-speaking Muslims was now permanently divided into two parts by the Aras River. One-third of the population, about 500,000 people who lived north of the river, became part of the Russian Empire. The other two-thirds of the population, who lived south of the Aras River, remained part of Iran (Atabaki 2000: 8). Yet, despite this political ­division, the two communities along the Aras River remained in regular contact. The Turkmanchåy and Adrianople treaties included provisions for population transfers. Russia’s policy was to attract Christian Armenians and Greeks from the Ottoman Empire and Iran to these newly acquired Russian territories. Meanwhile, many Muslims from South Caucasus immigrated to Iran or the Ottoman Empire to avoid living under Christian rulers. By 1829, a sizeable community of over 100,000 Armenians, mostly from Iranian Azerbaijan, had immigrated to Russia, where Tsar Nicholas I (1796–1855, r. 1825–55)

south caucasus at the turn of the twentieth century

Figure 1.1  Crossing the border at Aras River. ‘Contemporary travellers to Iran’. Source: MN 15, 18 April 1910.

granted them an Armenian district in the adjacent khånåtes of Erivan (Yerevan) and Nakhchivan (Swietochowski 1985: 1–10; Mostashari 2017: 41). By the early twentieth century, the term Azerbaijani referred only to the residents of the province of Azerbaijan inside Iran. Those who lived north of the Aras River and also spoke the Azerbaijani language, including the editor and various writers of the periodical Mollå Nasreddin, referred to themselves as Muslims or as Caucasians (Qafqåzi), while the Russian administrators referred to them as Tatars (Atabaki 2000).4 The All-Russian Census of 1897 estimated that South Caucasus c­ omprised around five million people. Of these, 30 per cent were Turkic speaking and 6 per cent were Iranian speakers (Kurds, Ossetians, Talysh and other peoples). Azerbaijani-speaking people settled mainly in Baku, Shusha, Nukhå, Shemåkhå and Nakhchivan, where their share of the population was between 45 per cent and 80 per cent. In Sålyån and Ordubåd, they constituted 90–100 per cent of the population. In addition, about 20,000 Caucasus Azerbaijanis lived in Tiflis, Erivan and Alexandropol. This population was predominantly rural. Armenians constituted 33.8 per cent of the urban population, Georgians 24.1 per cent and Azerbaijanis 18 per cent.5 Russian colonial policies in South Caucasus Russian authorities readily admitted that their government was not concer­ned with the economic development of their colonised subjects and preferred to turn the area into a source of raw materials for the rest of the empire. By the

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24 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN mid-nineteenth century, the Russian government had built no factories in the region. However, it had altered the region’s economy from subsistence agriculture, complimented by a healthy craft industry, into a mostly cash crop economy, which produced the raw materials for Russian factories elsewhere. This transition led to the ruination of the South Caucasus local craft industry (Swietochowski 1985: 17). In looking at Russia’s colonial policy in the Muslim Caucasus, we encounter some key differences from French and British colonialism elsewhere. Russia was in close proximity to its colonies, unlike France and its colony Algeria, or Britain and its colony India, which were on two different respective continents. The people of the Muslim Caucasus/Central Asia and the Russians had shared contiguous territories and had memories of several centuries of interaction prior to annexation. As a result, Russians held conflicting and even romantic notions about the ‘noble savages’ they had conquered. Moreover, Russians were themselves doubtful of the ‘authenticity’ of their European heritage. Perhaps the most important difference between Russian and European colonial powers, was that Russia’s claim to superiority and attempts to ‘civilise’ the native population were not based in beliefs of racial superiority, but in Russia’s religious superiority and the social status of the individual and the community. ‘The Russian Empire defined its others by estate and religion: western [European] empires defined them by geography and race’ (Etkind 2011: 134). The most important factor in determining a person’s social status was their religion. To hold a high position in any sector of society, one was subject to a religious test. Members of the Orthodox Church occupied the top position in the social hierarchy of the Russian Empire. In the second tier were followers of other Christian denominations such as Catholics and Protestants. The occupants of the third tier were non-Christian denominations such as Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Zoroastrians and others. Many restrictions prevented the promotion of members of this third tier to upper ranks in the military, government bureaus and educational institutions. Similar restrictions were upheld in legal conflicts. In a legal dispute between a Catholic and a Muslim or Jew, for example, the courts would almost always side with the Catholic. Yet, all these discriminatory measures were removed once a person converted to the Russian Orthodox religion. They were given a lump sum in cash and a regular clothing stipend and automatically received all the rights that a Russian person of that particular social class possessed. The system thus included numerous incentives to encourage conversion to Orthodoxy.6 Russian colonial policy wavered between fits of coercive Russification and assimilation of the peripheries and, at other times, voluntary conversion of these populations to Orthodoxy. But the idea that the Russian Empire achieved this objective primarily through military force is inaccurate. In fact, the empire had a complex relationship with its various ethnic communities. With regard to its Muslim populations, whether in South Caucasus or the Volga Tatars, it ranged ‘from respectful acceptance to opportunistic manipulation to indifference and lack of contact’. The response of the Muslim South Caucasian community was likewise mixed. While there was fierce resistance in North

south caucasus at the turn of the twentieth century

Figure 1.2  Bowing to Russian authorities. Source: MN 12, 23 June 1906.

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26 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN Caucasus, elsewhere the Muslim population of South Caucasus ‘seldom resorted to open conflict with the regime’ (Kivelson and Suny 2017: 132).7 Various tsars and local administrators held different perspectives on how to achieve this goal of Russification. Some disregarded the laws and customs of their colonised subjects and paid little attention to regional differences. Through legal, administrative and educational tools, they pushed for rapid integration of the local population, using land sequestration whenever it was deemed necessary. In contrast, other tsars and administrators pursued a more cautious approach towards local customs and laws, hoping to achieve a more gradual incorporation of the land and its people into Russian law and culture. As mentioned above, there was fierce resistance to Russian colonialism in North Caucasus. In the 1830s, under the influence of the Sunni Naqshbandi Sufi imam, Sheikh Shamil, 12,000 residents took up arms and fought the state. In response, a new administration under Tsar Nicholas I confiscated vast parcels of lands from the Sunni Muslim elite. When the Shamil insurrection ultimately failed, many Sunnis immigrated to Turkey, while Shiis remained in their homeland in South Caucasus. By the 1860s, Shiis had become the clear majority of the Muslim South Caucasus population, whereas at the turn of the nineteenth century, the populations of Shii and Sunni in South Caucasus had numbered roughly the same. The region included other ethnic and religious minorities such as Kurdish and Turkic nomads (both Sunni), as well as Jews, Armenians (members of the Apostolic Christian Church) and Georgians (members of the Georgian Orthodox Church), with the latter two religions dating back to the first century ce. Sporadic attempts at Russification of the Turkic-Muslim population of the Caucasus were achieved through military force, followed by education in Russian and employment in civil services. For some, the state established elite gymnazii (classical high schools) where the entire curriculum was taught in Russian (Kivelson and Suny 2017: 221). Next, members of this incipient elite were sent to big cities where they continued their college education and/ or entered military service, living an additional five years in the European parts of Russia before returning to the Caucasus and entering the civil services. In contrast, the vast majority of Muslims had only occasional contact with the upper echelons of the state after conquest. Another distinguishing characteristic of Russian colonialism was its ­treatment of Islamic law. By the early twentieth century, Muslims constituted 15 per cent of the population of the empire (twenty million) and were the largest non-Christian Orthodox minority. Starting with Catherine the Great (r. 1762–96), the state decided on a policy of toleration towards minority communities instead of retaining control through either forced religious conversion or expulsion. Every subject had to be a member of a ‘confessional community’ and follow its clerical leadership. Shii and Sunni Muslim communities and their members were recognised in this system. However, the Sufis of North Caucasus, who had shown such fierce resistance to colonial rule, were not recognised as a confessional community (Kivelson and Suny 2017: 130–1, 170).

south caucasus at the turn of the twentieth century

Figure 1.3  Editor of Mollå Nasreddin. Bowing to Russian police. Source: MN 6, 12 May 1906.

As Robert Crews (2006) has argued in his For Prophet and Tsar, local court and administrative offices worked closely with mosques to implement sharia law in Russia, and in the process created an ‘Islamic Church’ for a religion that historically had not had a centralised doctrinal authority. The government made Islam a pillar of imperial society, transforming Muslims into active participants in the daily operations of the autocracy and the local construction and maintenance of the empire … Rather than merely subordinating Muslims to the empire, this institution created interdependence. (Crews 2006: 3, 34)8 The Orthodox Church continued to retain extensive privileges over other denominations, while many Muslims (except in North Caucasus) gradually accepted the empire as a House of Islam (Dar al-Islam), a territory where they could practise their religious rituals and obligations. The vast majority of Muslims seemingly looked to the empire to organise their c­ ommunities, and even to enforce sharia law. For the Russian Empire, tolerance was much more than Figure 1.4  ‘Tatars in the Mosque’. ­non-interference in the affairs of Muslims. Source: Iljine 2013, 127.

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28 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN It meant a type of intervention that Muslim subjects would not reject. For example, the regime sponsored the construction of mosques throughout the empire, including Moscow, where a mosque was built in 1823 despite opposition from the Orthodox Church. A Quran was kept at the Kremlin so Muslim administrators could swear an oath of loyalty on their own holy book. The state became involved in the mediation of such intimate affairs as family conflicts and inheritance rights, all based on sharia law. And, since the sharia was not a uniform code, the state worked closely with mosque communities to interpret the sharia (Crews 2006: 9–21). This policy was resented by Russian nationalists, who wanted the state to enforce Russian culture – and often Orthodox Christianity – throughout the empire, and by liberals who wanted universal secular law for the empire. However, these policies seemed to have worked well for the empire. The state’s policy of religious tolerance allowed for local diversities, and simultaneously strengthened state power over local populations. In 1810, following the model of the Napoleonic state, the tsarist regime established a ‘centralized bureaucratic body for the administration of the tolerated confessions’ (Crews 2006: 23). The state bureaucratised the Muslim clergy, a group that was viewed as the biggest threat to Russian hegemony. The government also created a new stratum of ‘state mullahs’, who worked as civil servants and received a monthly salary, while limiting the number of village clerics to two per village (Mostashari 2017: 32). Lay people (men and women) were provided with the opportunity to petition the state with their complaints about any shortcomings of their prayer leaders, teachers or judges, or to report lapses in religious practices in their community. These petitions to the state might include the irregular behaviour of a particular åkhund (cleric), or the nonattendance of neighbours at communal prayers. In this way, the Russian state became a mediator between the faith community and its religious leaders, enabling it to monitor and control the behaviour of the clerical establishment (Crews 2006: 95). During the reign of Tsar Nicholas I, Mikhael Semenovich Vorontsov (in power 1844–53), the Governor General of the Caucasus, continued the gradualist policy of integration of minority populations into Russian institutions. Under Vorontsov, who in his youth had served as a military officer during the annexation of South Caucasus and Crimea, South Caucasian natives of all religions were admitted to Russian elementary and high schools and to the tsarist military, and could be offered civil service jobs. They entered Russian universities and teacher seminaries in Gori and Tiflis. Many also ventured into literary careers, including writing plays. Some members of the new cultural elite emerged from within the old Muslim aristocratic class. Shamåkha (former capital of Shirvån Khånåte), Shushå (former capital of Kåråbåkh Khånåte) and Ganja (former capital of the Ganja Khånåte) became new cultural hubs, and children and grandchildren of khåns often became the new social and cultural elites. In these cities, as well as in Tiflis and Baku, musical and literary assemblies were formed. These were frequented by beys, wealthy merchants and religious scholars, as well as government employees. Assembly members wrote poems addressed to other

south caucasus at the turn of the twentieth century

members, while ashiqs (bards) and mugham khånandas (singers) entertained them (Rice 2018: 31–6). Assembly members occasionally wrote literary works in the Azerbaijani language. However, Persian remained an influential literary language of these circles until the late nineteenth century. Almost anyone who was educated knew Persian; even those who preferred Azerbaijani as their literary language regularly referenced Persian poets as their models and many of them wrote more often in Persian than in Azerbaijani.9 Russian literature played a critical role in the cultural unification of the empire and provided an extremely successful vehicle for cultural hegemony. The state and Russian officers brought literature, theatre, painting and later photography to the conquered territories, which proved to be irresistible to the population. Russian literature thus ‘conquered more Russian, nonRussians, and Russian enemies than any other imperial endeavor’ (Etkind 2011: 169). Theatre as a vehicle for Russification or national culture? Vorontsov believed that the empire could not preserve itself in this far edge corner through the military and administrative powers of the Russian state alone. Control had to be sustained by compulsory Russian language education and convincing the native populations of the superiority of Russian cultural values. He hoped to foster such an appreciation by creating a love for theatre in the region. Theatrical performances were thus not just a cultural entertainment for Russian administrators and military officers, but a vehicle for the introduction of Russian and European culture to Tiflis, which was considered a frontier city bordered by ‘mountain ‘savagery’ (Jersild and Melkadze 2002: 32). Immediately after arriving in the region in 1845, Vorontsov encouraged the establishment of the Tiflis Imperial Theatre, which was built in 1851. In 1854, Kavkaz, the first Russian-language newspaper of the Caucasus, and the Russian Empire’s official paper of record in Tiflis, wrote in support of these policies. In its view, theatre ‘cultivates taste, acquaints us with the work of great artists, with the ideas of geniuses, and presents to the crowd the beginnings of the fine arts, that is, the most noble aspirations of humanity’ (quoted in Jersild and Melkadze 2002: 28). Actors from the imperial theatres of St Petersburg were invited to Tiflis. New dance clubs and schools offered balls to large audiences and taught various musical instruments. In 1851, an Italian opera company was invited to perform annually. In 1853, the first, full-scale ballet was staged. Kavkaz and other periodicals routinely reported on the latest theatrical performances in Europe, and encouraged similar productions in Tiflis. The quality of these productions was important to the educated Russians, who wished to convince the native South Caucasians of the superiority of Russian and Western civilisation. Russian literati, including Leo Tolstoy, applauded these efforts to turn Tiflis into the St Petersburg of the Caucasus. Cultural venues, backed by the state, reached out to Georgian, Armenian and Muslim communities to create a ‘proper theatre-going public’, one that understood and appreciated these

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30 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN performances. Yet, despite these efforts, the seats often remained empty, since the plays did not resonate with the local populations (Jersild and Melkadze 2002: 33). To remedy this situation, the local populace was invited to participate in the production of the plays as the theatrical crew, actors and actresses, and not just as passive audience members. These invitations were welcomed by the community. Georgian playwrights, among others, wrote and performed comedies focusing on their nobility. Soon an entire Georgian comedy troop formed in Figure 1.5  Selling tickets by force. Members of Tiflis, performing plays in Russian. After a Tiflis Charities sell theatre tickets to Muslims. few decades, these theatrical productions Source: MN 13, 29 March 1909. helped develop a new national cultural identity among Georgians, Armenians and later among Muslim intellectuals. This new identity was not just critical of local elites, clerics and patriarchs, but also gradually became more resentful towards Russia’s presence in the region. Vorontsov and his contemporaries could not have anticipated this outcome in the ­mid-nineteenth century. However, by the turn of the twentieth century, the relationship of the local intelligentsia to Western culture was no longer an uncritical one. South Caucasian intellectuals began to adopt Western critical Figure 1.6  ‘We swear we thought it was a concepts, such as trade unionism, socialism (taziyeh) passion play, otherwise we would not and anti-imperialism. As a result, Russian have cried so much.’ authorities grew more suspicious of these Source: MN 15, 12 April 1909. cultural productions and their implications, especially among the Georgians of Tiflis, and became less eager to invest in local arts and performances (Jersild and Melkadze 2002: 33). Åkhundzådeh: founder of Azerbaijani and Iranian Enlightenment As theatre began to address local issues, it slowly became more acceptable among the Shii Muslims of Tiflis. Shiism has its own form of theatre, the taziyeh passion play, which is considered the oldest form of theatre in the Middle East (Chelkowski 1979; Richard 1995). The existence of this type of performance may have helped to make the transition from passion plays to modern theatre as acceptable. Mirza Fath Ali Åkhundzådeh (Mirzə Fətəli Axundov, ­1812–78), was the first celebrated Muslim playwright of Tiflis. He is considered the founder of

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both Azerbaijani and Persian modern literature, as well as a founder of the Muslim Enlightenment in South Caucasus and Iran. Commonly known as Åkhundov, he was born to a wealthy land-owning family in the city of Shaki (later renamed Nukhå) in 1819, a year before the city was annexed by Russia. He spoke Azerbaijani at home and received a traditional religious education in local schools known as maktabs, which were run by low-level clerics. He was expected to become a cleric. In Ganja, he studied calligraphy with Mirza Shafi Vazeh, a poet and founder of the Divån-e Hekmat (House of Wisdom), one of the earliest literary assemblies in the region. Shafi Vazeh advised the young man not to become a cleric, advice the young Åkhundov heeded (Ådamiyat 1970: 13). In 1834, after studying Russian for a year, Åkhundov moved to Tiflis where he became a translator at the Chancellery of Figure 1.7  Mirza Fath Ali the Viceroy of the Caucasus, and in the process mastered Åkhundzådeh. the Russian language. There he met a new generation of dis- Source: Institute of sident Russian, Armenian and Georgian intellectuals. He Manuscripts of Azerbaijan, could now read the works of Russian writers, such as the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. great Romantic writer and poet of the Caucasus, Mikhail Lermontov ­(1814–41), the Russian Realist writer Nikolai Gogol (1809–52) or the Russian socialist Nikolay Chernyshevsky (1828–89). Through Russian translations, he read French writers such as Molière, Voltaire, Dumas and Sue; social thinkers such as Montesquieu, Renan, Rousseau and Mirabeau; and English writers and philosophers such as Shakespeare, Byron, Hume, J. S. Mill, and even the Swiss economist and historian Sismondi (Parsinejad 2003: 42). His versatility in Russian and Persian, coupled with his position, allowed him to travel widely in South Caucasus, and to visit Iran as a tsarist official for the coronation of Nåser al-Din Shah (1831–96, r. 1848–96) (Ådamiyat 1970: 28). One of his innovations was the introduction of a simpler and vocalised script for the Azerbaijani language, which he called Türki. It was shorn of many classical Persian and Arabic terms, and more compatible with the Azerbaijani vernacular. In 1836, he started to teach Türki at the Tiflis Gymnasium. Its director was the secularist Armenian writer Khåchåtur Abovyån (1810–46), founder of Armenian Realist literature, who ‘fought the Church as much as Åkhundov battled the Mosque’ (Ådamiyat 1970: 13). Tiflis was home to Georgian notables who dreamed of overthrowing tsarist rule. It was also the place of exile of former Decembrist revolutionaries, officers who had successfully defeated Napoleon’s incursions into Russia in 1812 and then carried out a near coup against Tsar Nicholas I. The Decemberists continued to agitate for liberal political reforms, including the abolition of serfdom (Ådamiyat 1970: 17). By this time, Tiflis had become an important city for theatre. Åkhundov was known to attend plays, and the city routinely staged works by prominent Russian and European playwrights such as Shakespeare, Molière, Gogol, Griboyedov and Ostrovski. Between 1850 and 1856, Åkhundov contributed six plays of his own, known as The Tamsilåt (Plays), thus becoming the

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Figure 1.8  Husseingulu Sarabski performing the role of Majnun in the first Muslim opera, Leyli and Majnun, staged in Baku in January 1908. Source: Iljine 2013, 110.

Figure 1.9  Khurshid Bånu Nåtavån and her children. Source: https://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:Hurshidbanu_Natavan_ with_her_children.jpg; and https://azkataloq.org/ photo/50/xursidbanunatevan-ve-ovladlari.

first modern Azerbaijani playwright (Parsinejad 2003: 43; Åkhundzådeh 2019). These plays were initially performed in Russian translations in Tiflis. But near the end of Åkhundov’s life, and especially after 1905, many of them, as well as works by other Azerbaijani playwrights, appeared in the Azerbaijani language. This greatly influenced the Muslim South Caucasian and Iranian migrant communities. Åkhundov also gained a formidable reputation as a social reformer, essayist and theoretician. He engaged in a deep re-examination of his Iranian heritage, and the religious and cultural practices of his Shii Muslim ancestors. He was passionate about his Iranian heritage, yet painfully embarrassed by its shortcomings. Due to his credentials as the son of a prominent cleric and as an official of the tsarist government, he felt secure in his ability to raise issues that no one before him had dared to air publicly. Åkhundov was an abolitionist who condemned the African slave trade of the Middle East and the castration of slave boys who were employed as eunuchs in royal harems. He also was a champion of schools for girls, unveiling, gender desegregation and marriage reforms. In his plays, Åkhundov created strong female characters who challenged male domination, and exercised their right to a marriage based on love, rather than an arranged one (Gasimova 2019). The villains of his plays were often Iranian mollås (low-level clerics) who upheld traditions such as child marriage, arranged marriage and polygamy. In his anti-clerical and anti-religious satires, he even criticised the Prophet, and blamed his marital conflicts on the institution of polygamy (Åkhundzådeh 1985: 73–4, 119–20). As Azerbaijani historian Turkay Gasimova points out:  The real situation of women was not so different from the one depicted in fictional works. The issues such as polygamy, ill treatment against women, forced marriages, physical punishment, and child abuse that Åkhundov and other intellectuals touched upon were indeed present. However, the existence of these problems did not preclude strong women from fighting for equal rights, and more participation in public life despite limited numbers. (Gasimova 2019) Among them was Khurshid Bånu Nåtavån (1832–97), daughter of the Khån of Kåråbåkh. Contrary to her last name, which means ‘feeble’, she was a brave woman with numerous interests, who appeared unveiled in her literary gatherings, embarked on philanthropic projects and tackled the subject of domestic violence. She also encouraged the literary career of other women, including the poet Åshiq Peri (Rice 2018: 40–2).10

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Åkhundov regarded Iran, where his sister continued to live, as his homeland (vatan). But he had an equal affinity for the area in which he had grown up in South Caucasus and his native Azerbaijani tongue. He wrote in both Azerbaijani and Persian, as well as in Russian. Tadeusz Swietochowski writes, ‘With no indication of split-personality, he combined larger Iranian identity with the Azerbaijani – he used the term vatan (fatherland) in reference to both’ (Swietochowski 1995: 28). His contributions to Persian thought are so ­important that he is considered the father of modern Iranian nationalism, with its deep longing for the pre-Islamic Persian Empire. This expression of Iranian nationalism was based on antipathy towards Arab Muslims for invading Iran and imposing Islam on the population, as well as his dislike for Ottoman Turks, with whom Russia had had several wars in the nineteenth century. Åkhundov’s relationship with the tsarist regime was a complicated one. The authorities closely monitored his affiliations with dissidents and his publications, but they also encouraged his literary endeavours, hoping that the development of an indigenous Azerbaijani culture would sever the close cultural and spiritual bonds with Iran. Hence Vorontsov, who called Åkhundov the ‘Tatar Molière’, applauded this new literary and social discourse among Muslims of South Caucasus as a way to challenge the community’s heavy identification with Iranian culture and the state, and to some extent this policy succeeded (Swietochowski 1995: 28; Ådamiyat 1970: 22). An important circle of literary figures coalesced around Åkhundov in Tiflis. With his encouragement, Mirza Shafi Vazeh, his former mentor, opened a second chapter of the Divån-e Hekmat (House of Wisdom) in Tiflis in 1841 (Rice 2018: 39).11 The gatherings of this literary circle were multi-ethnic and multicultural. In addition to Azerbaijani-speaking poets, Russian, German and other cultural and literary figures frequented the Divån. Another key attendee was the Iranian General Consul of Tiflis, Yusuf Mostashår al-Dowleh, who helped translate some of Åkhundov’s works into more fluent Persian. One of Åkhundov’s letters to Mostashår al-Dowleh best summarises his views on religious reform, or what Åkhundov called the ‘Protestantisation of Islam’. After leaving Tiflis, and serving as chargé d’affaires in Paris, Mostashår al-Dowleh published a small book called Yek Kalameh (One Word). This book was inspired by the 1789 French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. Here Mostashår al-Dowleh argued that the French code and the Islamic sharia law could be made compatible. After congratulating him on the publication of his book, Åkhundov wrote a devastating critique of Yek Kalameh in 1875. He refuted the principal argument of the book and instead maintained that the sharia was not ‘a fountain of justice’, as his friend had claimed, nor could it be reconciled with a modern democratic order. He had seven major objections to Mostashår al-Dowleh’s thesis. First, according to the sharia, women were required to veil, and thereby remained segregated and deprived of equality. Second, the sharia had not granted equal rights to non-Muslims. Third, it had not called for the emancipation of slaves who had converted to Islam. Fourth, it had condemned consensual sex between unmarried men and women, and subjected it to a heavy punishment. Fifth, it had required people

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34 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN to pay ­one-fifth (khoms) of their earnings to the clerical establishment, and mandated hajj for those who could afford it. Since ‘afford’ was a relative term, the pilgrimage often became an inordinate financial burden on a family, as well as an arduous trip. Sixth, it had called for the cutting off of the hands of thieves, when it was clear that the poor thief had stolen out of desperation, and without his hand he would become even more destitute and would ‘die from hunger’. Seventh, the sharia had condoned the murder of unbelievers, when in reality if God was so displeased with them, ‘let him send his angel of death to take that person’s soul’, and not ask mortal beings to commit capital punishment. Åkhundov concluded, ‘If I don’t fast, don’t pray, it is up to God to punish me. Why does the sharia take it upon itself to punish me … to the point of calling for my murder?’ As he concluded in the letter to his friend, all these principles had to be ‘completely uprooted’ for a new and more democratic political order to emerge (Åkhundzådeh 1978: 33–40).12 Social reforms, coercive integration and cultural concessions During the reign of Tsar Alexander II (1818–81, r. 1855–81), the tsar’s youngest brother, Mikhail Nikolayevich, became Viceroy of the Caucasus (1862–82). Alexander II is known for his emancipation of Russian serfs in 1861, the last group of peasants in Europe to be freed. His administration initiated a series of social, legal and military reforms, many of which followed Russia’s disastrous defeat in the Crimean Wars (1853–6). Universal conscription became the law of the land; corporal punishment in the army ended. The judiciary was reformed and local judges were elected. During his reign, Russia’s colonial expansion in Muslim regions continued, including the annexation of the North Caucasus, much of Siberia, and Turkestan (‘Alexander II’ 2018). Viceroy Mikhail Nikolayevich pursued a coercive policy of integration in the Caucasus, limiting the recruitment of local Muslims into the civil services. He adopted a harsh policy towards Muslims suspected of having participated in anti-Russian rebellions during the Russo-Turkish War (1877–8). In one case, he deported an entire village comprising 1,000 families. However, his plans to exile many more villagers faced stiff resistance from his own administrators, who feared the consequences of such a ruthless policy. Faced with the total alienation of the Muslim population, Mikhail Nikolayevich relented and continued the cultural concessions of his predecessors. As a token of goodwill, he approved the training of local teachers who taught their native languages in the Russian alphabet. From this period on, public elementary school education included both instruction in Russian and some limited instruction in native languages, transliterated into the Russian alphabet (Mostashari 2017: 60–2). This policy of greater tolerance for artistic and literary initiatives of South Caucasian peoples ended with the 1881 assassination of Tsar Alexander II. His son, Alexander III (1845–94, r. 1881–94), initiated a ‘counter-reform’ and reversed some of the liberal policies of his father. Russification had meant different things in different periods. In the era of Catherine the Great and Nicholas I, it was a policy of unifying the administrative practices of the state throughout the empire. In this earlier period, when the empire was

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somewhat more inclusive and tolerant, becoming more Russian appealed to non-Russians, as it provided them with tools to move up the social hierarchy. Soon, a crop of ambitious and cosmopolitan non-Russians emerged and obtained various positions in the civil services. By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, however, non-Russians realised that they were barred from ascending to the upper echelons of society due to their religion and ethnicity. Their frustration and anger at these limitations contributed to the emergence of a ‘national’ identity, and an insistence on education in their own ethnic languages. By the first decade of the twentieth century, a language-based national identity had replaced religion as the state’s primary criterion for determining who was a Russian and who was not (Kivelson and Suny 2017: 202–3). Alexander III pushed for the forced Russification of the whole empire, and privileged those who were part of the Russian Orthodox community over other Christian and non-Christian denominations. The new policies led to the persecution of Jews and destroyed what remained of German, Polish and Swedish institutions in the European provinces of the empire. The tsar’s political aspiration was the creation of one nation, with one language, and one form of administration, to be achieved by imposing the Russian language and Russian schools on all his subjects (Florinsky 2018). As restrictions on the Muslim populations increased, the viceroyalty and many regional administrative offices in South Caucasus were abolished, and control of the territories reverted to ministers based in St Petersburg. The new high commissioner in the region had very limited powers and was required to communicate with the ministers in St Petersburg over small details. Such intrusive oversight undercut any relationship the commissioner hoped to cultivate with the native population (Балаев 2012: 8–8). The royal decree of 1888 made Muslims ineligible to serve as chairs of school councils or members of university councils. Nor could they serve on the zemstva (elected bodies of local self-government in the Russian Empire). The state restricted the rights of khåns to dispose of their property and otherwise limited the entrepreneurial activities of the Muslim community. These new policies ended the decentralisation of government authority, and drastically reduced Muslim representation in the municipal Dumas of Tiflis and Baku because minimum property qualification for representations in the Duma were raised from 300 rubles to 3,000 rubles, and only merchants and entrepreneurs of the top two guilds could send their representatives to the Duma. Furthermore, according to the 1892 ‘municipal counter-reform’, only Figure 1.10  ‘The officer was so angry he was one-third or less of the candidates for any almost going to kill the dead.’ municipality could be non-Christians. Source: MN 28, 13 October 1906.

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36 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN Successive local administrations from 1882 to 1904, hamstrung by St Petersburg’s limitation on their power, were no longer able to provide local solutions to the escalating tensions of the changing South Caucasian communities. As a result, when these and other drastic reversals coincided with the remarkable growth of the oil industry in the Baku region, the state was unable to cope with the growing class and ethnic tensions that ensued (Mostashari 2017: 93–5). The first generation of Caucasus Azerbaijani intellectuals, such as Åkhundov, were emp­loyed in the military and the civil services, where they functioned as translators and bureaucrats. Most members of this generation had backed the Russification agenda of the tsarist government and also pushed for educational reforms. They had hoped that through such policies, the more insular Muslims of South Caucasus would start to interact with other ethnicities in the Russian Empire through Russian as a lingua franca. These intellectuals had faced opposition from the local populace, especially Muslim clerics. Parents feared that Russification and enrolment of their children in Russian schools would lead to the conversion of their children to Christianity, and they accused Muslim intellectuals of being accomplices for the colonial government. But these complaints were generally dismissed by intellectuals, who saw Russian education as key to the emancipation of their community. The second generation of intellectuals in the region, which emerged in the 1860s and 1870s, also benefited from educational reforms in South Caucasus, although many of them were denied employment in civil services, especially its higher echelons. Some of these men were influenced by the Ottoman Tanzimat reforms, and the Ottoman Constitution of 1876. A significant number were graduates of Russian universities, where they came in contact with socialists and populists of a variety of persuasions. Many became teachers and journalists. With this generation, theatre became one of the vehicles for socialisation of the general Muslim public. The heroes of these dramas, following Åkhundov’s script, were often young men pursuing love marriages instead of strictly arranged ones, and facing daunting opposition from their patriarchal families and clerics. Hasan bey Zardåbi (Həsən bəy Zərdabi, 1842–1907), was one of the most prominent members of this second generation. He was a science teacher, journalist and publisher of the first Azerbaijani-language newspaper, Ekinchi (The Ploughman, 1875–77). He was a strong advocate of land reform in South Caucasus and wrote numerous articles about the conditions of the peasantry and the need for social reforms. In 1873, he founded the first Azerbaijani theatre troupe. Many members of this second generation were influenced by the populist narodniks, who admired the simple life of ordinary people and peasants. Yet despite their radicalism, when Baku became a major producer of oil, members of this generation developed an easy rapport with Muslim industrialists and convinced them to become patrons of the arts and of education (Mostashari 2017: 129–30).

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The city of Baku and its oil industry In the late nineteenth century, Baku became the second most important economic and cultural centre of South Caucasus, after Tiflis. According to the 1897 All-Russian Census, about two million Muslims lived in the South Caucasus region, while Baku had the largest population of Muslims with 552,822 people. The region’s fortunes dramatically changed with the oil boom of the 1870s, when the city became a major oil producing region, surpassing the United Figure 1.11  Image of Baku oil industry. States’ production of oil in 1898. A number Source: Iljine 2013, cover page. of European industrialists invested in the region. Among them were the Swedish Nobel Brothers, who founded the world’s largest oil company; the French Rothschild family, who formed the Caspian–Black Sea Society for Commerce and Industries; as well as British, Germans, Belgians and Greeks. In 1901, the region produced 11.4 million tonnes of oil, more than half of the world’s production (‘Baku’ 2016). In Baku, the bazaaris (merchants and craftsmen of the bazaar) also constituted an important social sector. The hundred or so wealthy Muslim bazaaris owned 52 per cent of all trade establishments and controlled half of the inns and caravanserais. These establishments catered to Muslims of the Caucasus

Figure 1.12  Wealth disparities in Baku. Image from the window: oil tycoons and the ships owned by Musa Naghiyev, Shamsi Asadullayev, Huseyov, Dadashov and Rasulov. Inside the room: empty coffers of the Charitable Association. Source: MN 34, 24 November 1906.

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38 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN and Iranian Azerbaijani travellers (Altstadt 1992: 34–5). South Caucasian Muslims occupied various positions in the oil sector, from manager to skilled labourer to unskilled labourers. However, a majority of the unskilled workers were Iranians. In 1913, a study of oil workers calculated that over 4,000 Caucasus ‘Azerbaijanis’ and over 11,000 ‘Persians’ formed the industry’s unskilled labour force (Altstadt 1992: 37). By 1903, Baku was a multinational urban centre with a population of over 200,000. But the city was not a melting pot, and after work hours, each ethnicity retreated to its own enclave. Caucasus Azerbaijanis comprised about 40–50 per cent of the population of Baku. Except for the Iranians, it was the least educated segment of the city. Thus, better jobs went to the more educated and experienced Russian and Armenian workers, while Caucasus Azerbaijanis were primarily employed in semi-skilled and unskilled positions. With a majority population of around 55–60 per cent single working men, Baku became a dangerous place. Iranian pilgrim Muhammad Husayn Faråhåni recalled that it was a chaotic city, full of hazards. Russians roamed around freely and acted as if they owned the city and its population. The city experienced frequent robberies and even murders. Many young men and women resorted to prostitution to survive (Rice 2018: 50). Living conditions were particularly brutal for oil workers. Urban workers who were not in the oil

Figure 1.13  Attack on workers’ strike. ‘I created this factory for poor workers.’ Followed by poem by Såber: ‘The wheel of fortune’s turning in a new way, nowadays / The working men begin to think they’re human, nowadays.’ Source: MN 14, 17 July 1906.

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industry lived on relatively clean and paved streets, and had access to running water, tramways, telephone and refuse collection. They sent their children to school and had access to hospitals, libraries, shops, including some department stores, cafes, theatres and the bazaar (Altstadt 1992: 39). In contrast, oil workers, especially Iranians, lived an extremely impoverished life in dwellings covered by soot and were ‘a picture of unremitting and hopeless gloom’ (quoted in Altstadt 1992: 39). The oil workers also had to deal with gochus, impoverished beys who had become gangster-like ‘bodyguards’ in the services of bosses, and who broke the back of the trade unions (Altstadt 1992: 39). Cultural renaissance in Caucasus Azerbaijan By the late nineteenth century, a few Muslim families who were fortunate enough to hold on to their oil-rich land became quite wealthy, and some provided financial support for the new intelligentsia. They joined hands with writers, teachers, journalists, composers, playwrights, doctors and engineers, men who were educated at universities in Russia, Europe and Istanbul, to bring about what Altstadt has called a ‘Turkish Cultural Renaissance’ in South Caucasus. This movement, which took place in the second half of the nineteenth century, involved discussions of history, politics, literature and ethnic identity. It focused on the need for religious reform, and on a new definition of morality and ethics (Altstadt 1992: 50–1). Similar ideas reverberated throughout the Turkish-speaking regions including Turkey, Crimea, the Volga–Ural region, Turkestan and even the Iranian provinces of Azerbaijan, Gilan and Tehran, which had a substantial number of Azerbaijani-speaking and multilingual inhabitants. The most well-known of these philanthropists was Zeyn al-Åbedin Taghiyev (Hacı Zeynalabdın Taåıyev, d. 1924), an industrialist of humble origin, who is today dubbed the Father of the modern nation of Azerbaijan. Taghiyev, who was barely literate, had a complicated personality. On the one hand, he was a harsh capitalist, whose workers took sanctuary at the Iranian consulate in 1906, complaining about the exploitative working conditions at his textile factory. He also backed the tsarist government in its military and colonial exploits, actions which Mollå Nasreddin criticised (see Fig. 1.14). On the other hand, he was a most generous supporter of philanthropic causes and a political advocate for the Muslim population of Baku.13 He was also a generous patron of the arts and education. The financial collaboration between the intellectual Hasan bey Zardåbi and the entrepreneur Taghiyev resulted in the opening of a larger theatre Figure 1.14  Cartoon of H. Z. Taghiyev, 1907. in Baku in 1883 and the establishment of Pledging his loyalty to the Tsar. Nashr-e Maårif, a society which started Source: MN 13, 24 March 1907.

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Figure 1.15  First boarding school for girls, Baku (founded in 1901). Source: Photoarchive of Azerbaijan (Creative Commons).

Figure 1.16  Girls on the stairs of the school. Source: Photoarchive of Azerbaijan (Creative Commons).

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Azerbaijani-language schools, and promoted the teaching of the modern sciences. Taghiyev provided scholarships for a new generation of Muslim youth to study at Russian and European universities, including female students. He also founded the first boarding school for girls in Baku in 1901. The palatial school, adorned with cascading marble stairs, had a vast library of Persian, Russian and European classics, including works by Nizåmi Ganjavi, Shakespeare, Pushkin, Tolstoy, Molière and Voltaire (Mostashari 2017: 95; Swietochowski 1985: 22–3; and personal observation 1999). It housed all the important publications and journals of the region, including the works of Åkhundov and, after 1905, the journal Mollå Nasreddin. The anti-clerical writings of Åkhundov resonated with Taghiyev. He fought the åkhunds who opposed his reforms, even claiming they were against the Quran. To refute their charges, Taghiyev commissioned a translation of the Quran into the Azerbaijani language, but was blocked by the same clerics who now claimed the book was too sacred to be translated from Arabic. In response, Taghiyev sent an emissary to modern-day Iraq, home of the grand Shii clerics in Najaf and Karbala, and received a fatwa (opinion) from the religious establishment supporting a translation. Armed with this fatwa, he sponsored and published the first Azerbaijani translation of the Quran (Jafarova 2013). This literary and cultural renaissance continued uninterrupted until 1917.14 The place of religion and rituals in Muslim South Caucasus Unlike many other parts of the region, the Shii and Sunni communities of South Caucasus were relatively tolerant towards each other and adhered to a more pluralistic notion of Islam. The fact that both denominations lived under a Christian colonial order certainly contributed to this. However, there were other historical and geopolitical reasons for this relative tolerance. Islam had spread not just through Arab conquests but also through Sufi brotherhoods (tariqa) in the region. Brotherhoods were formed among both Sunnis and Shiis, and some orders even merged these sectarian denominations. Following the Mongol invasion in the thirteenth century, other religions of the Central Asian Steppes, from Buddhism and Nestorian Christianity to Shamanism, grew in popularity and aspects of them eventually found their way into mystical Sufism, becoming part of the community’s syncretic ritual practices. Sufi lodges known as khåneqåh were often built near mosques or madrasas (seminaries). A khåneqåh was usually centred on the tomb of a Sufi mystic, known as pir (elder/leader in Persian), revered for his miracles. Ziyårat (pilgrimage) to the shrines of the pirs or to the imamzådeh (tombs of Shii saints), were important elements of folk Islam in South Caucasus (Wiktor-Mach 2017: 48–61). Historically, South Caucasian Muslims were boxed in between the Shii Safavids and the Sunni Ottoman Empire with shifting borders. South Caucasus was integrated into the Safavid world but maintained its religious pluralism. The landscape remained dotted not only with Shii and Sunni mosques, but also with various Sufi shrines, Christian churches of various denominations, Jewish synagogues and even Zoroastrian fire temples (­Wiktor-Mach

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42 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN 2017: 50–66). The tribal structure of the khånåtes, combined with the relative autonomy of the khåns from the state due to distance, meant that the khåns were not subservient to the clerics, though they paid them respect and exempted them from taxes (Altstadt 1992: 10). At the turn of the twentieth century, Shii Muslims predominated in Baku province, while in Nakhchivan they were a definite majority of 57 per cent.15 After a century of Russian colonialism and integration of the Muslim population, religious institutions had been substantially weakened. Control of vaqfs (charitable endowments), historically a lucrative source of income for Shii clerics, were taken over by the Russian state. After 1823, Shii theology students were forbidden to go to Iran and Najaf for training and certification. Those who did were regarded with great suspicion by the state and were not offered positions upon return. Indeed, they were often discouraged from returning to South Caucasus at all (Altstadt 1992: 59, 250 n. 34). Mosques survived through rental property and contributions from merchants and craftsmen of the bazaar. By the late nineteenth century, there were hardly any distinguished clerics (mojtaheds) among the South Caucasian Muslims. The vast majority of the clerics were åkhunds, who acted as prayer leaders and often belonged to village communities. To become an åkhund, one first went to a maktab, which may have included instruction in Arabic language and not just memorisation of the Quran. The pupil then went to a madrasa, where he became a talabeh (theology student), improved or developed his Arabic, and studied Islamic law and logic for upwards of fifteen years. When a position opened in the seminarian’s region, he graduated and took the job. Many such positions remained vacant for years, as the state did not assign an åkhund to them. For example, in 1904 in the Baku Guberniya, 110 out of 297 parishes were vacant (Altstadt 1992: 59). Peter I (Peter the Great, 1672–1725, r. 1682–1725) had brought the Russian Orthodox Church under state control through an institution called the Holy Synod. In the same way, tsarist authorities established Sunni and Shii Ecclesiastical Boards. The creation of these boards and the fact that the Sunni and Shii clerics had to answer to a common (non-Muslim) authority led to greater cooperation between the two sects which coexisted relatively peacefully. Each board had a president, three board members and a staff, including an interpreter and an archivist. The Sunni president was called a mufti, and the Shii president was known as sheikh al-Islam. There were boards for each guberniya in Tiflis, Yerevan, Ganja and Baku. The Shii board had twenty qåzis (qadis/judges), while the Sunni board had sixteen. The entire entity was monitored by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and personally controlled by the viceroy. The Muslim qåzis were not permitted to administer civil or criminal law. Their authority was limited to family law, such as issuing birth, death, marriage and divorce certificates, though even these activities might be monitored and re-evaluated by the state if there was a complaint by an elite plaintiff who had the means and authority to do so (Altstadt 1992: 57–8). There were strict rules for individuals who might become åkhunds. The applicant had to be a Russian citizen, with no known criminal or ethical

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offence, and of good repute. Clerics took an oath of loyalty to the tsar and to the authorities, and were required to inform the police of the time and place of Muslim holidays and rituals. Failure to do so led to reprimand or punishment. The åkhunds could not join Sufi brotherhoods, which were illegal in Tsarist Russia (Altstadt 1992: 58–9). For a more advanced and titled position, one had to also take a test and become licensed. In the Shii communities, it was the responsibility of the sheikh al-Islam to issue these certificates, through which an åkhund could be appointed head of a mosque (Wiktor-Mach 2017: 73). The state controlled the clerics not just through coercion, but also through a system of rewards. There were many benefits to becoming a state cleric, including exemption from state and municipal taxes. Additionally, children of muftis and sheikh al-Islams had hereditary privileges not unlike children of the nobility. Altstadt concludes: Indirectly, state control did undermine clerical authority. Ulema were coopted by ‘job security’, tax exemption, privileges of rank, and high wages paid to those at the top ‒ the president of each board received 6,000 rubles per year. Over time, therefore, the legitimacy of religious officials in the eyes of the faithful was undermined. (Altstadt 1992: 60) By the turn of the twentieth century, Muslim South Caucasus was a society of two cultures. The more educated strata nominally adhered to Islam but ignored the authority of the clerics. They despised the Shii processions and rituals of martyrdom celebrated in the month of Muharram, as well as various folk practices. A significant number of columns and illustrations in the pages of Mollå Nasreddin were devoted to the condemnation of these rituals and to the critique of the excessive deference which ordinary people paid to their reli- Figure 1.17  Muslim clerics and Russian officers. gious leaders. ‘The cat acts like a lion in chasing a mouse / But In contrast, the rural community and it acts like a mouse in facing a leopard.’ the bulk of the urban poor remained Source: MN 1, 7 April 1906. deeply committed to their religious beliefs and traditions. Passion plays and religious processions impacted the popular classes, and syncretic religious rituals and festivals remained a key part of their lives. Here, Shii and folk traditions and rituals were performed with the hope of fulfilling prayers and alleviating pain and illness, bringing a measure of solace amid a life of drudgery. Chief among these rituals was the annual festival commemorating of the martyrdom of Imam Hussein (d. 680 ce), the Third Shii Imam. This event occupied roughly two months of the year, Muharram and Safar. A key component of the Shii tradition is that after the death of the Prophet Muhammad (632 ce), leadership should have been vested in the perpetuity of the family

44 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN

Figure 1.18  Excessive obsequiousness to the clerics. ‘Nakhchivan, Shamåkhi and anywhere else’. Source: MN 6, 10 February 1907.

Figure 1.19  Muharram Festival. Source: MN 2, 10 January 1910.

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of Muhammad. After the death of the influential fifth caliph, Muawiyeh (r. 661–80), founder of the Umayyad Dynasty (661–744), Hussein, grandson of the Prophet, revolted and proclaimed himself caliph by virtue of his bloodline. At the orders of Yazid, son of Muawiyeh, Hussein and his entourage were encircled in the desert of Karbala and massacred on the tenth of Muharram (10 October 680 ce), known as Ashura Day. The women and children were sold into captivity. Yazid then assumed power in Damascus as the sixth caliph. In the centuries that followed, Karbala became a site of pilgrimage for Shiis around the world and the martyrdom of Imam Hussein an important religious festival. A core part of Muharram involves public self-flagellation, a ritual of mourning and remembering, where men chant eulogies and beat their chests rhythmically, often with chains, sticks or swords. Many bloody rituals of Muharram (wounds to the forehead with knives and swords, or chaining and scorching of the body) were adopted from Christian denominations and introduced later in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.16 By the early twentieth century, South Caucasians were known as zealous practitioners of these ceremonies, more so than their Shii brethren further south (Calmard 1996: 142–5). In 1916, Ivar Lassy published an ethnographic study of Muharram rituals in South Caucasus. He suggested that these Shii rituals were a counterpart to mainstream and rigid Sunni orthodoxy. In his view, ‘an idea of selfdenial, of self-renunciation, of self-sacrifice for others was needed and this

Figure 1.20  Muharram procession of flagellants. Bottom right insert: Russian military procession. Source: MN 1, 3 January 1910.

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46 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN

Figure 1.21  A photograph of flagellants. Source: Iljine 2013, 126.

r­ epresentation of Husain as a voluntary sacrifice was the substitute the Shîah [Shii] found’ (Lassy 1916: 135). Lassy offered a finely detailed account of the ceremony, which he called ‘Muharram Mysteries’, as it unfolded in the months of Muharram and Safar in the region. He described the practices of the men, beating their chests, self-flagellating, drawing blood from their scalps and foreheads with knives or daggers, piercing the flesh with padlocks, hooks and chains, and other types of mortification which resulted in extensive bleeding (Lassy 1916: 114–17). The festival of Muharram also includes passion plays known as taziyeh, a dramatic narration of the life and suffering of Shii saints. As elsewhere in the Shii world, amateur actors from the community played various parts in the taziyeh. According to Lassy, the role of the ‘cursed’ Shemr, commander of the enemy Yazid, was played by the most talented member of the guild. He was usually the stage manager and the director of the play. Hussein wore a heavy veil that covered his whole body, while all the female parts were performed by young men, who were dressed as women. Passion plays also included animals such as camels and horses, all adorned with silk shawls and talismans. As Lassy noted, the taziyeh and other rituals are considered by the more educated portions of the population to be the most heathenish and to the true religious sentiment the most shocking part of the popular Mysteries. The lower-classes, on the other hand, possess in them material sustenance for their imagination, and consequently hold them in highest estimation (Lassy 1916: 98–9):

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At these performances the audience to a considerable extent takes an active part in the play … The audience is not considered a mass apart from the performers. On the contrary, the spectators are to a certain degree, ­co-actors, namely in so far as they execute the role of the companions of the Martyrs, by loudly weeping over their misfortune and death, and cursing their slayers in a most agitated state of mind. (Lassy 1916: 104) These rituals of Muharram were part of a gamut of religious practices in the daily lives of the South Caucasian Muslims. Among them were: nazr (vow), which consisted of offering food to neighbours and the poor in anticipation of a wish, or in response to a wish that had come true, as well as ziyårat (pilgrimage) to various tombs. Many rituals stemmed from the belief that the dead had the power to create life and to contribute to a man or woman’s fecundity. Visitors tied a strip of cloth to a ‘tree of life’, and prayed for a good omen, ‘when a person is Figure 1.22  At the tomb of Seyyed Ali infirm, ill, or childless, has sick children or rela- Åqå in Shamåkhi. ‘I pray to your tomb, tives’ (Lassy 1916: 183). please give me a child.’ All these practices were heavily criticised in Source: MN 21, 26 May 1908. the pages of Mollå Nasreddin. Instead, the public was encouraged to turn to modern medicine and science as both the explanation for life’s mysteries and as the solution for its maladies. New ideologies and new intellectual currents At the turn of the twentieth century, a new generation of South Caucasian intellectuals, passionate about a variety of modern ideologies, took centre stage. Four main ideological currents took hold in the region. The first new intellectual current was known as Jadidism, or New Method. Many Sunni Muslims in the Volga region and Central Asia gravitated towards New Method, an educational reform movement established by Ismail bey Gasprinskiy (1851–1914), a Crimean Tatar intellectual and publisher. Literacy rates were low in South Caucasus, especially so among Azerbaijanis. According to the 1897 census, the literacy rate in the Russian language was as follows: Georgians (10 per cent), Armenians (8.8 per cent) and Caucasus Azerbaijanis (2.1 per cent).17 Two kinds of primary and secondary education were available to Caucasus Azerbaijani students. State-funded primary and secondary schools, created on the all-Russian model of education (including the women’s gymnasium in Baku) were intended for children of Russian officers and representatives of the civil administration. They also admitted a

48 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN

Figure 1.23  Pilgrims at a saint’s shrine. Source: MN 3, 19 January 1907.

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very small number of students from wealthy Armenian and Azerbaijani families. The bulk of the population attended traditional religious schools known as maktabs. Almost every residential community, whether rural or urban, had its own maktab. Instructors were not trained as teachers but as low-level clerics. They did not receive a salary and depended on weekly donations of food and occasional cash from the families. A maktab education consisted of rote memorisation and syllabic reading of a text. Students were expected to learn and memorise the Quran and a few other religious texts, as well as several classical texts of Persian literature (adab). Calligraphy was taught and penmanship was stressed. But the ability to read any text and to write were not part of a routine maktab education. Similar maktabs existed for girls, where they were taught by a female relative of a male instructor. Those who wished to become clerics attended a madrasa where they were provided with a room and a scholarship. The madrasas were hostels with a series of bureaus (hijra) Figure 1.24  New Methods being blocked by for the use of teachers and students. Here, representatives of old methods of education students gained greater literacy, studied the and old traditions. ‘We won’t let you canonical texts of Islamic law, and developed progress.’ some command of the Arabic language (Khalid Source: MN 2, 11 January 1909. 1999: 26–31). Gasprinskiy’s New Method (Usul-e Jadid) was set against this Old Method (Usul-e Qadim) of the maktabs. He believed schools should be separate from religious institutions, that primary school teachers must be educated for this particular job, and that new textbooks needed to be created specifically for the education of children. He also placed greater emphasis on education for girls. His New Method of education was based on a phonetic learning of the alphabet. As a result, students became functionally literate in a short period of time. The teaching of the Quran was only one of several subjects, alongside arithmetic, modern sciences, languages, history and geography. This new ability to read any text in multiple languages opened up a whole world to the students. They could read not only Turkic texts, but Persian books and newspapers published in India, such as Habl al-Matin from Calcutta, Arabic works published in Cairo or Beirut, including books on medicine, translations and adaptations of works of European history, philosophy and literature. They also became familiar with tools to navigate this new world, such as maps, dictionaries, globes and atlases. Finally, the New Method introduced students to the anti-clericalism of the Enlightenment. Thus, in both method

Figure 1.25  While Sultan Abdul Hamid is preoccupied with twirling dervishes, the West is modernising. Source: MN 29, 20 October 1906.

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and content, the New Method was a dramatic departure from the old ways of learning and was seen as a direct threat to them. As Adeeb Khalid has shown, clerical opposition to New Method was not just a ‘fanatical’ reaction to modernity. Rather, ‘this view of Knowledge threatened to undermine existing practices surrounding the transmission of knowledge and the patterns of cultural and moral authority they engendered. Knowledge, and its place in society, was being redefined in the debate over the new method’ (Khalid 1998: 156; Khalid 2007). Gasprinskiy’s periodical Tarjomån (Interpreter, 1883–1918), combined the principles of the New Method with advocacy of cultural Pan-Turkism. It published articles in a simplified Turkish vernacular and syntax, adopted from Istanbul, but purged of many Arabic and Persian words. The goal of the editors was the cultural and linguistic unity of all Turkic Muslims of the Russian Empire, as a bulwark against growing Pan-Slavism. However, due to censorship, Tarjomån had to avoid direct discussion of political issues (Swietochowski 1985: 31). South Caucasian reformists were influenced by Gasprinskiy’s New Method. They called for the reform of the maktabs, advocated the teaching of both the Azerbaijani and Russian languages, and encouraged the teaching of modern sciences alongside the Quran (Swietochowski 1985). Shii reformists also called for an end to many folk practices of their denomination. These included various rituals of Muharram commemorations, as well ziyåråt (visits) to the shrines of pirs and imamzådehs. Reformists criticised Sufi-inspired zikr (dhikr) rituals, a form of devotional meditation where worshipers rhythmically repeat the name of God (as a form of mantra), and sway or dance in the process (Wiktor-Mach 2017: 71, 88). Those who opened New Method schools in South Caucasus similarly faced fierce opposition from Shii Åkhunds, who physically attacked the students and teachers. Opposition to the New Method was not limited to the clerics and more traditional classes. The Russian state wanted to be the only authorised institution of learning and interpreter of European culture and civilisation to its Muslim population. As a result, the state backed the religious establishment in its opposition to the new schools. Starting in 1887, the state created ‘Russo-native schools’ (russko-tuzemnye shkoly), which combined Russian education with a traditional Muslim education. Students received four years of instruction in Russian, which included classes in reading, mathematics and drawing, as well as separate Quranic studies classes. Once a week, a language course in Turkic Azerbaijani was also offered.18 In the morning, students studied Russian, and in the afternoon they were instructed in a traditional maktab style by a Muslim religious teacher. However, as time went by, many of these schools also began to use the phonetic method of teaching as well as modern textbooks (Khalid 1998: 158–9). The second new ideology was Pan-Islamism, which Sunni Muslim elites who had studied in the Ottoman Empire found attractive. Pan-Islamism called for the elimination of excessive ritualism and sectarianism, as rituals primarily associated with Shiism remained a major source of conflict between Sunnis and Shiis. The new ideology also called for the freeing of Muslims from the

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52 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN

Figure 1.26  Europe: ‘Oh boy! One by one Muslims are waking up and getting out of their cradle.’ Source: MN 32, 9 August 1909.

tutelage of European powers, who claimed to be custodians and caretakers of people of the East. It also encouraged the unification of all Muslim denominations in an anti-imperialist alliance against the growing influence of powerful Western (and Christian) empires (Wiktor-Mach 2017: 72).19 Pan-Islamism thus appealed to the South Caucasian Muslim intelligentsia of both denominations because they all lived under direct colonial rule, and because the new ideology promoted a non-sectarian and reformist Islam that aimed at healing the Shii–Sunni divide (Swietochowski 1985: 34). For more secular Muslim South Caucasians, Pan-Islamism was an ethnic anti-colonial movement. Mollå Nasreddin reflected this view through its many illustrations, which called attention to the dangerous situation of Muslim nations, left adrift in the sea of global politics. A third intellectual current was liberalism, popular among Muslim merchants and industrialists, especially politicians in the Baku State Duma. Their periodical was Kaspiy. Purchased by Taghiyev in 1895, it was the only Muslim South Caucasian-owned newspaper in the region, and was viewed as a representative of that community in the Russian Empire. The paper had a tolerant position towards competing ideologies of the era. It encouraged liberalism, called for greater employment of ethnic Muslims in the civil services, and advocated for the New Method’s agenda to reform the maktabs. Kaspiy published articles by advocates of Pan-Turkism and Pan-Islamism, and aired the

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Figure 1.27  In the tumultuous waters of the East, fighting inside the Iranian and Ottoman ships of state. ‘Islamic governments’. Source: MN 17, 28 April 1908.

grievances of the peasants, who complained that they lacked sufficient land, and asked for the redistribution of public lands on the Mughan Steppes south of Baku (Swietochowski 1985: 5). A fourth ideology was socialism, which came in a variety of persuasions. The most well-known socialist intellectual of the region was Narimån Narimånov (1870–1925). Born in Tiflis, he attended the Gori Teachers Seminary and went to medical school in Odessa, where he graduated in 1908. He played an active role in the 1905 Russian Revolution, joined the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party (RSDWP), and led student movements in Odessa. Narimånov headed the Hümmat (Endeavour) Muslim Social Democratic Workers’ Party and drafted the party programme of the Iranian Organisation of Social Democrats (Ferqeh-ye Ejtemaiyyun Amiyyun) after the 1906 Iranian Constitutional Revolution. He was also a strong supporter of Mollå Nasreddin. To be sure, these ideologies were not mutually exclusive. A person could be a supporter of New Method education and also some version of socialism. Likewise, one might support Pan-Islamism but also feel some affinity for liberalism.

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54 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN Women’s education and social reform Women’s education was of low priority in the Russian Empire, not just in the Muslim regions. By the late nineteenth century, no more than 1,300 girls had studied in the secondary schools of Russia, six of whom were Caucasus Azerbaijanis (Gozalova 2015: 137; Amrahov and Gafarova 2012).20 Soon, however, women’s education became a major concern of literary assemblies and Muslim intellectuals of South Caucasus. Some upper-class Muslim girls attended the Saint Nina Women’s Society School in Tiflis, formed in 1850. Small private schools for girls in the houses of wealthy aristocrats in cities such as Shamåkhi, Yerevan, Derband, Zagatala and Shusha, were formed in the second half of the nineteenth century. In these schools, girls studied Russian and other languages through private tutors and governesses. Some elite Muslim girls attended the girls’ gymnasiums in Baku and Ganja. Thus, female education in the region was on par with the education of other elite women in the Russian Empire. However, there had been no effort to expand and institutionalise female literacy in other sectors of Muslim South Caucasus (Gasimova 2019; Rice 2018: 131). In 1892, Gasprinskiy published an article in Tarjomån with the catchy title, ‘Is It Necessary to Educate Women?’ There, he called for the establishment of a large girls’ school with female instructors, where no man could enter the school. By this time, as there was broad support among the educated upper echelons of society for the idea, even the sheikh alIslam and the mufti turned to their respective Shii and Sunni communities for donations to build the school (Gelovani 2017: 33). Other leading advocates of girls’ education and women’s entry into the public sphere were Hasan bey Zardåbi, editor of Akinchi, and his educated wife, Hanifa Khånum. In her memoir, she recalled that the couple had disregarded social conventions and walked ‘arm in arm’ on the streets of Baku, with Hanifa Khånum sporting a modern dress, and walking without a head scarf (Melikova 2016: 32). This breach of decorum so outraged the public and the Åkhunds that the couple was threatened with stoning (Gasimova 2016: 22). In 1896, Zardåbi petitioned the Governor of Baku to open a single-grade school for girls, but his request was denied. By this time, the Russian state was funding schools for girls from other religious denominations, but was not interested in educating Muslim girls, as it could become a source of conflict with Muslim religious authorities and the Figure 1.28  Support for Girls’ Schools. more traditional classes. The Academy of Humanistic and As a result, the Zardåbi couple turned to Taghiyev Islamic Sciences. for help. That year, on the occasion of the coronaSource: MN 19, 11 August 1906. tion of Tsar Nicholas II (1868–1918, r. 1894–1917),

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Taghiyev sent an expensive gift to Tsaritsa Alexandra Feodorovna (1872–1918) and pleaded with her to intercede. The queen gave permission for a school named after her to be established. Taghiyev hired the Polish architect Joseph Goslavski to design the school (see also Figure 1.16). He combined elements from medieval Muslim architecture, Italian Renaissance, French Rococo and Flemish Baroque styles to construct a visually attractive school (Gasimova 2016: 18). Taghiyev also set up a large endowment to cover its annual expenses. Fully aware of the prejudices of his society towards women, Taghiyev confided to Shåhtakhti, editor of Sharq-e Rus, that education was the only hope for the emancipation of Muslim women. ‘But this school should be established and organized so skillfully that Muslims will respect it without reservation, trust it, and send their daughters to study there’ (Amrahov and Gafarova 2012). In 1901, the new secular boarding school for Muslim girls was opened in Baku, generating great public enthusiasm. In addition to academic subjects, it introduced students to theatrical productions. It admitted fifty-eight students from North Caucasus, South Caucasus and Tatarstan, and provided them with all their essentials including regular medical check-ups. A majority of the students were from impoverished families and were admitted on scholarships provided by Taghiyev. Hanifa Khånum Zardåbi became the headmistress of the school. The young girls who attended Taghiyev’s school in their modern uniforms were publicly harassed on the streets, while their families were criticised at the mosques. Shafiqa Efendiyevå, one of the first teachers at the school, recalled that mobs surrounded the school and blocked the exits, preventing the students and their teachers from leaving: ‘They attacked the windows with rocks and cursed in Ali’s name.’ Only the direct intervention of the empress, who expressed her support for the school, quieted the vigilantes, who reluctantly abandoned the siege (Rice 2018: 132). Such public harassment was not limited to Taghiyev’s new school. Girls from middle- and lower-class sectors who attended the New Method schools also faced substantial harassment on the way to and from school (Rice 2018: 131). To quell the negative reaction towards the opening of Taghiyev’s school, Ali Mardån bey Topchibåshov, a graduate of St Petersburg Imperial University, reminded his colleagues that: People should be assured that educating Muslim women does not mean that education will condemn traditions and customs or divert women away from their female and motherly duties to visit balls and theatres. Rather, the Russian Muslim school is going to provide an education so that a Muslim woman can speak Russian, dress well, and be a genuine wife for her husband and a good mother for her children. (Kaspiy, 7 October 1901, quoted in Hasanli 2019: 24) Soon the example of Zardåbi–Taghiyev was followed in other Muslim-majority parts of the Russian Empire and, in 1906, at the initiative of Hamideh Khånum Javånshir, wife of Mirza Jalil, the first secular school for Muslim girls also opened in Tiflis (Gelovani 2017: 37).

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56 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN By the first decade of the twentieth century, a number of upper-class Muslims had become involved in charitable organisations (Gelovani 2017: 33–6). The Women’s Charitable Society, spearheaded by Hamideh Khånum (wife of Mirza Jalil) and chaired by Sonå Khånum Taghiyevå, was founded in 1906. The society focused on famine relief and other natural calamities and included many wives, daughters and sisters of the more progressive upper-class men. Nevertheless, the Åkhunds and the conservative public continued to chastise men who supported their wives and sisters in their social activities.21 The 1905 Russian Revolution and South Caucasus On Sunday, 9 January 1905, a peaceful procession of 200,000 men, women and children, mostly factory workers in St Petersburg and their families, faced the brutal guns of the guards at the Winter Palace of Tsar Nicholas II, in an event known as ‘Bloody Sunday’ in Russian history. Demonstrators carried a petition calling for an end to the Russo-Japanese War, as well as an eighthour day, a constituent assembly that represented all social classes, free and universal education, better wages and working conditions for male and female workers, release of political prisoners, and separation of church and state. The workers also called for the recognition of soviets, permanent committees of workers which would negotiate over their grievances with the employers. The protests and strikes that ensued in response to the brutal massacre soon spread throughout the country.22 On 6 August 1905, the tsar issued a manifesto, which called for the formation of an Imperial State Duma with a consultative rather than legislative vote, and granted limited franchise. The war with Japan ended on 23 August 1905, when the Russian government realised that the revolution posed a much greater risk to its survival than the war abroad. In the late summer of 1905, the movement seemed to be subsiding. Suddenly, on 6 October, the railroad workers’ strike grew into a massive general strike in St Petersburg, which paralysed both Moscow and St Petersburg, and spread into other cities as well. To curb the rapidly growing movement, the tsar issued the October 1905 Manifesto, thereby extending the right of representation in the Duma to some disenfranchised classes. He also upgraded the role of the Duma from an advisory body to a legislative one (Anweiler 1974: 26–39). The St Petersburg Soviet, which was formed later in the October 1905 general strike, representing more than 200,000 workers in the city, was the most important soviet of the 1905 revolution. The main left-wing political groups of the time, the Bolshevik and Menshevik wings of the Russian SocialDemocratic Workers’ Party (RSDWP), and the Social Revolutionaries, were intimately involved in these revolutionary associations. While the Bolsheviks were more influential in Baku, the Mensheviks became particularly active in Tiflis, as well as in Kiev, Odessa and much of Southern Russia. Labour and economic grievances were not the only contributing factors to the revolution in the Russian Empire. There were also other trigger points, many of which stemmed from Russia’s rapid modernisation under an authoritarian regime (Ascher 2004; Harcave 1970). The Emancipation

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Reforms of 1861 had freed serfs who worked on private estates and within households, nearly 50 per cent of the empire’s population (twenty-three million), and, in theory, turned them into full citizens. However, peasants had ended up with very little land to eke out a decent living. In addition, the payment and redemption taxes imposed on them were quite high. Both factors would lead to ongoing civil unrest, including a wave of peasant rebellions, rent and tax strikes, and land confiscations from 1905 to 1907. On 3 November 1905, a very nervous tsar was forced to abolish the redemption tax payments of 1861 and to provide credit for peasants to purchase land (Shanin 1986: 44, 84).23 Yet another contributing factor was the increase of student radicalism. As universities rapidly expanded in the late nineteenth century, accepting a more ethnically diverse student body (as part of the Russification project), a new multi-ethnic public sphere emerged. The third generation of Muslim South Caucasian intellectuals was raised at a time when Baku became a multinational industrial centre. Interest in journalism and the humanities intensified, and students and graduates joined professional associations, where the rights of individuals to freedom of expression and association were discussed. When the state clamped down on these activities, student strikes grew. All of these factors contributed to the revolutionary upheaval, which spread quickly thanks to a new means of communication (the telegraph) and transportation (railways) (Harcave 1970; Ascher 1994; Morrissey 1998). Ronald Suny has shown that the oil centres of Baku were intimately involved in the course of the revolution. There, a series of extensive labour strikes began in the years 1902–3, resulting in the first labour contract for Russian workers in December 1904. Despite ongoing ethnic fights between Armenian and Muslim workers, class solidarity prevailed at the time so that ‘except for the year of revolution, 1905, the economic strikes in Baku had occurred more often, lasted longer, and been on the average more successful than those in any other Russian city’ (Suny 1972: 47). In 1904, Baku workers gained the right to an ‘eight-to-nine-hour day, sick pay for up to three months, pay for the period of the strike, and substantial increases in wages’ (Suny 1972: 37). By October 1905, factory committees became a reality in the region and were recognised by the largely Russian and Armenian industrialists. A delegation of workers from Baku was sent to St Petersburg to negotiate. They won a number of rights, including regular rest days, no overtime without pay, equal pay in certain job classifications, and the creation of workers’ mediation boards in factories. However, the committee failed to raise the wages of Iranian migrant workers to equal that of other workers (Suny 1972: 39). By April 1906, when Mollå Nasreddin began publication, the Russian Revolution had been brutally suppressed. The tsarist government had killed over 14,000 people in its counter-offensive, executed over 1,000, wounded over 20,000, and arrested or exiled close to 70,000 people (King and Porter 1983: 44). Yet, perhaps because Mollå Nasreddin addressed the social and cultural concerns of the Muslim community of South Caucasus and carefully avoided any direct attacks on the tsar, its publication was permitted.

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58 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN The 1905 Armenian–Tatar War In the midst of the Russian Revolution, an Armenian–Muslim civil war, known as the Armenian–Tatar War, broke out. It should be noted that this was not a religious war, but an ethnic one aggravated by Russian colonial policies of ‘divide and conquer’. Relations between the two communities were already tense due to a history of migration of Armenians in the region and economic competition. The new immigrants had received protection from the tsarist state. In addition, there were closer religious and cultural identities between the Gregorian Orthodox Russians and Orthodox Armenians. These factors, together with the resourcefulness of the Armenian migrants, fuelled a wave of economic and social prosperity for their community. By 1900, Armenian investors held a larger share of industries in the region. The economic success of the Armenian community also translated into cultural and political achievements. In 1885, when the government tried to shut down Armenian language instruction after the second grade, young Armenians formed their own revolutionary organisations. Soon, there were two major political parties: the Social Democratic Hunchak Party and the more nationalist Armenian Revolutionary Federation known as the Dashnaktsutiun Party (Swietochowski 1985: 39–40; Suny 1986). The state responded by trying to undercut the political and economic influence of the Armenian community. Under Prince Grigory Sergeyevich Golitsyn, the Governor General of the Caucasus (in office, 1897–1904), the

Figure 1.29  Armenian–Muslim civil war of 1905. Source: MN 7, 19 May 1906.

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state reduced the number of Armenians in civil service. In 1903, the property of the Armenian Orthodox Church was confiscated. Some Armenian nationalists, enraged by these actions that had dramatically reduced their autonomy, embraced terrorist activities which had hitherto been employed in Ottoman territories. And in 1904, they attempted to assassinate Golitsyn, resulting in his resignation (Suny 1986). Another factor that ignited the civil war was the Russo-Japanese War of 1904. As most able-bodied Russian men were at war, there were few local troops available for patrolling local communities. The Governor of the Baku guberniya, desperate to provide safety, permitted Muslims to carry arms to protect their communities. With both sides armed, simmering conflicts between Muslims and Armenians reached a boiling point in February 1906, and war broke out between the two communities. As a result, between 1905 and 1906, around 128 Armenian and 158 Muslim villages were destroyed in the hostilities (Swietochowski 1985: 41). Relations between the Russian government and the Armenian community improved when the government rescinded the 1903 decree and returned confiscated church properties to the Armenians. In the fall of 1905, faced with a renewed alliance between the Russian government and the Armenian community, Muslim nobles formed a clandestine political organisation known as Defåi (Defence) in the city of Ganja. However, instead of further enflaming tensions between the two ethnic communities, the Defåi worked to defuse resentments. They began to point fingers at the tsarist government as the source of all conflict, a line of thinking that was also developing in the pages of Mollå Nasreddin. At the State Duma, a Muslim deputy, Ismail Khan Ziyåtkhånov, stated: We, the Muslims, were told by the [tsarist] administration: you have been economically enslaved by the Armenians. They are arming themselves and plan to create their state; one day they will do away with you. The Armenians were told that the idea of Pan-Islamism had put down deep roots in all strata of the Muslim community, and one day the Muslims would massacre them. Such was the pattern of provocation. (quoted in Swietochowski 1985: 44) Soon, calls for unity among Muslims, Georgians and Armenians followed. The Armenian Dashnaks, the most influential Armenian party of the region, called for a future South Caucasian Republic that would be part of a Russian Federation, but would otherwise be independent. Their blueprint was not so far removed from what the Defåi envisioned. South Caucasus was to be transformed into a republic with a democratically elected parliament of its own, where cultural autonomy of each ethnic group would be guaranteed and local languages would be taught alongside Russian. The borders of each community within the republic would be redrawn according, more or less, to the ethnic composition of the cities (Swietochowski 1985: 45).

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60 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN Radical ties between South Caucasus and Iran From around the 1850s, many Iranian migrants worked in the Russian Empire, primarily in South Caucasus, as migrant labourers.24 Most were from the Iranian province of Azerbaijan. The Russian state referred to these mostly seasonal workers as ‘Persians’. Migrants called each other hamshahri (fellow citizen) and the term həm∞əri was adopted as a pejorative by the Caucasus Azerbaijanis to refer to Iranian Azerbaijani immigrants as a whole. Not all migrant workers were men. Women constituted 20–25 per cent of the total Iranian emigrants living in South Caucasus and Central Asia (Atabaki 2003: 415). Migrants sought work in cities such as Baku, Yerevan and Tiflis. Some also moved to the Volga region and Central Asia. Workers were subjected to all sorts of exorbitant fees on both sides of the border, resulting in many choosing to cross the border illegally even though the chronic shortage of workers in Russia meant they could receive work permits. The middle- and upper-class Azerbaijanis looked down on these migrants, whom they regarded as ‘hicks’ (in Persian, dåhåti). However, mixed marriages between migrant workers and local working-class women were frequent. Residency rights could pass from mother to child and, as a result, the children of such mixed marriages were fully integrated into the Muslim South Caucasian society and were not considered foreigners.25 In the late nineteenth century, Baku’s expanding oil fields and its related industries encouraged Iranian villagers to migrate north in much larger numbers in search of higher-paying work. Many remained seasonal workers who periodically returned to their Iranian villages during harvest time. In 1905 alone, the total number of Iranians who crossed the Iran–Russia border was around 300,000. By 1913, when the population of Iran was around ten million, the number of Iranians who worked in Southern Russia (Caucasus and Central Asia) was estimated to be around 500,000, or 5 per cent of Iran’s total population. As we have seen, most worked under extremely difficult conditions in agriculture, construction, masonry, on the docks and especially in the oil fields. While away from their families, they wrote letters and sent remittances back home. From time to time, they travelled to Iran to visit relatives or to find a spouse. In these ways, the two communities remained closely connected (Hakimian 1985). In 1904, the Muslim community of Baku formed Himmat (Endeavour). It was affiliated with the Bolshevik wing of the RSDWP of Baku, which was desperate to find new Muslim recruits but had not succeeded. Hence, the RSDWP made an exception for the Muslims of South Caucasus and permitted them to form their own ethnic organisation. Himmat was more of a coalition than a political party with a single ideology. Its membership comprised social democrats, liberal democrats, revolutionary socialists and even nationalists.26 Many members were religiously devout and did not see why they had to choose between being good Muslims and their socialist and liberal ideologies. Most were həm∞əri who maintained their familial ties to Iran both as merchants and as workers. The strikes and protests of the 1905 Revolution, and the alliance of Muslim workers with Armenian and Georgian ones, cemented their involvement with

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left-wing political organisations and led to the gradual radicalisation of Iranian migrants as well. In 1903, Iranian workers constituted 22.2 per cent of all oil workers of Baku. During the 1906 strikes in the copper mines and plants of Allahverdi in Armenia, 2,500 Iranian Azerbaijanis formed the ‘basic core of the strikers’ (Abdullaev 1971: 51). Baku had one of the largest Iranian migrant communities, but there were also about 5,000 to 6,000 unskilled Iranian workers in Tiflis, and thousands of others in other major cities of South Caucasus. In 1905, migrant Iranians created their own leftist organisation in Baku and later in Tiflis. The Organisation of Social Democrats (Ferqeh-ye Ejtemaiyyun Amiyyun) included both merchants and workers of Iranian ethnicity. They kept close ties with Himmat, as well as with the Baku and Tiflis committees of the RSDWP. In late 1905, in response to the radicalisation of the Iranian workers, the Russian government ordered the expulsion of thousands of them from Baku. However, local employers who were desperate for migrant workers objected, making the implementation of the policy very difficult (Hakimian 1985: 443–62). With the advent of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, many members of the Organisation of Social Democrats decided to return to Iran to fight on the side of the constitutionalists. Some of these fighters, who were commonly known as the mujahidin in Iran, were affiliated with Mollå Nasreddin, and regularly dispatched reports to the periodical on the events in Iran. Among them was Mirza Jalil’s younger brother, Mirza Ali Akbar Memedqolizådeh. As a result, between the years 1906 and 1911, Mollå Nasreddin was one of the most informed regional newspapers in matters related to Iranian politics. This coverage further added to the journal’s popularity in both South Caucasus and Iran. Notes  1. Twelver Shiis believe in divinely ordained leaders, known as the Imams, who number twelve and are related to the Prophet through their blood line, as the legitimate continuators of the heritage of Muhammad following his death. The Ismaili Shiis believe in the first seven of these Imams and after that diverge from the Twelvers.   2. Willem Floor writes, ‘In practice Safavid Persia was divided into five administrative regions: Khorasan, Fars, Azerbaijan, Gilan-Mazandaran, and ‘Iraq-e ‘Ajam.’ He adds, ‘Some sources have it that Persia was divided into 7 regions, which basically meant that Shirvan (or South Caucasus) was a separate jurisdiction from Azerbaijan, and that Kerman was also considered a separate region. These four or five administrative regions did not correspond to provinces or to administrative jurisdictions, however, for Safavid Persia was divided into about 50–70 jurisdictions’ (Floor 2001: 4–5). See also Minorsky 1943: 100–2; Jåbiri Ansåri 2006: 130–1.   3. After the death of Nader Shah, the kingdoms of Kartli and Kakheti (Eastern Georgia) became autonomous, while independent khånåtes emerged in the area that today consists of the Republic of Azerbaijan and Armenia. In July 1783, according to the bilateral Treaty of Georgievsk, the Kartli-Kakheti kingdom became a Russian protectorate (Atkin 1980, 19).  4. In this volume, we also refer to them as Muslims. When discussing residents of the territory that is today the modern Republic of Azerbaijan, we might also

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62 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN refer to them as ‘Caucasus Azerbaijanis’ to distinguish them from ‘Iranian Azerbaijanis’.  5. Волкова Н.Г. Этнические процессы в Закавказье в XIX–XX вв. // Кавказский этнографический сборник. М., 1969. Вып. IV. С. 3–54, pp. 17–18.  6. Балаев 2012: 84–8; and Nigar Gozalova, personal communication, email, 20 June 2020.   7. Rorlich indicates the same with regard to Volga Tatars (Rorlich 2013: 150).   8. While it is clear that the government successfully limited the career options for aspiring clerics among Shii Azerbaijanis, independent religious life among imperial Russia’s Muslims was never fully quashed.   9. Rice 2018: 45; and email exchange with Rice, 30 June 2021. 10. After the tsarist government abolished the Khånåte of Kåråbåkh, and her father fled to Iran, Khurshid Bånu remained in Kåråbåkh and devoted herself to her activities. 11. For a discussion of other literary societies in the region, see Rice 2018: 39. 12. Even the mild statements of Mostashår al-Dowleh were too audacious for Iranian rulers. After his return to Iran, Nåser al-Din Shåh ordered the distinguished diplomat imprisoned and executed. One can only imagine what would have happened to Åkhundov had he moved back to Iran without the protection of the Russian state. Yek Kalameh became well known among constitutionalists and subsequent editions appeared in the early years of the Constitutional Revolution. See Mirza Yousef Tabrizi Mostashår al-Dowleh, Yek Kalameh (Tehran: Bal Press, 2007). See also Baqir Momeni, Din va Dowlat dar Asr-e Mashrutiyat (Stockholm: Baran Press, 1993), 295–308. For the influence of the French revolutionary discourse on Iranian constitutionalists, see Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi 1990a. 13. For an account of protest by his workers, see Khosrowpanåh 1999: 48. But see how during the 1905 Armenian–Tatar War, Taghiyev provided stranded Iranian migrants with free boats so they could be transported back from Baku to Anzali (Khosrowpanåh 1999: 44). 14. According to A. Bennigsen, from 1875 to February 1917, about 172 newspapers and magazines with Middle Eastern/Muslim titles were published in the Russian Empire. Most were published in the Azerbaijani Turkic language (sixty) and in the language of the Kazan Tatars (sixty-three). More than 66 per cent of other publications (435) were also in the Azerbaijani and Tatar languages. In Azerbaijan alone, according to the Azerbaijani historian A. Sumbatzade, forty newspapers and twenty magazines appeared from 1903 to 1917. See Bennigsen and LemercierQuelquejay 1964: 48, 278; and email exchange with Nigar Gozalova, 22 July 2021. 15. As of 1886, 36.28 per cent of the population of the Elizavetpol province were Shii Muslims, 25.20 per cent were Sunni Muslims and 0.42 per cent were Ali-Allahi. According to the same source, 93.03 per cent of the population of the Zakatala district consisted of Sunni Muslims. In the Nakhchivan district, Shii Muslims predominated, accounting for 57 per cent of the district’s population. See the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary 1890–1907. 16. The origins of some of these rituals have been traced to the Franciscan Flagellant Movement of the thirteenth century, which gradually found its way to South Caucasus, and then to Iran and Iraq. 17. Волкова Н.Г. Этнические процессы в Закавказье в XIX–XX  вв. // Кавказский этнографический сборник. М., 1969. Вып. IV. С. 3–54, p. 35. 18. Назарли А.Э. Народное образование в Азербайджанской Республике (1918–1920 гг.). Баку, Нурлан, 2008. –с. 24–25. 19. The most well-known proponent of Pan-Islamism was Jamål al-Din Afghåni (1838–97), a Shii Iranian intellectual who changed his surname from Asadåbådi to Afghåni to pass as a Sunni Muslim of Afghan origin in the Arab and Ottoman

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worlds. After going through periods of secularism and various versions of religious reformism, Afghåni came to the conclusion that the greatest danger facing the region was imperialism (Keddie 1983). 20. According to the general census of 1897, literacy rates of Russia were 12.4% in the cities and 8.6% in the rural areas. In 1900, in comparison, US schools were coeducational and around 60 per cent of high school students were girls. This led to great social anxiety that women were overtaking men in education. Soon, policies to restrict women’s access to education were implemented (Maschke 1997: 114). 21. In addition to Mirza Jalil and Ömar Fåeq, some other male supporters of women’s rights included Memed Emin Resulzade, who after 1910 became editor of the social democratic newspaper Iran-e Now in Iran, and in 1918 became President of the Azerbaijan National Council; Yusif Vazi Chemenzeminli, who was perhaps the author of Ali and Nino (published under the name Kurban Said, 1937) and was Ambassador to Turkey during the Azerbaijan Democrat Republic; as well as the influential thinker Ahmed bey A©ao©lu (Gasimova 2016: 25). 22. See ‘Petition of the Workers and Residents of St Petersburg for Submission to Nicholas II on January 9, 1905’, included as appendix to Spector. Our discussion of the 1905 Russian Revolution has relied on Anweiler 1974; Deutscher 1965; Trotsky [1905] 1971; Service 1985; Shanin 1986; Ascher 1994; Suny 1972; Suny 1988; Luxemburg 1970; Harcave 1970. 23. Serfdom never existed in the area that constitutes modern Azerbaijan; therefore these reforms only indirectly concerned the population of South Caucasus. 24. Touraj Atabaki discusses the many reasons for these migrations. See Atabaki 2003. 25. Information based on Nigar Gozalova, e-mail, 20 June 2020. 26. For a discussion of Himmat, see Swietochowski 1978; Lazzerini 1975; AltstadtMirhadi 1983: 245–54, 264–8; Bennigsen and Lemercier-Quelquejay 1967: 56–7.

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CHAPTER 2

The Staff and Major Contributors

Who were the contributors to the periodical, and what were the challenges and obstacles they faced as they addressed their audience’s concerns? Mollå Nasreddin was not the organ of any particular political party, though the editor and nearly all its staff were partial towards social democracy. Most of the writers and poets belonged to the Shii Muslim community, which was also the journal’s primary audience. However, the co-founder Ömar Fåeq was a Sunni Muslim, and the two principal artists, Schmerling and Rotter, were Christian and Jewish, respectively. Yet, despite their religious differences, these writers, poets and artists forged a strong collaboration, as they shared a common bond and desire to create a more egalitarian world. Contributors belonged to different social classes. Some came from working-­ class families, but most were living a more middle-class life at the time they joined Mollå Nasreddin. In the case of Hamideh Khånum, who should be considered a financial backer of the publisher, and Mirza Jalil (after their marriage in 1907), they were landowners with an estate and had significant disposable income. Nearly all the contributors knew multiple languages and had travelled inside and outside Russia, including to Iran. Some went to college as the first members of their family. Others were autodidacts and avid readers. Many were talented and accomplished individuals in their areas of expertise. Several were playwrights and, while writing for the paper, also staged plays. Editor Jalil Memedqolizådeh, aka Mirza Jalil (1866–1932), was an author, playwright and one of the founders of the School of Critical Realism in Azerbaijani literature. Ömar Fåeq Nemånzådeh (1872–1937), co-founder and associate editor, was an experienced journalist who had studied in Turkey. Mirza Jalil’s wife, Hamideh Khånum (1873–1955), was a pioneering advocate for women’s rights. Ali-Akbar Tåherzådeh Såber (Mirzə Ələkbər Zeynalabdin o©lu Tahirzadə, 1862–1911), was a gifted poet who revolutionised Azerbaijani literature. Abdol Rahim bey Haqverdiyev (Əbdürrəhim bəy Əsəd bəy o©lu Haqverdiyev, 1870–1933), was a playwright and stage director, as well as a member of the First State Duma of the Russian Empire. Mohammad Said Ordubådi (Məmməd Səid Ordubadi, 1872–1950), was a prolific correspondent and writer who covered the revolutionary events in Iran. The principal artists Oskar Schmerling (1863–1938), Joseph (Yusof) Rotter and Azim Azimzådeh (Əzim Aslan o©lu Əzimzadə, 1880–1943) were founders

the staff and major contributors

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Figure 2.1  Mollå Nasreddin and its avid readers. Source: MN 10, 9 June 1906.

of the art of caricature in South Caucasus. Together, they created a publication whose reputation exceeded the accomplishments of each of them individually, leading to the creation of a satirical school of thought in Azerbaijani literature.1 From 1906 to 1912, around 370 issues of Mollå Nasreddin were published in Tiflis.2 The paper began with a modest weekly printing of 1,000 copies on 7 April 1906, but in a month was printing 25,000 copies per week. In this most radical stage of the paper, Mollå Nasreddin lambasted politicians, landowners and clerics of South Caucasus; revealed the heartrending lives of women and children who suffered from the indignities of a highly patriarchal culture; exposed the colonial and imperialist policies of the Great Powers; and routinely commented on the affairs of Iran, the Ottoman Empire and other smaller countries. In appropriating the name of the famous trickster figure, the journal sharpened the sting of its sociopolitical and anti-clerical criticism. At the same time, it shielded itself against outright accusations of blasphemy, since the folk trickster was well liked as an idiot-savant who told it like it was.

Figure 2.2  ‘God, I am wondering what the paper is saying about me today?’ Source: MN 16, 19 April 1909.

66 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN Throughout its twenty-five-year existence, Mollå Nasreddin was published in several cities. From 1906 to 1917, it was printed in Tiflis. The journal briefly moved to Tabriz, Iran (1920–1), away from the chaos of the Russian Civil War. Publication resumed from 1922 to 1931 in Baku, now part of the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan. Altogether Mirza Jalil and Ömar Fåeq contributed more than 1,000 pieces, including columns and editorials, stories, proverbs, riddles and jokes, as well as folk songs. Major concerns of Molla– Nasreddin The circumstances under which the contributors pursued their commitments to the periodical were arduous. Most were married, and responsible for multiple dependents and extended family members. Working for a radical newspaper was not exactly the best means of earning a living. The nature of their publication subjected them to all forms of public taunts and harassment as well as economic deprivation. They experienced great hardships during World War I, the 1917 Russian Revolution and the Russian Civil War. Nearly all suffered government surveillance and censorship during the tsarist and Soviet regimes; some were imprisoned, while others fled persecution. In a world without modern medicine, they experienced major pandemics such as cholera, smallpox and tuberculosis. Some faced the tragic deaths of their children and relatives from pneumonia, depression or the sheer exhaustion of life. Some, such as Mirza Jalil, mercifully died before the full weight of Soviet repression became manifest. A few lived to a ripe old age and made necessary accommodations with the Soviet regime in order to survive. Others died of heartbreak, or vanished without a trace during the Stalin purges and Gulag or the Nazi genocide in Europe. Mollå Nasreddin was a patchwork of progressive ideologies. The periodical was not critical of capitalism per se, only the excesses of it, and it blamed the tsarist bureaucracy and the Muslim religious institutions for the harsh and impoverished lives of the people. It lampooned landowners for overtaxing their peasants and the wealthy for not contributing enough to charitable causes. It criticised imperialist powers for their landgrabs in the Middle East and North Africa. In the social and cultural arena, Mollå Nasreddin campaigned for modern schools for boys and girls, instruction in the Azerbaijani language and greater rights for Muslim women. Many of the articles in Mollå Nasreddin supported liberal political and social rights, such as the establishment of modern education, health and hygiene; the right to freedom of speech and publication; revisions in marriage and divorce laws; and support for a democratic constitution and representative parliament in Iran and Turkey. Contributions to the periodical also called for the implementation of social democratic ideals such as limits on child labour and better working conditions for workers and peasants. Some columns addressed nationalist sentiments, such as the right of Caucasus Azerbaijani people to be educated in their mother tongue. Others expressed the grievances of the peoples of the Middle East and North Africa and condemned the growing influence of European imperialist powers.

the staff and major contributors

Nearly all these ideas were considered revolutionary for their time and place. Below we look at the ethnic, religious, regional and international concerns of the periodical to show its vast scope of coverage of local and global issues. At the local level, the journal called for instruction in the Azerbaijani language at home and in schools. With regard to religious practices, it advocated for a closer alliance between Shii and Sunni communities in South Caucasus as well as reforms of Islamic laws and practices. At the regional level, the journal argued that many traditional and conservative practices of Muslims of South Caucasus had emerged from Iran and had to be discarded. At the same time, Mollå Nasreddin wholeheartedly supported the Iranian Constitutional Revolution and the Young Turk Revolution and the new democratic reforms they had introduced. Finally, at the international level, the periodical was a champion of rights for Muslim peoples in the Middle East and North Africa, exposing the colonial and imperialist designs of the European powers, including Tsarist Russia, on the region. The latter was a particularly risky stance since it meant Mollå Nasreddin was confronting the foreign policies of its own government. We end this chapter with biographical accounts of the major contributors to the paper, which show the enormous personal and political challenges they faced in producing the journal. Local concerns: writing in one’s native tongue Publication of Mollå Nasreddin coincided with the rise of a new literary movement among Muslims in South Caucasus at the turn of the twentieth century.3 A few years earlier, private bilingual Russian-Azerbaijani schools had emerged, following Gasprinskiy’s New Method of educational reform (Jadidism).4 The new literary movement had three components: incorporation of New Method programmes into existing schools and building of new schools; creation of evening adult-education programmes; and institution of teacher-training programmes to address the mass influx of new students that was anticipated. Through these efforts, literacy rates increased substantially in South Caucasus after 1906, especially in Baku. The new movement faced obstacles from three primary directions: the clerics, the more traditional parents and the state. The primary source of income for many mollås was teaching at maktabs, and they now faced a significant loss of income due to the New Method educational initiatives. Additionally, the tsarist authorities were concerned because the New Method encouraged the teaching of the Azerbaijani language and was influenced by Pan-Turkism. The authorities feared that the schools might strengthen the cultural bonds between Muslims of South Caucasus and the Ottoman Empire (Rice 2018: 115–23). Mirza Jalil and Såber were both strong advocates of the New Method and supported Gasprinskiy in their articles and poems. Schmerling drew an iconic cartoon of Gasprinskiy holding his journal Tarjomån in his hand, while being attacked by two mollås who accused him of ‘heresy’, calling his new pedagogy ‘contrary to the sharia’.

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Figure 2.3  ‘In Benåghåzi Village, near Baku: “Get lost! What is the benefit of New Methods schools for us? At least, the tavern makes some money for us!”’ (The sign on the right reads school, and the one on the left reads tavern.) Source: MN 51, 21 December 1908.

Reformers remained in favour of bilingual education. They demanded that a larger portion of primary and secondary instruction in state schools take place in Azerbaijani. They also criticised elite and upper-middle-class families for speaking Russian rather than Azerbaijani at home. However, as the Azerbaijani vernacular was not yet standardised, the reformers disagreed on whether the new written language should be based on the Ottoman Turkish vernacular or the Azerbaijani vernacular. The Azerbaijani vernacular was close to Ottoman Turkish, as they both had the same grammar and were mutually understandable. However, the Azerbaijani vernacular included more Persian and Arabic terms, while the Ottoman Turkish vernacular came across as stiff and highly formal to an Azerbaijani speaker. South Caucasian Muslims who had studied Ottoman Turkish, read Ottoman newspapers and travelled to Istanbul, were fully versed in Ottoman Turkish and called for the adoption of standardised Ottoman Turkish as the mother tongue (ana dili). They were referred to as the Ottomanisers. However, those who had primarily studied in South Caucasus argued for standardising the Azerbaijani vernacular. Mirza Jalil and most of the other contributors were in this second category and were known as Azerichiter (Rice 2018: 142–6).

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the staff and major contributors

Figure 2.4  Father preventing his son from attending a New Methods school. Source: MN 41, 13 October 1908.

Figure 2.5  Fatwa against Ismail Gasprinski, publisher of Tarjomån. New Methods are against the sharia. Source: MN 17, 28 April 1908.

Mollå Nasreddin maintained that Caucasus Azerbaijanis did not know how to adequately convey their thoughts, whether written or orally, in their mother tongue. Nor could Iran or the Ottomans offer a solution to this dilemma. Iranian Azerbaijani writers wrote their letters and articles in Persian. Many felt that the ornate Ottoman Turkish language could not adequately convey the Azerbaijani sentiment. As a result, most educated Caucasus Azerbaijanis used Russian when they communicated in writing.5 For all these reasons, Mirza Jalil believed that ‘the number of [Caucasus Azerbaijani] people who have dared pick up a pen [and become a writer] can be counted on one hand’. Mollå Nasreddin was to be a guide and role model for such ‘timid’ potential writers.6 As mentioned above, Mollå Nasreddin criticised parents for speaking Russian in their social gatherings and with their children. Yes, ‘the state might not allow us to teach our mother tongue in state schools’, but it is not preventing us from speaking Azerbaijani with our children or in our public gatherings. Why do we give our children Russian names, or allow them to change their Azerbaijani names to Russian ones, so that when you go to a friend’s house and you call his little girl Monavvar, she frowns, because she prefers to be called ‘Varia?’ (MN 31, 3 November 1906).7 In another column addressed to women, Mollå Nasreddin revealed a common practice among upper and even some middle-class Caucasus

70 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN Azerbaijanis. In anticipation of sending their boys to state schools, where instruction was in Russian, these families placed their children in Russian-speaking homes so they would learn the language from an early age. Sardar Maku of Tiflis had placed his son with such a family and paid 600 manåts a month for room and board, plus occasional gifts. ‘In Tiflis alone, there were more than 100 children living in Russian homes. Some families paid 50–100 manåts, but the lowest rate was 30 manåts’ per month. The Russian families that hosted these children were often impoverished. Many were domestic workers of the wealthy Muslim elite. The children lived there for 3–4 years, became familiar with the Russian cuisine and culture, then returned to their own family. Now, they spoke Russian to their parents and after a while ‘began to ridicule the customs and practices of Muslims’. Why then, do we blame the Russians for forcing their customs and habits on us? We are to blame ourselves, Mollå Nasreddin concluded (MN 50, 14 December 1908). As a result of this practice, even when chilFigure 2.6  ‘Brothers, I was not created without my own tongue (an Azerbaijani Turk)! Why do dren of elite families had some Azerbaijaniyou force your tongues on me?’ (Persian, language instruction in school, their preferred Russian, Arabic) language of communication became Russian. Source: MN 38, 22 December 1906. Language was gradually dividing the Muslim communities of South Caucasus. The more secularised upper classes had become Russian speakers and were gradually forgetting their native tongue. The Arabic alphabet was difficult for them to learn, but the more traditional classes of ‘hajjis, mashhadis and karbalåis’ who communicated in the Azerbaijani language, built mosques and propagated religious practices, lived in their own separate world. Mirza Jalil and others believed the adoption of a Latin script for the Azerbaijani language could help bridge this gap (MN 44, 3 November 1908). Religious concerns: Shii–Sunni alliance and reforms Mollå Nasreddin was not an anti-religious publication. Indeed, it did not see a conflict between being a good Muslim and holding progressive, liberal and even social democratic ideals. However, it advocated for a form of strippeddown rationalist Islam that was bereft of folk superstition and did not come in conflict with the requirements of modern life. An example of such common superstition was dividing the days of the month, and the hours of the day into

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auspicious or inauspicious periods. Before embarking on an important decision in one’s life, one had to speak to various fortune-tellers/clerics to determine an auspicious time, otherwise it was inadvisable to embark on a new project. Rather than writing a stern column on the detrimental impact of such thinking, Mollå Nasreddin held a mirror to such traditions and poked fun at them. In the first issue of Mollå Nasreddin, the paper called on its readers ‘to please check [with a cleric] to see if it was auspicious for them to subscribe to the periodical’ (JMQ: 41). Another set of customs that the periodical adamantly opposed was the public’s rigorous adherence to what Mary Douglas has called rituals of pollution and purification (Douglas [1966] 1991). Observant Muslims divided foods, animals and people into the two strict categories of halal/pak (pure) and haråm/mirdår (impure). As in the Jewish dietary laws, some foods were inherently impure, such as pork or wine. Non-Muslims were also considered impure. Strict rules of segregation were observed by the Muslim community in its interactions with non-Muslims, who were seen as polluting agents. When interactions did occur, such as during trade, the Muslim merchant followed detailed rituals of ablution to purify himself. In his memoir, Mirza Jalil recalled that

Figure 2.7  Calendar of auspicious and inauspicious days of the month. It includes good days for taking a bath, for chatting with handsome boys, and for resting. Source: MN 16, 21 July 1906.

at the time of publication of the periodical, and even now, observant brothers considered the wet hand of a Russian or Armenian impure and the wet hand of a Muslim pure. Oil and cheese that was sold by a Russian or a Georgian was polluted, while oil and cheese sold by a Muslim was pure. (JMQ: 43) Yet, here again, rather than giving a stern lecture on the irrationality of such prejudices, Mollå Nasreddin made fun of them.8 The periodical ‘warned’ its subscribers to carefully wrap their subscription fees before mailing them so they would not be touched by the presumably non-Muslim postman. The postmen should not touch subscription fees that are sent to our office because their hands might be sweaty and wet and if such happens our

72 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN  office would have to wash the moneys to ritually purify them, which would be a great hassle for us. (JMQ: 42)

Figure 2.8  Mollå Muhammad Amin issues a fatwa against Mollå Nasreddin. ‘Mollå Muhammad Amin at a mosque in Baku’. Source: MN 5, 3 February 1908.

These and other criticisms of common religious practices were quite dangerous. On several occasions clerics in South Caucasus and Iran called for the death of Mirza Jalil, and even dispatched assassins to carry out the deed. In January 1908, for example, in response to an illustration in Mollå Nasreddin, Muhammad Amin, a Baku cleric, issued a fatwa that called for the death of Mirza Jalil, and even sent him a copy of it. Rather than backing down, Mirza Jalil asked Rotter to draw a caricature of Muhammad Amin, holding a Quran in his right hand and a ‘polluted’ copy of Mollå Nasreddin with the tip of his left hand, crying and cursing the editor and asking for revenge (qisås) (MN, 3 February 1908). In response to this caricature, 1,000 Muslims from Baku sent a petition to the head of the Russian Military Forces in South Caucasus, demanding the closure of the periodical. They also dispatched three assassins to Tiflis to murder Mirza Jalil, but luckily, they failed to locate him.9 To protect himself from such attacks, Mirza Jalil lived in the Georgian sector of Tiflis, on an avenue called St David. The Muslim community was centred on Shaitån Bazaar (Satan’s Bazaar), an important commercial area, that was home to bazaar merchants and clerics. Yet what took place in Shaitån Bazaar was grist for the mill of Mirza Jalil, providing him and his colleagues with routine material for their columns. In his memoir, he recalled:

My residence on the St David Street guaranteed the liberty of our magazine. This Georgian sector was a place where Muslims did not set foot. It was clear that the greatest targets of Mollå Nasreddin were folk absurdities and [religious] superstition, social parasites [presumably clerics and the wealthy] and their club-bearers. But it was impossible to carry on such a fight, while residing in the midst of a Muslim community. Because if you were there, they would stone you to death. For this reason, when from time to time I poked my stick into their beehive, I took cover in a quiet corner of the Georgian sector and waited till the anger of the bees subsided. Once the hoodlums of Baku came looking for me in Tiflis but could not find me. (JMQ: 56–7)

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Figure 2.9  The Muslim quarter of Tiflis known as ‘Shaitån Bazar’ [Satan’s Bazaar]. Source: MN 24, 15 September 1906.

Regional concerns: the complicated relationship with Iran Although Mollå Nasreddin defended Iran against European intervention, the journal was highly critical of the despotic rulers of the country, the immense authority of its Shii establishment, the vast illiteracy of the population, the lack of healthcare and proper hygiene, and what it considered to be rampant superstition among Iranians. Iranians constituted a majority of Mollå Nasreddin’s readers. Azerbaijanispeaking people of Iran read the periodical in its original language. Others kept up through Persian translations of poems published in periodicals such as Nasim-e Shemål of Rasht. They loved the periodical for both defending them against the colonial powers and criticising the shah and the Shii clerics. The relationship of the periodical to Iran was an important one. Mirza Jalil, who had a particular attachment to the land of his ancestors, wrote in his memoir: I was born in the city of Nakhchivan, which is five-six farsang (30–36 miles) from the River Aras and 40 farsang (240 miles) from the village of Jolfå. I am here deliberately mentioning the names ‘Aras’ and ‘Jolfå’ because the River

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Figure 2.10  Travellers carry such cultural baggage as fortune telling, interpretation of dreams, charms and talisman, the registry of autocrats, and musical instruments for making a living. ‘Crossing the renowned Aras River on Earth’. Source: MN 5, 5 May 1906.

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Aras marks [our] common border and Jolfå is the customs bureau between us and Iran, and I am proud of my association with this river and this region for two reasons. First, because Iran is the birthplace of my grandfather and second, because Iran is well known worldwide for its adherence to religion. I have always been proud and grateful that I was born in the neighbourhood of such a sacred land. (Quoted in JMQ: 99; in Rezåzådeh Malik 1979: 54) Mollå Nasreddin addressed the concerns of its readers inside Iran, especially those living in the province of Azerbaijan. It expressed great affection and nostalgia for Iran, but also great exasperation toward those cultural mores of Iranians which came into conflict with modernity, and by association were also a drag on the social progress of South Caucasus. This sense of frustration, while not yet a fully formed expression of Azerbaijani ethno-national identity in South Caucasus, eventually became a preliminary step in that direction. In the pages of Mollå Nasreddin, whether in prose or poetry, the word ‘vatan’ or homeland, nearly always referred to Iran, not so much as a location, but as a state of mind. This was best seen in the many articles, poems and drawings about the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, which began in the

Figure 2.11  A page from The Travel Diary of Ebrahim Beg recalling how people on the streets were told to look away while the Qajar royal carriage came through. Guards warned the public to turn around and look away so as not to catch a glimpse of the royal wives. Source: MN 9, 2 June 1906.

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Figure 2.12  Commemorating the death of Leo Tolstoy. Source: MN 36, 13 November 1910.

summer of 1906 and ended in 1911, a subject that will be discussed in a subsequent volume. Mollå Nasreddin’s social critique partially stemmed from the writers’ position as second-orthird-generation colonised Muslim subjects living under Russian rule. But it was also a reflection of the writers’ deep immersion in Russian literature, which a number of them, including Mirza Jalil, Narimånov and Haqverdiyev, had helped translate into Azerbaijani. Among these were works by Nikolai Gogol (1809–52), who had satirised political corruption in the tsarist state; Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–81), who argued for separation of Church and State in his Brothers Karamazov; Maxime Gorky (1868–1936), a social democrat who fervently advocated for social change; and finally, the great pacifist writer and educator, Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), whose death was mourned in the pages of the paper. A majority of the readers of Mollå Nasreddin lived inside Iran and not just in the Province of Azerbaijan. In May 1906, when circulation had reached 25,000, in response to a question about the geographic distribution of the readers, Mirza Jalil wrote:

More than half of our customers are Iranians. Over 15,000 issues of our magazine go to Khorasan, Tehran, Isfahan, Tabriz and is even distributed in cities and villages nearby. Of this number, 13,690 are subscribers. The rest are sold individually alongside those of our colleagues Hayåt and Irshåd. The other 10,000 copies of the magazine Mollå Nasreddin are distributed among the Muslims of the Caucasus and in Russia (Irshåd and Hayåt should have the same circulation). (MN 5, 5 May 1906) Mollå Nasreddin also had a significant literary influence on Iran. During the Constitutional Revolution, the periodical carried on a vibrant exchange with progressive Iranian newspapers.10 Iranian journalists borrowed concepts and styles from Mollå Nasreddin and reprinted its poems. In return, Mollå Nasreddin celebrated the major achievements of the constitutionalists and warned its Iranian readers of impending hazards.11 The most successful of these exchanges took place between Mollå Nasreddin and Sur-e Esråfil (1907–8), edited by Ali Akbar Dehkhodå. He was fluent in both Persian and the Azerbaijani languages and was able to recreate Mollå Nasreddin’s discursive style for an Iranian audience. The ‘Charand-o Parand’ columns of Dehkhodå broke with the turgid and arcane conventions of Persian literature and discussed complicated political issues in easily understandable language. Like Mollå Nasreddin, ‘Charand-o Parand’ drew parallels

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between proverbs, folkloric witticisms and contemporary social issues. The relationship between Mollå Nasreddin and Sur-e Esråfil was reciprocal. Often, issues and questions that were raised in Mollå Nasreddin by the poet Såber about Iran received a provocative response by Dehkhodå in the pages of Sur-e Esråfil.12 International concerns: a response to the growing power of imperialism The years 1878 to 1914 witnessed the gradual dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire in the hands of the European colonial powers. Mollå Nasreddin paid keen attention to these changes and their consequences for the people of the region. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–8, which Russia won, was fought in the name of liberating Christian people from Muslim rule. After the war, the Congress of Berlin declared the full independence of the Christian nations of Romania, Serbia and Montenegro. The Young Turk Revolution of 1908, which re-established the constitutional order, initially offered hope that the multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire could be maintained and that the machinations of colonial powers could

Figure 2.13  Breakdown of the Ottoman Empire, which is portrayed as a mighty ship. ‘Opportune time for colonial powers to fish and loot the region.’ Source: MN 16, 19 April 1909.

78 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN end. Mollå Nasreddin expressed this jubilant hope in a cartoon that showed various European colonial powers packing their bags and leaving Macedonia. Instead, the revolution led to the rise of Pan-Turkism, thereby further alienating the non-Muslim and non-Turkish parts of the empire. Later, the Italian–Turkish War of 1911–12 and the Balkan Wars of 1912–13 led to the ouster of Turkey from North Africa and nearly all of Europe. These events and others were covered in the pages of Mollå Nasreddin. The periodical lamented the loss of territories that had belonged to Muslims. It also alerted the public that wars and involvements of European powers, in the name of emancipating Christian people or ethnic minorities were, in fact, measures to expand European colonialism in former Ottoman lands. Principal writers and contributors The journal was under constant threat of censorship and confiscation. The Qajar rulers of Iran were extremely annoyed by the periodical, which mocked the shah and the royalists. They ordered the paper burned at the border and confiscated at local post offices. Shii clerics in South Caucasus, Iran and even Najaf were outraged by the open attacks of the periodical on their ­institutions

Figure 2.14  Colonial powers leaving Macedonia in great disappointment after the 1908 Young Turk Revolution and the re-establishment of the 1876 Ottoman Constitution. Source: MN 30, 28 July 1908.

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Figure 2.15  Muharram gathering. ‘Eulogiser: May God Curse the constitutionalists and the journalists. People: May God Grant Your Wish.’ Source: MN 6, 18 February 1909.

and routinely issued condemnations of it (Aryanpour 1972: 2:45). Tsarist authorities were unhappy with the periodical’s support for the revolutionary cause in Iran. As a result, the periodical had to weigh every word it published so as not to be censored or closed by the Russian state or confiscated by the Iranian authorities. This made life very difficult for the journalists. Clerics and more traditional sectors of their own society accused them of blasphemy and they never knew from one day to the next if the journal would continue. Below, we provide brief sketches of the lives of the principal contributors to the journal, the difficult lives they lived, and the manner in which they contributed to the weekly. Jalil Memedqolizådeh (Mirza Jalil) Early life and education Mirza Jalil was born in 1866 in the ancient city of Nakhchivan.13 His grandfather had migrated from Khoy (Iran) to Nakhchivan and married Sara Båbåyevå, the daughter of another Iranian migrant from Khoy. Mirza Jalil’s father was a small merchant who owned a salt shop in Nakhchivan. The couple who had five children were considered ­lower-middle

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Figure 2.16  ‘The illustration was not allowed and there was no time for another illustration to be drawn.’ Source: MN 8, 22 February 1909.

Figure 2.17  Mirza Jalil Memedqolizådeh. Source: Beyond Caricature: The Oscar Schmerling Digital Archive. https://schmerling.org/en/people/ jalil-mammadguluzadeh.

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class and religiously observant. Aziz Sharifzådeh, a professor of Oriental studies who grew up in Nakhchivan, and in his youth worked as a paperboy for Mollå Nasreddin, described life in the area during his youth.14 The city was intensely religious and Shii rituals were popular forms of entertainment in the months of Muharram and Safar, complete with self-flagellation and the wounding of one’s head with a slim dagger. In these months, a large number of eulogisers crossed the border from Iran to lead these festivals. Gender segregation was tightly enforced in Nakhchivan. The city had near identical one-storey clay and mud houses. None of the windows of the houses opened to the street so ‘God forbid an unrelated man [nå mahram] might catch a glimpse of a young woman’ (S¸ ərif 2009: 27). Women observed very strict hijab in public, complete with face covering, as was the case in Iran in this period. They were not allowed to speak to unrelated men, and their voices were not to be heard during prayer. Marriages were arranged by the family and often the couple first saw each other on their wedding night. If a man did not like his wife, he could easily divorce her or take additional wives. Some men married four wives and kept them in the same house. As in Iran, some Nakhchivan men also took temporary wives. Divorce was not an option that could be initiated by a woman trapped in an abusive marriage. Sharifzådeh lamented that ‘only death would

Figure 2.18  The Eulogisers in Yerevan, Ganja, Ordubad, Baku and other cities. Source: MN 7, 15 February 1909.

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Figure 2.19  ‘Khan Båji (to her friend while looking at a local jail): Wouldn’t it be nice if our houses also had windows like these, to watch the streets when we had a heavy heart!’ Source: MN 32, 9 August 1909.

rescue the woman who suffered from oppression in the hands of the husband she hated’ (S¸ ərif 2009: 43). And yet, even in this world, where men had such absolute authority, there were brave women who fought against the traditions imposed on them. There were girls who ran away from home to marry the man they preferred. Sharifzådeh concluded, ‘Jalil Memedqolizådeh was born in such a world and with all his power and creativity he fought to change it’ (S¸ ərif 2009: 44). Mirza Jalil spoke Azerbaijani at home and attended a traditional maktab school. Instruction was through rote memorisation, and students were punished by beatings on the soles of their feet, a practice known as bastinado. After finishing elementary school, he attended the local Russian school. But memories of his life in Nakhchivan and of the maktab stayed with him, later becoming the subject of stories and illustrations in the pages of Mollå Nasreddin (Javanshir 2016: 1; Habibbeyli 1999: 5). In 1882, he went north, where he attended the Gori Pedagogical Seminary and also joined its theatre programme. A number of other young men who

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Figure 2.20  Bastinado. ‘In Iran’. Source: MN 26, 29 September 1906.

also became leading Muslim intellectuals attended the school, among them Narimån Narimånov.15 After graduating in 1887, Mirza Jalil became a schoolteacher and taught in Nakhchivan and Yerevan for ten years. He was a genuinely caring teacher, even opening a bathhouse at one of the schools for his students and providing them with stationery, clothes, shoes and food. In the village of Nehram (Nakhchivan), he brought his sister Sakineh to the school, thus pioneering modern education for young Muslim girls in the region. He also taught his students new agricultural techniques. These efforts at combining academic and vocational training encouraged reluctant, and even hostile, parents to send their children to the school (Habibbeyli 1999: 9–10). These experiences provided him with great material for his short stories such as the Tea Set (1889), Raisin (1892) and School of Danabash Village (1894). Meanwhile, he learned the Armenian language; joined Russian, Armenian and Muslim leftist intellectual circles; and immersed himself in European classics ranging from the Greek plays and philosophical writings to works by Karl Marx, Charles Darwin and John Stuart Mill. As a civic-minded intellectual, he was also busy with charitable educational projects, which he combined with theatrical productions to raise funds. In the 1890s, he and his younger brother Mirza Ali Akbar staged a number of plays for the community, including works by Åkhundov, and thus brought theatre to Nakhchivan. (Sardåriniyå 1991b: 31–4; Javanshir 2016: 3).

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Figure 2.21  Peasant to Teacher: ‘You think you are part-owner of my son, to take him to school?’ Source: MN 3, 19 January 1907.

Two tragic marriages In 1894 he married Halimeh Khåtoun, a village girl in Nahrem. They had a daughter, Monavvar (1897–1965), but a year later, in 1898, Halimeh died. A bereft Mirza Jalil moved back to Nakhchivan near his parents so they could help take care of his daughter.16 Between 1898 and 1903, and after a decade of teaching, he took a variety of different jobs. He was an interpreter and clerk in the Yerevan Police Department, became an assistant bailiff in Nakhchivan’s jail and also worked as an assistant to the Chief of Police in Nakhchivan (Habibbeyli 1999: 105–19). Mirza Jalil also studied law to become a notary public, but eventually decided he was ill suited to all these professions. With regard to these career changes, he pointed out later that ‘I was the main obstacle in all these endeavours because more than anything else, and at every opportunity, I would pick up a large piece of paper and write down drafts of my future stories and novels’ (Habibbeyli 1999: 11). In 1900, he married for a second time. His second wife, Nazli Khånum, was from an affluent family that had held the governorship of the Nakhchivan Khånåte before the Russian conquest (Javanshir 2016: 4 n. 18). She was divorced with a ten-year-old son. Theirs was a loving union (1900–4). Mirza Jalil was friends with Nazli Khånum’s brother, Memedqoli bey Kengerli, who was an attorney. The entire family, except for Memedqoli bey, opposed the marriage because of the vast social distance between the two families.

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But the wedding took place anyway. In fact, it was a double wedding, as Memedqoli bey married Sakineh, the sister of Mirza Jalil. The marriage of Memedqoli bey to Sakineh did not last long and he divorced her after a year. It was a most difficult period in the family, but more turmoil would follow. Nazli Khånum suffered from severe depression, and her situation worsened after the divorce of her brother and her own miscarriage. In December 1903 Mirza Jalil and Memedqoli bey took a gravely ill Nazli Khånum to a psychiatric ward in Tiflis. There they watched helplessly as she starved herself to death in 1904 (Javanshir 2016: 3–4). Working for Sharq-e Rus At the turn of the twentieth century, several Azerbaijani-language newspapers were published in South Caucasus, including, Sharq-e-Rus (1903–5), Hayåt (1905–6), Irshåd (1905–8), Tekamul (1905–7) and Fiyuzåt (1906–7). Mirza Jalil met Memed Shåhtakhti (1848–1935), editor of Sharq-e Rus, in Tiflis. He was a seasoned journalist who had studied in France and Germany, and published articles in St Petersburg’s newspapers. The editor loved a short story that Miza Jalil gave him to read and offered him a job with his newspaper. After the death of Nazli Khånum, Mirza Jalil remained in Tiflis and worked with Sharq-e Rus, where he published several short stories and his translations of works by Leo Tolstoy (Habibbeyli 1999: 12). The story that got him the job was titled ‘Postbox’. It was about a simple peasant who was told by his landlord to take a letter to the city and drop it in the mailbox. The befuddled peasant had no idea how the mail system worked. After some difficulty, he found the box and dropped the letter. Then, with some trepidation, he decided to stick around to see what happened. When the postman arrived to empty the box, the peasant got into a fist fight with him, trying to protect his lord’s letter from this presumed thief. In the process, he was arrested and ultimately was jailed for three months (JMQ: 59–69). Mirza Jalil and Ömar Fåeq Nemånzådeh were the two principal writers of Sharq-e Rus, and the two soon became life-long friends. Ömar Fåeq had studied in Istanbul, where he had become active in radical politics and had worked as a teacher before becoming a journalist.17 In November 1904, when Shåhtakhti travelled to Europe, the two writers continued publishing the paper, an experience that gave them the confidence to start their own publication. When Sharq-e Rus Figure 2.22  Gheyrat Printshop building. stopped publication in 1905, they Source: Habibbeyli 1987, 96.

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86 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN purchased its printing press, and applied for a state licence to publish Mollå Nasreddin. Establishing the Gheyrat Press With the help of a benefactor, Ali Asghar Båqerov, they also rented a two-storey building in the Armenian quarter of Tiflis. There, they launched their print house Gheyrat (Honour). This was a mischievous use of the noun gheyrat, as the term was usually invoked to refer to a woman’s honour and how it had to be protected by male relatives, thus justifying a strict patriarchy. Figure 2.23  Mirza Jalil and employees at Gheyrat However, this Gheyrat print house Printshop. began exposing the debauchery of Source: Habibbeyli 1987, 97. men and clerics, and printed works on the subject of freedom of speech. These publications caused a sensation in the community and alarmed the tsarist authorities, who nearly closed down the print shop in December 1906 (Javanshir 2016: 1–7). In these activities, Mirza Jalil and Ömar Fåeq were inspired by the 1905 Russian Revolution, which opened the floodgates to the publication of numerous radical newspapers in the Russian Empire. In his October 1905 Manifesto, Tsar Nicholas reluctantly granted basic civil liberties, such as freedom of speech. Soon, censorship regulations were relaxed, leading to the emergence of a free press. Satirical journals were the most distinctive product of this period, reaching the unprecedented distribution of close to thirty million copies in the Russian Empire. ‘The press went from serving as a vehicle of social and political dialogue and compromise to become a weapon of militant and harsh criticism, in some cases, aimed at doing away with the tsarist state’ (Levitt and Minin 2013b, 18–19). Mirza Jalil recalled how inspired he was by these radical Russian publications: Freedom of publication got to a point where it became inconceivable to us. One day I saw a young newspaper seller hawking a periodical called Cock-a-Doodle-Do. This journal was in the Russian language. On the cover was the illustration of a rooster, whose head was that of Nicholas, the tsar of Russia. I will never forget that periodical. Dear God, was I asleep or awake! Can one draw the tsar’s head as a rooster and display it in public! I bought the periodical and ran to one of my friends [presumably Ömar Fåeq] and said ‘Stand up! The time to sit has come to an end. Stand up and see how they are comparing the tsar to a rooster … when until now we did not dare draw his image without much praise and prayer?’ (JMQ: 32; Sardåriniyå 1991b: 15)

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Figure 2.24  Armenians and Muslims making peace. Mollå Nasreddin says to the authorities and the public: ‘Goodbye gentlemen, now you can leave.’ Source: MN 1, 6 January 1907.

The 1905 Muslim–Armenian War soon engulfed Baku and reached Tiflis. As the print shop was in the Armenian quarter of Tiflis, the two young writers were nearly killed in the ensuing skirmishes. According to Mirza Jalil, their lives were spared and the print shop was restored thanks to the intervention of two sympathetic Armenian youths. This event left a strong impact on Mirza Jalil and Ömar Fåeq, and may have contributed to their adamant support for ethnic harmony between Muslims and Armenians, as well as their desire to expose how both groups were victims of the ‘divide and conquer’ policies of Russian colonialism (JMQ: 24–5). Publishing Mollå Nasreddin For the first issue of Mollå Nasreddin, Mirza Jalil and Ömar Fåeq invited the well-known Tiflis artist Oskar Schmerling to contribute. Schmerling, in turn, recommended Joseph Rotter to work with them. In a manner that would become their routine collaboration, the two editors would suggest topics for a column or satirical conversation. Schmerling or Rotter would then draw the illustrations and caricatures that reflected the editors’ points of view and the subject matter. The front-page graphic of the first issue introduced the trickster Mollå Nasreddin, a savant bystander. It showed a group of men, representing Muslims of South Caucasus, fast asleep. As Mirza Jalil explained in his memoir, they

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Figure 2.25  ‘The Awakening’. Source: MN 1, 7 April 1906.

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remained asleep despite the revolution. However, a few men were yawning and waking up, and the periodical was addressed to them: ‘You Muslim Brothers! I have arrived for you and your sake’ (JMQ: 34). The initial publication of Mollå Nasreddin on 7 April 1906 was a major literary event in South Caucasus and Iran. The new periodical broke new ground on several fronts. While extremely careful not to offend the Russian authorities, it was not a sycophantic publication that extolled the virtues of the Russian administration. It was also not a religious publication that called for a greater adherence to Islam, nor a Pan-Islamist journal calling for unity of Muslims under the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid. The periodical did not reproduce common Muslim prejudices of the time and instead spoke out against anti-Semitism and on the need for friendship and alliance between Muslims and Armenians. Finally, it was a champion of the urban working classes, peasants, and marginalised women and children in South Caucasus, Central Asia and Iran. Progressive newspapers of South Caucasus, including Russian, Georgian and Armenian-language publications, welcomed the new periodical.18 Soon, however, Mollå Nasreddin faced the wrath of the landed elite, politicians, clerics and bazaar merchants. As Mirza Jalil noted in his memoir: The goal of our paper was to fight delusion and superstition. As a result, on the one hand the pseudo-clerics trampled us with their charges of blasphemy. One the other hand, the khåns and the beys who were enormously respected and influential at the time despised us. When you add the animosity and vengefulness of the vagabond dervishes and seyyeds and those of the hajjis and mashhadis19 of the bazaar, you can see why the paper could not gain enough readers among the ordinary people and parties … And yet the very people who shut their ears and ran away from us, turned around while running away, looked back and saw the articles and the caricature of themselves, and laughed out loud. Then after laughing some more, they cursed us, and after cursing us some more, laughed out loud again! … And so, in one of our editorials we responded: ‘My Muslim Brothers! When you hear something funny from me and laugh out loud, don’t think you are laughing at Mollå Nasreddin … If you want to know whom you are laughing at, do pick up a mirror and look at your blessed face!’ (JMQ: 35–6) While writing satirical stories and articles for Mollå Nasreddin,20 Mirza Jalil battled a variety of political and legal issues, as well as personal tragedies. In 1907, he defended the magazine in court for an irreverent article by one of his writers; in 1910, he succeeded in commuting the prison sentence of his younger brother, Ali Akbar, who was imprisoned by the Russian authorities for participating in revolutionary events in Iranian Azerbaijan; in 1911, the principal poet of the periodical, Såber, passed away; and in 1912, Mirza Jalil’s younger sister Sakineh died, leaving him and Hamideh Khånum responsible for her three boys. However, he was also celebrated for his enormous accomplishments. The periodical became the harbinger for other satirical Azerbaijani publications such as Bahlul (1907), Zenbur (1909–10), and later

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Figure 2.26  Left: ‘For God’s sake, see how Molla Nasreddin embarrasses people. We must do something about it!’ Right: ‘Damn you, well done! Love your artistry!’ Source: MN 41, 22 December 1910.

Kelniyet (1912–13), Leklek (1914) and Tuti (1914–17), among others. All these publications focused on greater education for Muslims, waged a consistent struggle for women’s rights, and opposed Russian colonial policies. It is notable that while Volgar Tatars had both initiated the New Method education and dominated the Muslim press, Mollå Nasreddin surpassed them by becoming a pioneering satirical publication that was far more sophisticated in terms of both content and graphics.21 He continued to write plays and stage theatrical performances in Tiflis. Years later, he was elected Chairman of the Muslim Department of Tiflis People’s University, an auditorium affiliated with the university was opened in Shaitån Bazaar (Habibbeyli 1999: 113). This was how he responded to the many threats and provocations he had endured from the highly conservative community of Shaitån Bazaar. Ömar Fåeq Nemånzådeh Ömar Fåeq Nemånzådeh (1872–1937) was born to a Sunni peasant family in the South Caucasus village of Agara, near the border with Turkey. This area is home to Sunni Meskhetian Turks. His first name means Victorious Ömar,

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a reference to the second Sunni caliph, who is vilified by the Shiis. In 1882, at the insistence of his mother, who wanted him to become a cleric, Ömar Fåeq went to Istanbul to live with a maternal uncle and attend the Fatih Madrasa. Soon after, he begged his uncle to send him to the reformist Darü∞∞afaka (1882–92), a combination of high school and junior college, where he received a more modern secular education. After graduation in 1892, he worked for a few years at the Galata Post Office, where he had access to numerous European periodicals and became active in the Young Turk movement. In his memoir, he writes that he joined the ranks of ‘revolutionary Turks but fearing arrest by the police, returned to South Caucasus’.22 Back in South Caucasus, for the decade 1893 and 1903, Ömar Fåeq taught in various cities of Sheki, Shamåkhi, Ganja and Tiflis, and became intimately familiar with Figure 2.27  Ömar Fåeq. the lives of the rural and urban working classes. During Source: Ömər Faiq Nemanzadə. this period, he was arrested several times by the police, https://omarfaig.info. who had followed his radical activities in Istanbul and South Caucasus. When Ömar Fåeq and Mirza Jalil decided to publish Mollå Nasreddin, the former had a decade of experience as a journalist for Tarjomån and Sharq-e Rus, while Mirza Jalil was relatively new to journalism. But because of Ömar Fåeq’s radical history and education abroad, and because Mirza Jalil had gone to a local Russian college, worked as a police officer and had many influential contacts, they decided that he alone should apply for a licence from the authorities. In an essay called ‘What is the Magazine Mollå Nasreddin’, Ömar Fåeq recalled that at the time: Only two newspapers were published in the Azerbaijani language, Hayåt and Irshåd. Was there in fact the need for a third periodical? Only these two friends [Mirza Jalil and Ömar Fåeq] understood that these periodicals were reluctant to publish the truth in their pages and did not wish to discuss the revolutionary events [of 1905]. The two friends understood that the masses of the people had their own ideas and expectations. There were big differences between the lower classes and the upper classes. But in Baku the publishers (of Hayåt and Irshåd) did not understand this difference.23 Ömar Fåeq wrote numerous articles under about forty different pen names, including the name Mollå Nasreddin, which he and Mirza Jalil jointly used. We now know that some of the most provocative articles of Mollå Nasreddin, such as ‘Armenian and Muslim Women’ (MN 20, 19 May 1907) and ‘Two Letters to the Sheikh al-Islam of South Caucasus’ (MN 22, 2 June 1907), were written by him and not by Mirza Jalil as was previously assumed (Gurbanov 1992: 29). In one instance, Ömar Fåeq had to calm down an angry crowd in the local mosque and explain that the articles in Mollå Nasreddin had complied with Quranic requirements.

92 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN After the Bolshevik Revolution, Ömar Fåeq stopped working with Mollå Nasreddin and gravitated towards the non-Bolshevik Musavat Party, which in 1918 became the leading party of the newly established Azerbaijan Democratic Republic. However, he remained close friends with Mirza Jalil until the end. Following the death of Mirza Jalil, Ömar Fåeq moved back to the seclusion of his native community in Agara (Georgia). But the Soviet regime had a long memory: he was arrested in the autumn of 1937 and executed on charges of espionage for Turkey.24 Because Ömar Fåeq was blacklisted during the Soviet era, subsequent historiographies of Mollå Nasreddin barely mentioned him. Mirza Sharif Mirzayev, Chief Censor (1906–17) of the Muslim Press at the Censorship Committee of Tiflis, a man who had read and approved every article by Ömar Fåeq as part of his job, later noted with regret: Figure 2.28  Ömar Fåeq hears about the threats to the editor. He speaks at the mosque and dissuades the people. Source: MN 37, 24 September 1907.

 Is it possible that our future generations would not remember the name of a man who, in the harshest days for the reactionaries after the First Russian Revolution, with a great courage, ignoring all the dangers, still promoted revolutionary ideas and called up his compatriots to the light of freedom?25

Hamideh Khånum: a modern marriage and partnership In many ways, Mollå Nasreddin survived because of the sustained financial and intellectual support of Mirza Jalil’s third wife, Hamideh Khånum (1873–1955), whom he married in 1907. Indeed, she ought to be credited as both the primary financial backer and as a member of the advisory board of the periodical. As we saw, Mirza Jalil’s first two marriages had ended tragically in the deaths of his wives. Yet these two tragic losses seem to have made him more aware of the harsh lot of women and the dramatic gender disparities they faced. In his own life, he had seen how vulnerable women’s bodies and minds were to the ravages of pregnancy, miscarriage and childbirth, as well as domestic conflicts and easy divorce (talaq) practices by men. He had struggled to provide an education for his sister Sakineh and saw her vulnerability after her divorce. Mirza Jalil was raising his daughter from his first marriage, and after his sister Sakineh’s untimely death in 1912, he also supported his nieces and nephews and provided for their education. These experiences may have led this highly sensitive writer to become a sympathetic and steadfast supporter of women’s rights throughout this life.

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Early life of Hamideh Khånum Mirza Jalil’s marriage to Hamideh Khånum Javånshir was a highly unconventional one. She was born in the estate of Kahrizli in the Kåråbåkh district. The Javånshir family had ruled the Kåråbåkh Khånåte before the Russian conquest. In the decades that followed, they became one of many Russified aristocratic Muslim families whose sons became officers and important members of the imperial government (Rice 2018: 39; Javanshir 2016: viii). Her father, Ahmad bey Javånshir, attended the St Petersburg Military School and served as an officer in the Russian army. He was an intellectual known for implementing new agricultural techniques on his estate. He was also a historian, poet and translator of classical Russian poetry. Hamideh Khånum was educated at home, where she learned to read and write Russian. Her first husband, Ibrahim bey Davatdårov (1851–1902), was an aristocrat and military officer. The couple lived in the Polish city of Brest-Litovsk from 1893 to 1898. Ibrahim bey died in 1902, and a year later Hamideh Khånum also lost her father. Left with the responsibility of supporting her two children, Mina (1890–1923) and Mozaffar (1900–59), she took over the management of the family estate and the village of Kahrizli in 1903 (Javanshir 2016: xi, 35). Meeting Mirza Jalil Hamideh Khånum met Mirza Jalil in early 1905, when she came to Tiflis to arrange for the publication of her deceased father’s literary works. By this time, Hamideh Khånum was an influential thirty-three-year-old woman, living a thoroughly modern and independent life. Her fifteen-year-old daughter Mina followed her mother’s lead, and attended the Girls’ Institute of Tiflis, living in its dormitory, far away from Kahrizli. Mirza Jalil encouraged Hamideh Khånum to form a charitable society for Muslim women. She followed his suggestion and formed the Muslim Women’s Benevolent Society, which was composed of influential women of Tiflis, and received backing from Russian dignitaries. Soon after, the society opened the city’s first primary school for Muslim girls (Rice 2018: 133). She and Mirza Jalil became close acquaintances, discussing the latest political strikes and social movements as the Russian Revolution unfolded. In December 1906, Mirza Jalil proposed to her, but Hamideh Khånum turned him down, saying she was too busy running the estate. Mirza Jalil had to prove that he was devoted to her and to her cause of women’s rights before she would agree. Such an opportunity arrived several months later. In February 1907, in anticipation of a locust swarm and famine in Kåråbåkh, Hamideh Khånum was invited to present a paper at an Armenian-Muslim conference in Baku on the subject of the impending catastrophe. However, the clerics and beys of Figure 2.29  Hamideh Khånum Kåråbåkh objected to the presence of an unveiled Muslim Javånshir. Source: Habibbeyli 1987, 77. woman and she declined the invitation (HMQ: 31).26

94 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN Then, the locust swarm happened, leading to hunger and starvation in the community, which was followed by the spread of typhus. When Mirza Jalil learned how Hamideh Khånum had been denied the opportunity to speak at the Baku conference, he published the article titled ‘Muslim and Armenian Women’, in Mollå Nasreddin. Here, the author [Ömar Fåeq] quoted the Quran (24: 31–2) to argue that wearing the hijab was not mandated in the holy book, and that forcing women to veil did not make them any more chaste. In its most explosive segment, the article also argued that men who themselves engaged in all forms of perversions, from paedophilia to sex with prostitutes, had no business ordering their women around: Let’s look at ourselves a bit and see who are we? We go to dance and music gatherings and sleep with the performers We force our women to stay home, but take eight-year-old boys to bathhouses We force our women to stay home, but on the side, take others we like as sigheh wives We force our women to stay home, but spend their daily keep on blond foreign prostitutes. (MN 20, 19 May 1907) The article caused quite a commotion in the Muslim quarters of Tiflis. News reached Mirza Jalil that the Åkhunds of Shaitån Bazaar had gathered at a mosque, cursed Mirza Jalil and issued a fatwa for his death. As mentioned above, they also sent a mob to kill him. Mirza Jalil recalled this incident in his memoir: During the second year of the paper, when an article about women was published, Ömar Fåeq sent me strict instructions not to appear on the streets. Because in Shaitån Bazaar the stores had closed, a Muslim vigilante group had gathered, and was looking for me door to door. (JMQ: 56–7)

Figure 2.30  ‘Qazvin Cleric Sheikh Isså tells the locusts: “Get lost you creatures of God.” And so, the locusts got scared and left the province.’ Source: MN 42, 27 November 1911.

Marriage to Mirza Jalil The commotion eventually subsided, but Mirza Jalil’s courage to stand up for women’s rights led Hamideh Khånum to agree to marry him. In her memoir, she wrote, ‘I said yes to Mirza Jalil’s marriage proposal. More than anything else, I was attracted to his progressive ideas and wanted to be his wife and supporter’ (HMQ: 36). News that a wealthy aristocratic Muslim woman was marrying the ‘atheist’ journalist Mirza Jalil, a man with meagre means and social status, outraged the beys of her community who threatened

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to kill him. Nevertheless, the couple went ahead with their plans. They had a modest wedding at her estate. Later they had two sons, Midhat (1908–32) and Anvar (1911–79).27 Mirza Jalil stayed true to his word, and the vast majority of the articles he wrote or commissioned were about Muslim women’s rights, including issues that affected Hamideh Khånum and the other women in his life (HMQ: 34, n. 1). Shortly before their marriage in June 1907, Mollå Nasreddin provoked the highest Shii authority in South Caucasus, the sheikh al-Islam, on the subject of gender segregation. The sheikh had regularly visited the high school where Mina studied for nine years and had given guest lectures. He was also present when Mina and her friends, all unveiled young women, graduated from the Institute in May 1907. Yet in public, the sheikh al-Islam maintained that unveiled women must not speak and interact with unrelated men. Referring to Mina’s graduation ceremony, Mollå Nasreddin published an open letter (written by Ömar Fåeq) exposing the hypocrisy of the sheikh. The essay asked why the sheikh had not helped raise funds for religious studies at the school, why he had not supported the teaching of the Azerbaijani language, and why he never publicly supported girls’ education (MN, 22 May 1907). This article led to a two-week closure of the periodical by state officials (HMQ: 41). Their lives: an inspiration for his articles on women’s rights Mirza Jalil followed this pattern throughout his years as editor. Events that happened in the lives of his wife and his stepdaughter, or to those around them, as well as to women from his own more religiously observant community, became the basis for satirical stories in Mollå Nasreddin. Often, Hamideh Khånum’s life, and the lives of other independent and productive Muslim women, became the high bar to which Mirza Jalil compared women in other Muslim communities. As a result, we can safely assume that many of the stories and illustrations that compare the lives of the more modern Muslim/Russian/ Armenian families to those of traditional Muslim families of South Caucasus were in fact comparisons between the life that he and Hamideh Khånum and their friends lived, and the life of his own community of origin in Nakhchivan.

Figure 2.31  ‘Get lost, you cursed being! All we need is for you to sell newspapers to the women in their courtyards!’ Source: MN 13, 7 April 1911.

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Figure 2.32  Two Ways of Living. Source: MN 14, 7 April 1907.

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Figure 2.33  ‘What kind of creatures are these?’ Source: MN 17, 28 July 1906.

For example, when his sister Sakineh and her children came to Tiflis, Mirza Jalil took them on a tour of the city. At his request, Sakineh, who wore the traditional veil of women from Nakhchivan, also covered her face. Given the strict gender norms of Nakhchivan, it may be that Mirza Jalil was trying to protect her reputation while she was in Tiflis. However, the sight of a fully veiled Nakhchivan woman was a shock to the cosmopolitan residents of Tiflis, and a group of curious men harassed her. After this incident, which seems to have profoundly rattled Mirza Jalil, Hamideh Khånum ordered modern clothes for her sister-in-law. However, the memory of the startled people of Tiflis stayed with him and was routinely reflected in the pages of Mollå Nasreddin (HMQ: 52). An unconventional arrangement From the beginning, the couple agreed to maintain a long-distance relationship and keep their separate residences. Hamideh Khånum’s independent wealth, and the fact that the estate was their principal source of income, gave her the right to break with patrilocal norms and not move in with her husband. In Tiflis, Mirza Jalil lived in a small apartment with his daughter, as well as several young people from their extended family who were under his care. The youth reciprocated by bundling the newspapers that were to be mailed to the subscribers each week and taking them to the post office (HMQ: 45). The distance between Kahrizli and Tiflis was around 360 kilometres (220 miles). It would take at least three to four days to travel this road by carriage, the

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Figure 2.34  In Baku: newspaper sellers. Source: MN 13, 30 June 1906.

usual mode of transportation. Mirza Jalil would visit Hamideh Khånum a few times during the year. They also vacationed at the resort town of Shusha, around fifty miles from Kahrizli, which had a lively culture of plays and performances.28 Mirza Jalil was meticulous, but somewhat unconventional, in his working and living habits. He worked all night until 4 a.m., responding to the thirty or forty ‘letters to the editor’ that arrived each day and drafting articles often based on the letters he had received. According to his wife, while he was a kind and generous person, he was somewhat reclusive and had no patience for socialising that did not relate to his work. Hamideh Khånum, in her candid memoir, talks about the occasional ups and downs in their marriage. However, on the whole, the marriage brought out a more joyous side of Mirza Jalil, one that was visible when he was at the estate or vacationing with her. He once told her: I was not created for family life. I am essentially a dervish-like person. I have a difficult character. I am nervous. I confess that living with me is difficult. I have no patience to raise children. You made me a family man (quoted in Javanshir 2016: 69). Their unusual but successful marriage opened doors for both of them. Her wealth provided him with a steady income for many years; a comfortable

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house in Kahrizli; access to the large library of her father; quiet and enjoyable visits to the estate where he went fishing, horseback riding, hunting and swimming; as well as vacations at the Shusha resort. He could now devote himself to publishing Mollå Nasreddin, and from time to time help his wife with the estate – overseeing the planting of the crops and harvest, doing the bookkeeping and occasionally teaching the village children. In the process, he also learned a great deal about village life and relations between landlords and peasants. The estate grew a variety of crops such as cotton, grains, fruits and vegetables. It also housed a weaving workshop with multiple looms where Muslim and Armenian women weaved woollen shirts, socks and gloves, and produced floor mats. Many of Mirza Jalil’s articles were written in Kahrizli and reflected the lives and struggles of the working people he saw around him. In these periods, the management of Mollå Nasreddin was left with Ömar Fåeq in Tiflis (HMQ: 45). Hamideh Khånum also benefited from this arrangement. She continued to live with her children in Kahrizli, tending to her village and the considerable responsibilities of the estate, which included overseeing the harvest, the grinding of grains in their mill and the annual dredging of the local spring. Mirza Jalil’s reputation and philanthropic involvements allowed her to play a more prominent role in society, especially in activities related to women’s rights, which might have been difficult had she stayed a widow or married a more conventional husband. In Shusha and Tiflis, she organised plays, held fundraisers and benefits, and used the funds to support the education of impoverished girls and boys. She established close links with an Armenian women’s society, and together they tried to build bonds of friendship between their embattled ethnic communities (HMQ: 42). Mirza Jalil mischievously helped his wife’s fundraising activities by lampooning the parsimonious community members who did not contribute to charitable causes. He also praised those who did, such as Zeyn al-Åbedin Taghiyev. In these ways, he enticed wealthy members of the community into becoming more generous benefactors and aided her causes (HMQ: 48–50). But even with his support, many of her activities were considered outrageous by the beys and Muslim clerics, and she and her employees at the estate were routinely harassed (HMQ: 63). A woman of her own The estate was large and far enough away from major cities to provide the couple with the opportunity to shelter several political refugees. Among them were Georgians who had gone to Iran to participate in the Tabriz Siege, but fled back home when the tsarist government occupied the Province of Azerbaijan. By harbouring refugees, Hamideh Khånum benefited from the expertise of some highly educated men and women, who helped her with the farm as they quietly sought protection from the police. To prevent waves of contagious diseases, Hamideh Khånum administered first aid and personally vaccinated her community. She had to convince her village community of the benefits of inoculation, which was deemed ritually impure (HMQ: 56–7). While in Poland, she had learned herbal medicine and

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100 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN homeopathy, and thus used a variety of modern, traditional and alternative medicines to cure illnesses. Through these practices, she must have saved hundreds of lives. In 1909, she and Mirza Jalil also opened a mixed-gender school for the girls and boys on their estate, where Mirza Jalil occasionally taught during his visits.29 On top of all her responsibilities, Hamideh Khånum was a wife and mother in a blended family. There was Mirza Jalil’s daughter from a previous marriage, her son and daughter from a previous marriage, and the couple’s two sons, as well as several orphaned children of their extended family who were periodically left under their care. When Mirza Jalil’s daughter Monavvar married a military officer in 1919, Mirza Jalil could not attend, and it was Hamideh Khånum who assembled her stepdaughter’s trousseau and sent the bride off to her husband’s house (HMQ: 91).30 How involved was she with the periodical? In her letters to her husband from Kahrizli or Shusha, she routinely suggested topics for articles (HMQ: 43). We don’t know if she ever wrote articles under a pseudonym, but according to Isa Habibbeyli, ‘she was always the first to read and to criticize Jalil Memedqolizådeh’s papers, articles, and novels’ (Habibbeyli 1999: 33). She was a widely read intellectual in her own right, with a diverse set of interests, from agriculture and medicine to women’s rights and the folk tales of Kåråbåkh. After Mirza Jalil’s death, she translated a number of his works into Russian. In 1939, she became a member of the Azerbaijani Writers’ Association, and was commissioned to write a memoir of their life together. This candid work, written between 1934 and 1938, is the most comprehensive account of the life of Mirza Jalil and Mollå Nasreddin. It reveals a great deal about their remarkably modern marriage. It shows that while she was a relentless supporter of her husband and his activities, she kept her own voice and vision, as well as her independence, both during and after their twenty-five-year marriage.31 Ali-Akbar Såber Early life Ali-Akbar Tåherzådeh Såber was born in 1862 in the town of Shamåkhi, in the province of Shirvån, around 120 miles north-west of Baku. Såber’s father was a grocer of modest means who sent his son to one of the New Method schools in Shirvån, founded by the poet Azim Shirvåni (1835–88). Shirvåni had trained as a cleric in Najaf (Iraq), but turned against a religious education and instead devoted himself to running the school in Shamåkhi. Encouraged by Shirvani, Såber began to write his own poems around age twelve, initially composing ghazals (love poems) which he presented to literary assemblies in Shamåkhi (Rice 2018: 61). Two years later, his father pulled him out of school to work in his shop. Såber continued to write poetry despite the protestations of his father, who once, in a fit of anger, tore up his notebook of poems. Young AliAkbar then tried to run away from home and join a caravan headed towards Mashhad, but his father stopped him. Eventually they reconciled.

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Såber was a popular poet and an entertaining speaker who worked as a eulogiser in religious ceremonies. In his twenties, he travelled widely in Central Asia (Samarkand and Bukhara), Iran (Mashhad, Sabzevår, Nishapour, Hamadan) and Karbala (modern-day Iraq). His mother loved religious pilgrimages, and Såber and his brothers accompanied her on seven or eight of such visits to Karbala and Mashhad. These experiences made him aware of the social life and customs of people of the Middle East and Central Asia (HMQ: 60). Collaboration with Mollå Nasreddin After returning to Shamåkhi and getting married, Såber started a soap-making workshop to support his growing family. On the side, he joined various literary circles, read Figure 2.35  Ali-Akbar Såber. widely in Arabic, Persian and Russian, and continued to Source: Azerbaijan Academy of write poems. Until the age of forty-four, he continued to Sciences. write ghazal poems. After the 1905 Russian Revolution, he turned to social and political issues, thereby dramatically broadening his style and the subject matter of his poems. The most productive years of his life were 1906–11, when he became the principal poet for Mollå Nasreddin and contributed to several other Azerbaijani-language periodicals (Javanshir 2016: 170–1). He signed these radical poems with a variety of satirical pen names such as Hop Hop (hoopoe), Pillar of Religion, Weeping Laughter, Old Uncle, Old Iranian and A Scholar. Såber’s collaboration with Mollå Nasreddin made him controversial in Shirvån and the target of much attack, to the point where he was accused of being a Babi/Bahai and had to defend himself in the following poem: I confess that God is Great and I am a man of Faith O People of Shirvån. Not a believer of the new faith, I am an old Muslim O People of Shirvån I am a Shiite, but not in the ways you desire; I am a Sunnite, but not like the examples you like. I am a Sufi, but not like the ones you describe. I am a lover of truth, O people of Shirvån. (Såber 1965: 359; trans. Javanshir 2016: 172, slightly modified) Following these attacks, his soap business fell apart and his financial situation deteriorated. By now he had eight children, seven daughters and a son, and was desperate to provide for his family. In 1908, he opened a New Method school called Omid (Hope) with sixty students in Shamåkhi. But once again he was heavily criticised for teaching a modern curriculum. In 1910, he left Shamåkhi for Baku, where he worked as a teacher and edited periodicals such as Tazeh Hayåt and Haqiqat. Soon after, he became ill and had to return to Shamåkhi, where he died of kidney failure in September 1911 (Javanshir 2016: 171).

102 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN Såber’s originality Ali Akbar Dehkhodå, who exchanged witticisms with Såber in the constitutional era, believed Såber had revolutionised Azerbaijani literature: ‘He was a child of one night who travelled the way of one hundred years, and surpassed the thoughts and the writers of this age by centuries. He was incomparable in depicting political and social problems’ (quoted in Javanshir 2016: 173). Hasan Javadi has enumerated several ground-breaking aspects of Såber’s poems, among them the originality of his themes and subject matter, his lively poetical language, and his conversational style (Javadi 1987). Såber was immensely versatile and had the ability to reproduce the style of almost any classic work of Persian literature, such as those by Ferdowsi (d. 1020), Sadi (d. 1291), or Håfez (d. 1390), in the Azerbaijani language and with modern concerns: From the point of view of satirical technique, Saber uses almost all the forms and techniques employed by satirists before him. He uses a wide range of forms and meters in his works from qasideh to ghazal and from mathnavi to rubai. Saber sometimes parodies a well-known poem, or, to be more precise, he takes the first beyt [line] and writes a nazireh [poem of a parallel structure]. He beautifully translated some passages of Ferdowsi’s Shah-Nameh into Azeri verse. (Javanshir 2016: 179–80) Såber versified well-known fables and folk tales of the trickster Nasreddin for his young audiences. However, a closer look at Såber’s poems shows that he played the trickster in other ways as well. He conducted what Lewis Hyde (1998) has called a type of ‘dirt-work’ for his adult readers. He mocked and ridiculed sacrosanct people and institutions in a way that challenged the prevalent norms and orthodoxies of South Caucasian and Iranian societies. Many of his poems were written from the point of view of those who tenuously held on to power, even if that power was slipping away due to the major social and educational innovations at the turn of the twentieth century. These patriarchal men were frustrated by the insistence of intellectuals that sons must go to modern schools and develop a career, rather than work for their father, and that daughters must receive a modern education and not marry young. They were angry with the new emphasis on the rights of workers and peasants, and furious at calls for reform of marriage and divorce laws. Many of Såber’s poems were ‘satirical monologues’ (Mir Ahmadov 1962: 13), renditions of supposedly private thoughts, or personal conversations between two people, such as a landlord and his peasant, an overseer and his worker, or a husband and his wife, through which we learn about the inner thoughts of each character. For example, as strikes and protests of workers grew in South Caucasus and Iran, Såber responded with a satirical poem which was written from the point of view of the moneyed classes, and was addressed to the ‘Workers of Baku’: The wheel of fortune’s turning in a new way, nowadays. The working men begin to think they’re human, nowadays.

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They poke their noses everywhere and always, nowadays What are we coming to when working men breathe freer, nowadays? They fight for rights and disobey the overseer, nowadays? The wheel of fortune’s turning in a new way, nowadays. (Såber 1969: 222; see also Figure 1.13) Såber also provided a glimpse into discreet domestic conversations. There were poems about a man who tired of his wife and the mother of his four children, and wanted to take a second wife, but the first wife objected. Then, there was the poem about an old woman who told a young wife not to invest too heavily in her marriage, and to protect herself emotionally and financially as husbands could not be trusted. They abandoned their wives or took a second younger wife when the men became wealthier. Finally, the poem ‘Don’t Let Him Come’, was told from the point of view of a fifteen-yearold girl on her wedding night. She had been married to a seventy-year-old man, and pleaded with her aunt not to let her husband enter the bridal chamber: O, Auntie, don’t let him come! The sight of him is hateful, don’t let him come! O, God, it’s as if he is no human. For love of God, he is no husband for a woman. I was too shy to inquire when betrothed, ‘He is young and nice,’ I was told. This could be my husband! Heavens, what a Thought! O, Auntie, don’t let him come! His doings are hateful, don’t let him come! (Såber, quoted in Javanshir 2016: 176) Contribution to the Constitutional Revolution In addition to being a progressive poet who addressed class, gender and ethnic concerns of the Muslims of South Caucasus, Såber wrote over twenty long poems about Iran and, to a lesser extent, about the Young Turk Revolution. His poems on Iran, especially those that dealt with Azerbaijani revolutionaries during the Siege of Tabriz, were memorised and passed on through word of mouth. With a keen eye and a sharp wit, Såber followed the major events of the revolutionary movement in Tehran and Tabriz from afar, becoming a participant in its ongoing political discussions. More than one writer has credited Såber with keeping the spirits of the people of Tabriz high during the siege of that city, convincing the residents that their struggles, led by Sattår Khån, were not in vain. Yahya Aryanpour writes, ‘The mujahedin and freedom fighters of Tabriz were constantly singing the poems of Såber about Sattår Khån in their bunkers and the war scene, and were energised by them’ (Aryanpour 1972; 2:46). Abbas Sehhat (1874–1918), an Azerbaijani poet and friend of Såber, suggests that ‘More than an army, the works of Såber, in the five years [of collaboration with Mollå Nasreddin], energized the Iranian Constitutional Revolution’ (Aryanpour 1972: 2:50).32

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Figure 2.36  ‘Oh, Auntie, don’t let him come!’ Cartoon of Azim Azimzådeh related to poem of Såber. Source: Såber 1965, 113.

Today, there are multiple statues of Såber in the Republic of Azerbaijan. In addition, several schools, libraries, gardens and squares are named after him. His poems under the title Hope Hope Nameh, were published by Abbas Sehhat. They have gone through multiple printings in Azerbaijani, as well as Russian and Persian translations (Aryanpour 1972: 2:48–9). Abdul Rahim bey Haqverdiyev Abdul Rahim bey Haqverdiyev was born in an aristocratic family near Shusha in 1870, but experienced a rough childhood. His parents were divorced, and he lived with his father and stepmother. At the age of three, his father died, and his paternal uncle became his guardian. Eventually, he was allowed to move in with his mother and stepfather, who taught him how to read and write at the age of ten. The young Abdul Rahim attended a German-style Realschule high school in Tiflis and began to write plays at the age of fourteen. After graduation, he enrolled at the Department of Transportation Engineering at St Petersburg University. In the eight years that he was at the university, he learned French,

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Figure 2.37  (Åkhund says) ‘He’s been cursed by God because of his blasphemy!’ Our sick poet Såber on his deathbed. Source: MN 20, 29 May 1911.

audited courses at the Oriental Studies Department and immersed himself in Western European drama. He translated works by Shakespeare, Voltaire and Schiller into Russian, and translated many Russian plays into Azerbaijani languages (Rice 2018: 174). Before writing for Mollå Nasreddin, Haqverdiyev had reached a number of literary and political milestones. He wrote Daghilan Tifag (The Breaking of Unity, 1896), the first epic tragedy in the Azerbaijani language. He also wrote two popular plays when he was a theatre director in Shusha: Bakhtsiz Javaan (The Unlucky Young Man, 1900) and Pari Jådu (Nymph Magic, 1901). Both plays were about the lives of ordinary people trying to achieve personal freedom and happiness, while suffering from the rich and powerful who controlled money,  land  and  capital. In May 1906, Haqverdiyev was elected to the shortlived First State Duma of the Russian Empire as one of six Muslim representatives (Swietochowski 1985: 50). Thus, when he started to write for Mollå Nasreddin, he Figure 2.38  Haqverdiyev. was the most well-known contributor to the periodi- Source: Azerbaijan Academy of cal. Later in life, he continued to hold other important Sciences.

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Figure 2.39  Top: At the Muslim Theatre. ‘Are you crazy? Why buy an expensive ticket. Buy a cheap one then after the first act move up and sit in the front row.’ Source: MN 16, 2 May 1910.

offices. In 1918, after the formation of the Democratic Republic of Georgia, he was elected to its parliament as a representative of the Muslim community of Georgia. Next, he was appointed Ambassador of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic in Dagestan and Armenia. After the Bolshevik Revolution, Haqverdiyev became head of the Department of Theatre in the People’s Commissariat for Education, among other posts. From 1930 to 1932, he was the Chair of the Writer’s Union of Azerbaijan. Haqverdiyev died shortly thereafter in 1933.

Azim Azimzådeh Mirza Jalil and Ömar Fåeq employed over a dozen illustrators of a variety of ethnicities and religions in the course of the periodical’s life (Sardåriniyå 1991b: 123). However, between 1906 and 1911, nearly all the illustrations were drawn by Oskar Schmerling, Joseph Rotter and a handful by Azim Azimzådeh. The first two men were professional artists who trained at Russian and European schools, and they will be discussed in Chapter 3. Here, we look

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Figure 2.40  Mirza Jalil (seated, second from left), Omar Faeq (fifth from left), and Kurban Ali Sherifzadeh, educator and father of Əziz S¸ərif (seated, sixth from left), with other Azerbaijani intellectuals. The handwritten note at the top says, ‘Progressives of Iran: Mirza Jalil, Editor-in-Chief of Mollå Nasreddin.’ The caption in French also identifies them as ‘Iranian writers’, suggesting that South Caucasian Azerbaijanis were considered Iranian diasporans by many people inside and outside Iran. Circa 1910. Institute of Manuscripts of Azerbaijan, Baku.

at the autodidact Azim Azimzådeh (1880–1943), who was sometimes referred to as the ‘Såbir of Azerbaijani art’ (Aliyev 1999: 28). Azimzådeh was born in Novkhåni, near Baku, in a humble village. His father left farming to become a labourer in the Baku oil fields. Young Azim initially attended the religious maktab school, but the teacher had no patience for this talented boy, who preoccupied himself with the ‘sinful’ deeds of drawing, and so he bastinadoed him. His grandmother pulled him out of the maktab and, unbeknownst to his very strict father, signed him up at a New Method school. At his new school, Azim was encouraged to illustrate fairy tales. He never received a formal education in the arts since his father forced him to go to work at age fifteen. He recalled that from early childhood, he became a wage earner, working as a messenger or shop assistant. Only Figure 2.41  Azim Azimzådeh. in his spare time was he able to draw or educate himself Source: Azerbaijan Academy of (Aliyev 1999). Sciences.

108 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN In one of these jobs as an errand boy, he met a Russian painter and interior decorator who recognised his talent and taught him oil painting. In addition to oil painting, he soon learned the art of sculpting and became involved in theatrical productions. As with many young radicals of his generation, he gravitated towards the social democratic Himmat Party and became an active member of it. This meant he was under police surveillance and from time to time had to go into hiding (Sardåriniyå 1991b: 121). But through these political connections, he also found employment with several newspapers including Båbå-ye Amir, Mazali and Mollå Nasreddin. For one year, he was also editor of the short-lived illustrated satirical periodical Zenbur (1909–10) published in Baku. In addition, he illustrated the literary works of Åkhundov, Mirza Jalil and Narimånov, and the collected poems of Såber’s Hop Hop Nameh (1914), for which he produced over fifty caricatures, all closely connected to the themes of the poems (see Figure 2.36). In 1922, when Mirza Jalil resumed publication in Baku, Azimzådeh joined the staff of Mollå Nasreddin.

Figure 2.42  Cartoon by Azim Azimzådeh: the birth of a girl. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

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Three prominent themes stand out in his work: (1) the contrast between the comfortable lives of the rich and the impoverished; (2) criticism of clerics and religious teachings; and (3) sympathy for girls and women and opposition to child marriage and polygamy. These sentiments were clearly reflected in his artworks with titles such as The Girl Married Off Against her Will, Husband Beating His Wife and A Daughter is Born (1937). After the 1917 Revolution, Azimzådeh was embraced by the Soviet regime and became a propagandist for its revolutionary causes. For these illustrations, he was recognised in 1927 as the ‘People’s Artist of Azerbaijan’. For the next decade he directed the Baku School of Art. But in 1937, he was accused of slandering Lenin and Stalin, and was almost sent to the Gulag. Unlike many others who died for far less serious accusations, he was saved because Mir Jafar Båqerov, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan, was an admirer of his art. In addition to his journalistic contributions, Azimzådeh is remembered for his paintings, One Hundred Samples from Old Baku, and his caricature The Fascist Zoo (Aliyev 1999). Revolution and war correspondents Mollå Nasreddin sent several correspondents to Iran to report on the revolutionary events in Tehran and Tabriz, especially during the Siege of Tabriz (1908). Nearly all of these men were affiliated with Himmat Party and the Tiflis or Baku chapters of the Organisation of Social Democrats, and thus shouldered multiple responsibilities. They helped disseminate a modified version of social democratic ideas among Iranian activists, participated in the revolutionary events and also sent regular reports back to Mollå Nasreddin. These reports became the kernels for the satirical pieces which Mirza Jalil and his staff composed, as well as the caricatures they drew for the journal. Of the many men who worked as embedded journalists, three in particular stand out: Ali Akbar Memedqolizådeh, known as Mirza Ali Akbar (1872–1922), was the younger brother of Mirza Jalil. He went to Iran soon after the start of the Constitutional Revolution and was accompanied by several members of the Organisation of Social Democrats. These men were known as the Mujahidin-e Qafqazi (South Caucasian Mujahidin) inside Iran. Mirza Ali became one of the leaders of the underground social democratic Secret Centre of Tabriz and became a close friend of Sattår Khån (Javanshir 2016: 1; J. Afary 1996; J. Afary 1998). He was the distributor of Mollå Nasreddin in Tabriz and sent regular reports on the revolutionary events back to Tiflis. The Secret Centre made sure the fighters in the barracks received copies of Mollå Nasreddin, which they eagerly read and shared with others (Asadi 1997: 39; J. Afary 1998). After Russian forces occupied Azerbaijan in 1909, Mirza Ali Akbar and several other South Caucasian revolutionaries were arrested. Eventually his sentence was commuted, and he returned home (HMQ: 60–1, 67). Other correspondents of Mollå Nasreddin who became involved in the Siege of Tabriz were the journalists Mohammad Said Ordubådi (1872–1950) who sent numerous in-person reports and satirical poems covering the events in Tabriz, and the poet Aliguli Alekper Oglu Najafov (1880–1919) known

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110 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN as Ghamgusår, who also covered the siege through both articles and poems (Sardåriniyå 1991b).33 The above is by no means a comprehensive description of all the contributors to Mollå Nasreddin. Hopefully, the brief glimpse into their lives and their contributions captures the enormous talent behind the periodical and the reason for its success.34 Notes   1. For more information on the editor, writers and artists of the paper, as well as others who contributed, see Habibbeyli (1987; 1999; 2003); see also Gurbanov 1992; Aliyev 1999; the memoir by Hamideh Khånum Javanshir (2016); and Javadi 1987.  2. See Mollå Nasreddin (1906–31): Vol. 1: 1906–1907 (1988); Vol. 2: 1908–1909 (2002); Vol. 3: 1909–1910 (2005) (hereafter cited MN).  3. In 1852, Mirza Shafi Vazeh’ and Ivan Grigoriev compiled a Turkish-language textbook entitled Kitabi Türki, but the authorities did not give permission for its use. The first Azerbaijani-language textbook Veten Dili (Native Language) was published in 1882. It was the main textbook of Azerbaijani-speaking children from 1882 to 1920 (Cəfərova 2016). Thanks to Nigar Gozalova for this information.   4. For details, see Chapter 1.   5. This was also the case with Hamideh Khånum in her letters to Mirza Jalil.  6. Jalil Memedqolizådeh (1978), Gushe-yi az Khateråt va Chand Dåstån, trans. into Persian by M. Farzaneh (Tehran: Farzaneh Press), 40 (hereafter cited as JMQ).   7. Monavvar was the name of Mirza Jalil’s daughter, so this might have referred to quarrels at home.   8. This was also the subject of one of Mirza Jalil’s first short stories, ‘Ustad Zinal’ (JMQ, 70–87).  9. Hamideh Memedqolizådeh (2000), Moones-e Roozhå-ye Zendegi: Khateråtam dar båreh-ye Mirza Jalil Mohammadqolizådeh, Sardabir-e Majaleh-ye Mollå Nasreddin, trans. Delbar Ebråhimzådeh (Tehran: Pajuhandeh Press), 46 (hereafter cited as HMQ). 10. Among them were Sur-e Esråfil of Tehran (1907–8), Azerbaijan of Tabriz (1907) and Nasim-e Shemål of Rasht (1907–11). 11. Among these were Hasharat-e Arz (Tabriz, 1908), Bohlul (Tehran, 1908) and Sheikh Choghondar (Tehran, 1911). See Javanshir 2016: 158. 12. For a more detailed discussion of Dehkhodå’s contribution to modern Persian literature, see Dehkhodå 2016 and J. Afary and John R. Perry’s introduction to this volume. 13. Other sources give his birth in 1869. See Cålil Måmmådquluzadå (2004) Əsərləri, 4 cilddə, I cild, Bakı, ‘Öndər.’ s. 6. 14. Sharifzådeh became a professor of Oriental Studies at Lomonosov Moscow State University. 15. For a more detailed discussion of Mirza Jalil’s early education and schooling at the Pedagogical Seminary, see Habibbeyli 1999: 5–15. 16. Monavvar went to college, became a midwife and practised in Nahrem for many years. Later she became a public health official for the region and in 1946 became a deputy of the Supreme Soviet (Javanshir 2016: 2, n. 11). 17. Nemånzådeh became editor of several periodicals during the Soviet period but was accused of being a Pan-Turkist and executed in 1937 (Javanshir 2016: 5). 18. Others sent telegrams of congratulations including Narimån Narimånov and Haydar Khån Amu-Oghli (1880–1921), an electrical engineer who would soon become deeply involved in the Constitutional Revolution; and Ali Monsieur, a

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radical merchant who in a few short months would start the Iranian Organisation of Social Democrats in Tabriz, modelled after the Himmat Party (Sardåriniyå 1991b: 36). 19. Seyyed is one who claims heritage from the family of the prophet. Hajji is one who had made the pilgrimage to Mecca. Mashhadi is one who has made the pilgrimage to the Shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad, Iran. 20. For a more detailed discussion of these plays and short stories and their impact on the Muslim South Caucasian community, see Habibbeyli 1999: 16–28. 21. For a discussion of seven such satirical periodicals among Volga Tatars, see Rorlich 2013: 149–81. 22 . See (last accessed 13 August 2020). 23. Ömər Faiq ‘Mollå Nəsrəddin jurnalı nədir?’ Fond 26, 1936. Baku Manuscript Institute. 24. In 1944, as Stalin pushed for a pressure campaign against Turkey, he deported the entire Turkish population of Akhaltsikh of around 100,000 to Central Asia. 25. Some of this information is based on email exchanges with Yehya Kemalog˘ lu in Istanbul on 26 March 2020, with the assistance from Ulvi Pepinova, great granddaughter of Ömar Fåeq, who has created a website about him. Available at (last accessed 13 August 2020). 26. Most of this information on her life is based on her memoir. See Memedqolizådeh 2000 and Javanshir 2016. 27. Isa Habibbeyli notes that on their marriage certificate, Mirza Jalil was introduced as bey, suggesting he was a tribal chieftain, to make the marriage more palatable to her relatives (Habibbeyli 1999: 31–2). 28. At the time, with its mixed Armenian-Muslim Azerbaijani population of around 26,000, the mountainous city of Shusha was one of the larger cities of South Caucasus and also its cultural centre. 29. Azerbaijani historian Nigar Gozalova recalled that her grandfather, Gozalov Godja Mikayil Oglu, had learned how to read and write in this school and had fond memories of Hamideh Khånum and Mirza Jalil (personal communication with author, email exchange with Gozalova, 20 April 2020). 30. This marriage ended in divorce and Monavvar married Mozaffar (Hamideh Khånum’s son from her first marriage) in 1924. 31. In composing this section, we have relied on the introduction by Abbas Zamanov (2000), editor of Hamideh Khånum’s diaries (in Memedqolizådeh 2000) and the English introduction to the same by Hasan Javadi and Willem Floor to Javanshir 2016. 32. After his death, the principal poet of the periodical became Ali Nazmi, who until then had been a junior poet at Mollå Nasreddin. Nazmi was born in the village of Sarab, Ganja, and came to Iran to study in his youth. He started writing poetry at age eighteen, and his first poem was published in Sharq-e Rus. Nazmi had several satirical exchanges with Dehkhodå in Iran. Mirza Jalil refers to him as our ‘Second Såber’ (Sardåriniyå 1991b: 135–6). Two other poets of the periodical were Gazanfar Khåligov and Ismail Åkhundov (Habibbeyli 2003, 43). 33. Their stories will be discussed in a future volume on Mollå Nasreddin and the Iranian Constitutional Revolution. 34. For information on other contributors, see Javanshir 2016, especially the footnotes by the editors.

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CHAPTER 3

Tiflis and its Hybrid Artistic Community

Tiflis, where Moll å Nasreddin was published and most members of its staff lived, was home to multiple diasporic communities with sophisticated artistic cultures. We begin with a brief examination of the city’s history, politics and economy, as well as its upheavals at the turn of the ­twentieth century. Next, we turn to three ethnic and professional communities of the city that in various ways helped shape the periodical, either as readers or contributors to the journal. These were (1) the Iranian-Azerbaijanis, both merchants and workers; (2) the German-Georgian c­ ommunity – especially its artists and architects; and (3) the itinerant community of photographers – Georgians and especially Armenians – who travelled to neighbouring communities as well as to Iran and Turkey. In the last part of this chapter, we turn to the two major artists of the periodical – Oskar Schmerling and Joseph Rotter – and the ways in which their ethnic and educational backgrounds, as well as political and artistic views, influenced their contributions. Tiflis: a bridge between East and West The city of Tiflis was the administrative and cultural capital of Tsarist Russia on its western periphery, and a magnet for artists and intellectuals from other parts of Russia and Europe. The turn of the twentieth century witnessed the growth of a variety of political parties and organisations on the liberal-to-left spectrum, unleashing new ideologies that influenced a generation of writers, playwrights and artists. The city’s entrenched artistic reputation protected the writers and artists of Mollå Nasreddin and provided them with a safe space to explore their creativity. As Mirza Jalil noted in his memoir, the journal could not have been published further south, closer to Baku and the Iranian border, where a larger Muslim community would have shut down the radical periodical. Even in Tiflis, Mirza Jalil and Ömar Fåeq had to be extremely careful. Their print shop was located in the Armenian community, and Mirza Jalil’s residence was in the Georgian sector of the city, sheltering them from the occasional outbursts of the more traditional classes of their own community.1 Tiflis provided remarkably fertile ground for the publication of Mollå Nasreddin. The city had an impressive theatre industry, which had started in the mid-nineteenth century, and housed a variety of art schools. The

tiflis and its hybrid artistic community

Figure 3.1  Old Tbilisi. Source: https://iberiatravel.ge/.

latest plays were brought in from St Petersburg and Europe. Local artists routinely travelled to academic art centres in St Petersburg and Munich. Tiflis’s newspapers and literary circles discussed state-of-the-art developments in European arts and encouraged similar appropriations in their hometown. Tiflis was also home to a number of Armenian photographers who helped disseminate the latest techniques in photography, sparking a new interest in Realist painting in Tiflis as well as in Tabriz and Tehran, where they travelled routinely. The city was home to a new generation of Georgian Realist painters who were able to overcome the division between Orientalist, Colonialist and Realist paintings of their time. They created a new form of Critical Georgian Realism that brought East and West together, one that was sympathetic towards local populations of Muslims, Georgians and Armenians, and also highly critical of their social and political realities. Before 1860, Tiflis’s economy centred on its transit trade with Iran, which was controlled by Armenian merchants who worked mostly with Russian and Iranian traders. Georgian notables lived on their large estates in the countryside, which were tilled by serfs. A majority of what is modern-day Georgia remained agrarian. The emancipation of serfs in 1861, followed by a gradual change from transit trade and craft production to large-scale industry, turned Tiflis into an important commercial hub (Suny 1988: 116–17). Soon, immigration from the Georgian countryside, other Russian cities and Eastern Europe increased, giving the city its transnational diasporic and multi-ethnic flavour. At the turn of the twentieth century, Tiflis was both a centre of Russian rule for the entire viceroyalty of Caucasia, and an eclectic cosmopolitan city where ‘the East and West met each other’ (Bulia and Janjalia 2002: 88). It was a vibrant centre of politics, with more than twenty political parties and

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Figure 3.2  Old multicultural Tbilisi. Source: Georgia About https://georgiaabout.com/2014/03/12/paintings-of-old-tbilisi-by-giovannivepkhvadze/.

movements. The city had wide boulevards lit with large gas lamps. Tiflis also boasted a unique variety of architectural styles, often consisting of twoor three-storeye buildings with a remarkable mix of Russian Neoclassical, Renaissance, Baroque and Moorish architecture, as well as Art Nouveau and pseudo-Georgian styles, modelled after eighteenth-century Georgian mansions. Tiflis combined old Middle Eastern forms of entertainment, such as wrestling and naqqåli poetry recitation, with European ones. Its gardens, modelled after German beer gardens, were home to vocal and instrumental musical performances, while the city of Tiflis was also a centre of fashion. The French writer Alexandre Dumas, who travelled to the city in 1858, wrote: ‘Thanks to the French colony, which is basically made up of Parisian tailors and fashion designers, Georgian women lag behind the fashion in the Italian Opera and large Boulevards by only two weeks.’ Finally, what made the city truly stand out at the time were its special effect theatres, circus acts and an opulent opera house – the Tiflis Imperial Theatre, one of the oldest opera houses in Eastern Europe (Bulia and Janjalia 2002: 92). When Mirza Jalil started publishing Mollå Nasreddin, Tiflis had a population of around 160,000. According to the census of 1897, a plurality of the residents were Armenians (30 per cent), followed by Russians (28 per cent), and Georgians (26 per cent).2 The German-Polish community was about 4.5 per cent of the population. The Muslim community was a small minority. Tatars (Caucasus Azerbaijanis) were around 5,600 people (around 3.6 per cent). Persian-speaking and Persian subjects, meaning migrants and citizens,

tiflis and its hybrid artistic community

Figure 3.3  The Georgian National Opera and Ballet Theatre of Tbilisi, formerly known as the Tiflis Imperial Theatre.

were around 10,000 people (6 per cent of the population) (Atabaki 2003: 416; Raisniyå 2001: 203).3 Though Armenians had resided in the city since the Middle Ages, most were migrants from Iran and the Ottoman Empire who had arrived after the Russian conquest of the region. By the 1870s, Tiflis had become the centre of eastern-Armenian cultural life, second only to Constantinople. Armenians formed a majority of the urban middle-class bourgeoisie and dominated the city’s trade, thereby challenging the political and economic authority of the Georgian nobility. Ronald Suny points out that ‘of the 150 largest industrial establishments in Georgia in 1900, 44 percent belonged to the Armenians, about the same amount belonged to Russians and foreign capitalists, and only 10 percent were owned by Georgians and 2 percent by Azerbaijanis’ (Suny 1988: 118). Rise of social democracy in Tiflis The Georgian nobility’s call for nationalism had little appeal to Georgian workers. Soon, there was a young generation of Russian-educated Georgian intellectuals who gravitated towards socialist ideas, finding common cause with striking workers. Tiflis quickly became the scene of regular industrial strikes, including those by railroad workers who called for better pay and greater dignity. When these Georgian workers and activists were arrested

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116 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN by the police and expelled from the city, they turned to organising peasant boycotts of large estates in rural areas (Suny 1986). Gradually, social democracy gained a strong foothold in the city. Georgian social democrats were unique in several ways. They had close ties to an ethnic labour movement, were involved in mass peasant agitations and, while they campaigned against the Russian administrators and the Armenian bourgeoisie, they saw themselves as part of an all-Russian movement against Russian autocracy (Suny 1988: 163). When the Russian Socia l Democratic Workers Party (RSDWP) broke into Menshevik and Bolshevik wings in 1903, a majority of those in Tiflis sided with the Menshevik wing. Menshevik social democrats argued for collaboration between the ­progressive wing of the bourgeoisie and the workers, as they believed Russia was not yet ready for a socialist revolution. By 1905, the Mensheviks had become ‘the de facto leaders of a massive national liberation movement, the dimensions of which had not been seen elsewhere in the Russian Empire’ (Suny 1988: 145). The people of Tiflis were active participants in the Russian Revolution of 1905, and the city was the site of mass strikes and demonstrations. The city also did not entirely escape the 1905 Muslim-Armenian ethnic war (Gozalova & Amirov 2021). In the State Duma elections of 1906, Mensheviks won a majority of the seats from the Tiflis Governate. After Tsar Nicholas II (1868–1918, r. 1894–1917) dissolved the Duma and called for new elections, Mensheviks once again won a plurality in the State Duma, only to see the parliament dissolved again by Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin (in office 1906–11). The premier arrested the social democratic deputies and brought about a new era of political repression. Unable to win greater support, the leading Bolsheviks of Tiflis, who were a small minority, left the city for Baku, where Bolsheviks had had more Figure 3.4  Poster of the Russian Revolution of 1905 success recruiting oil workers (Suny from L’Assiette au Beurre, Paris, July 1905. 1988: 174). Source: https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-russianrevolution-1905cartoon-from-lassiette-au-beurre-parisjuly-57293849.html.

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The Iranian diasporic community Iranians continued to play a dominant role in the economy of Tiflis. European and Russian goods (such as fur) entered Iran through Russia, while Iranian commodities (carpets, silk, engravings and other handicrafts) were exported to Europe and Russia via Georgia (Sanikidze 2008: 169). Numerous streets, parks and neighbourhoods kept their Persian names, and the city’s architecture retained a strong Iranian flavour. Iranian master builders were known as skilled designers and craftsmen who built safe and beautiful buildings and palaces (Alexidze 2008: 254). Some professions were held exclusively by Iranians, as in the carpet stores or famous bathhouses of Tiflis, known for their medicinal benefits. There were also several Iranian charitable and cultural organisations, which primarily helped impoverished immigrant workers and their children, including one that was run by elite Muslim women. The Iranian community also built

Figure 3.5  A Russian customer buying carpets from a Persian merchant. Image from Dmitri Ermakov. Source: Photographs of Dmitri Ermakov, 1846–1916, Rolf Werner Friedrich Gross. https://georgiaabout.com/2012/10/13/about-history-the-photography-of-dmitri-ermakov/.

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118 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN schools and contributed to the teaching of the Persian language in the diaspora community (Sanikidze 2008: 169). Tiflis had two Persian-language publishing houses and thus was an ­important centre for the publication of Persian textbooks, literary works, historical accounts and periodicals. The Iranian consulate in Tiflis was one of the most important foreign missions in the city and a crucial site for cultural, educational and charitable functions. Iranian publications were sent to Tiflis, and could be found in its reading rooms and libraries. Although initially the consulate did little to alleviate the impoverished lives of migrant Iranian workers, after the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, the Iranian consulate became more involved in charitable and educational activities in Tiflis, Baku and Yerevan, and also lent their support to the democratic movement in Iran (Khosrowpanåh 1999). The local Shii Muslim population of Tiflis and the Iranian migrant community both celebrated Nowruz (Persian New Year), observed the Ramadan fast and participated in Muharram festivals. Tiflis troubadours performed popular Iranian songs, while Iranian jesters engaged in acrobatic acts, walked on stilts and tight ropes, and entertained the public (Sanikidze 2008: 165–7).

Figure 3.6  Bathhouses of Tbilisi: domes of sulphur baths and Metekhi Church with crescent moon in the sky. Source: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/domes-sulphur-baths-metekhi-churchcrescent-717515797.

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Figure 3.7  ‘Preoccupations of Muslims throughout the year’. Clockwise from top left: Nowruz, month of Muharram, Eid Qurban holiday, and fasting in Ramadan. Source: MN 5, 1 February 1909.

Although the sheikh al-Islam, the leader of South Caucasian Shiis, lived in Tiflis, the Muslim community of the city, including its Iranians, was known for its relatively lax observance of Muslim dress and dietary rules. Visitors from Iran reported with shock that Muslim women did not wear the veil and face covering, while men drank wine and beer, and partook of non-halal meat4 at public events (Alexidze 2008: 254; Raisniyå 2001: 199). Iranian writers, poets, painters, musicians and journalists found their way to Tiflis to linger or live in the freer atmosphere of the city for a few years. The most well known of these men was Mirzå Abdul Rahim Tålibi, aka Tålibov (1834–1911), a prolific author, translator and social reformer, who migrated from Iranian Azerbaijan to Tiflis in 1851. Tålibov was influenced by Åkhundov and enamoured of the many performances of his popular plays in Tiflis (Raisniyå 2001: 197). A few young Iranian artists were also trained in Tiflis. These included Mir Hussein (1881–1963) and Abbas Rassåm (1892–1975), whose father was a painter in the court of Mozaffar al-Din Shah. The brothers stayed in Tiflis from 1903 to 1908. The younger brother later became a prominent caricaturist in Iran. Some of his watercolours can be found at the National Museum of Georgia. Another artist was Hussein Tåherzådeh Behzåd (1887–1962), a well-known Tabriz

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120 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN constitutionalist, who fled to Tiflis from government persecution around 1907. Behzåd, who was trained as a caricaturist, worked for Mollå Nasreddin and may have been an apprentice to Schmerling. He also published cartoons in Iranian satirical periodicals of the Constitutional era.5 Iranian social reformers maintained strong ties to the city before and after the Constitutional Revolution of 1906. Hasan Taqizadeh and Muhammad Ali Tarbiyat, who became prominent constitutionalists had visited Tiflis in 1904. They met with Muslim intellectuals and marvelled at the city’s theatres, museums and other modern institutions. From the earliest stages of the Constitutional Revolution, Muslim, Armenian and Georgian revolutionaries came to the aid of the Iranian cause. Many were residents of Tiflis or Baku. Some were members of the Baku and Tiflis wings of the RSDWP, while others belonged to the Muslim social democratic Himmat Party. Many supported the Iranian Organisation of Social Democrats, which had started in Tiflis and Baku, Figure 3.8  Shaitån Bazaar in Tiflis. (Seyyed to Georgian) ‘Buddy, I beg you! and after 1906 opened branches in Iranian cities Let’s go get a drink!’ such as Tabriz, Rasht, Enzali, Tehran, and even in Source: MN 51, 21 December 1908. smaller towns (Afary 1996: 81–8). In June 1908, when Muhammad Ali Shah bombed the Iranian parliament, many fled to Tabriz, then crossed the border to Istanbul, Baku or Tiflis. Yahya Dowlatåbådi, who visited Tiflis in the summer of 1908, wrote about the residents’ support for the Iranian cause: A centre of the Ferqeh-ye Mujahidin [Organisation of Social Democrats] is here. Georgians and Armenians of this city are also progressive and have extended their support to Iranian freedom fighters. Indeed, at this very time a group of them, armed with weapons, have reached Azerbaijan through any means possible and are helping the Iranian mujahidin. (Dowlatåbådi vol. 3, p. 17, 1952) Soon, between 500 and 800 revolutionaries from South Caucasus were inside Iran. They helped resuscitate the beleaguered constitutional movement in Tabriz and Rasht, and in July 1909, joined forces with Iranian constitutionalists to re-establish the democratic order in Tehran. The German diasporic community In 1815, Tsar Alexander I (r. 1801–25) invited German peasants to settle in South Caucasus to form agricultural colonies. Migration followed from Prussia,

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Austria and Switzerland, forming several German-speaking migrant colonies in the region, including two known as ‘New Tiflis’. Most German migrants were Protestants, and were aided by the Evangelical Lutheran churches, though there were also small colonies of German Catholics. The migrants opened their own schools and churches. They retained many aspects of their German culture including their language, architecture, modes of transportation and costume. They even opened their own beer gardens for entertainment. But they were also eager to build ties with other communities. Most became trilingual, learning Georgian and studying Russian at school. In the second half of the nineteenth century, German immigrants entered the manganese, iron ore and copper industries. Others became scientists, chemists, electricians, hotel owners and brewers. Until World War I, German immigrant communities dominated the electrical, transportation and chemical industries of Georgia.6 When the Russian conquest of the Caucasus finally came to an end in the late 1860s, a new era of peace emerged in the region, one that encouraged the flourishing of the arts and sciences. German scientists, technicians, architects and artists of Tiflis proliferated in the late nineteenth century. Some were second- and third-generation immigrants who attended universities in Moscow, St Petersburg or Munich before returning to Tiflis. Others were visiting German artists and architects, who stayed for a few years or decided to migrate to Tiflis for good. As a result, European arts and culture began to vastly grow in influence in the city. German immigrants, including artists, played an important role in the artistic renaissance of Tiflis. In 1873, the Tiflis Fine Arts Society, with its accompanying art school, library and museum, was opened. The school invited European art professors to teach painting, drawing, sculpture and architecture. Academic connections between the Tiflis Fine Arts School, the St Petersburg Academy of Arts and the Munich Academy of the Arts were strong. Talented students who started at the Tiflis school might be recommended to continue at the St Petersburg school and then, if quite promising, encouraged to complete their education at the Munich Academy. At the turn of the nineteenth century, Munich was a major artistic centre in the German Empire. The city housed a magnificent art collection dating from the sixteenth century, and artistic endeavours were aided by the economic prosperity that followed the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. In the mid-1880s, the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Munich had 5,600 students, many from other nations. Eventually, the Munich Academy developed a ‘Russian Circle’, which comprised the various ethnicities of Russia, including the GermanGeorgians of Tiflis (Tchogoshvili 2006: 114). The city also held an annual international exhibit (Hiles 1996: 1–17). The 1880s also witnessed a dramatic growth in socialist politics in Germany.7 Greater literacy and leisure time among the new middle classes, and the much larger working classes, encouraged publications that were aimed at mass audiences, and between 1888 and 1900, more than 2,000 new publications appeared (Hiles 1996: 63). The reputation of Tiflis as the cultural centre of the Caucasus was partly due to the city’s exquisite architecture and its contributions to the art of painting. By the 1870s, Tiflis housed many fine arts and musical societies,

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Figure 3.9  St Petersburg Academy of Arts. Source: http://www.saint-petersburg.com/buildings/academy-of-arts-building/.

Figure 3.10  Munich Academy of the Arts. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:New_Academy_of_Fine_Arts,_ Munich,_Bavaria,_Germany-LCCN2002696135.jpg.

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with their affiliated publications, where literary and artistic criticism was encouraged. German immigrants made a particular contribution to the city’s architecture. They built some of the most well-known buildings of Tiflis, among them its famous opera house and Tiflis Imperial Theatre, as well as churches, hotels, museums, libraries, city halls and private mansions. The state aided the development of the arts in Tiflis, as it commissioned large murals and frescos of battle scenes in an attempt to memorialise the Russian conquest of the Caucasus. One of the main architects of this period was Oskar Schmerling’s maternal uncle, Albert Salzmann (1833–97). He had studied at the St Petersburg Academy of Arts, travelled to Europe, where he became a renowned architect, and returned to Tiflis to become one of the most prolific and admired architects of the city. His son, Alexander Salzmann (1874–1934), Schmerling’s younger cousin, was also a well-known painter and art director. Alexander studied at the Munich Academy of the Arts and later under Kandinsky, where he continued his work in the Expressionist style of Cézanne and Matisse. He was the Art Director of the Tiflis Opera Theatre from 1918 to 1920 (Tchogoshvili 2006: 33). Many Georgian artists were trained by Franz Roubaud (1856–1928), a Russian artist who had also studied at the Munich Academy of the Arts. The vast battle scene paintings of Roubaud, as well as those of his contemporaries and their students, became extremely popular. They were often panoramic, which meant that when audience members stood in the middle of the 360-degree visual medium, they experienced a form of virtual reality, as if they were actually present at the battle. The state commissioned many of these large paintings, such as a battle scene celebrating Russia’s 1859 victory over the Dagestani Muslim leader Imam Shamil (1797–1871), the first Muslim leader to lead a serious resistance against Russian colonialism in North Caucasus in the nineteenth century. These paintings provided a reliable source of income for the fledgling Tiflis Fine Arts Society and its artists. While Roubaud’s work included pioneering images of native Muslim Circassians in brave poses, as a whole, these projects tended to glorify Russia’s military conquests of North Caucasus, making some Georgian literary critics uncomfortable (Tchogoshvili 2006: 38). Another source of income for the artists were assignments by the Caucasian Museum of Tiflis, headed by Gustav Radde (in office 1867–1903). He invited German artists to paint frescoes that captured the Georgian countryside, the beautiful climate and its varied ethnic populations. Among the artists who were invited to the city was the German painter and illustrator Franz Xavier Simm (1853–1918), who had studied the Old Masters in Rome and worked on the Vatican Frescoes for five years before coming to Tiflis. Simm and his wife, Mariam Mayer, lived and worked in Tiflis from 1881 to 1888. They created a variety of frescoes for the Caucasian Museum, drawing on Greco-Roman and biblical themes. The artistic community of Tiflis was delighted to have such celebrated European artists in its midst. But it was also concerned that Simm refused to take into account the local history and culture of the Caucasus in his work, and had not ‘properly studied the characteristics of the Caucasus

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Figure 3.11  Capture of Imam Shamil, by Franz Roubaud. Source: https://www.alamy.com/capture-of-shamil-roubaud-f-1886-capture-of-imam-shamil-byrussian-troops-in-1859-during-the-caucasus-war-1886-188-plenenie-shamilja-rubo-1886-image​ 210960593.html.

and its diverse population’ before embarking on his vast mythological paintings (Tchogoshvili 2006: 101). The third generation of German immigrants, those who were born and raised in Georgia, and more recent German artists from Europe who arrived in late nineteenth century, were drawn to the radical ‘Russian Wanderers’ school of art, also known as the Society for Travelling Art Exhibitions, and various left-of-centre movements. The Wanderers had left the St Petersburg Academy and formed their own cooperative in protest at its rigid training. They soon began to portray the harsh life of peasants and rural people, addressing the social and ethical concerns of their time. It was this generation of artists that became far more attuned to the ethnic diversity of the Russian Empire, and who would break with the colonial artistic mould. They became pioneers of Realism and Critical Realism in Georgia, and showed great affinity for other cultures and people. They created art that was inspired by European heritage, but that was critical of the tsarist regime, and expressed the varied sensibilities of the multi-ethnic South Caucasian and Central Asian societies.

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Itinerant Georgian and Armenian photographers Mollå Nasreddin included a large number of cartoons, illustrations and portraits of Iranian events and figures, which fatefully resembled their subjects, even if they were satirical in nature. But how did Schmerling and Rotter have access to these images if they never travelled to Iran? They probably had some assistance from their Iranian apprentices. However, the primary inspiration might have come from the large volume of pictures of Iran, its architecture and its people, as well as the events of the Constitutional Revolution that were circulating in Tiflis in this period. Therefore, we need to briefly look at the photographic connections between Iran and Tiflis, a subject that brings us to itinerant Armenian photographers. Ever since the publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism, the history of photography has been deeply influenced by postcolonial discourses which have analysed the impact of the new technology on the colonised and Third World countries. Scholars have paid great attention to how the camera was put to the use of colonial powers, how photos framed colonised people as abject, uncouth and savage, and thus justified the civilising mission of the colonial ruler. But as Markus Ritter and Staci Scheiwiller have noted, this exclusive focus on the colonial appropriation of photography has often ignored the fact that there were also vernacular photographers, what they have called ‘Indigenous lens(es)’, who emerged almost immediately after the technology became available in the region: ‘Photographic practices could be heterogeneous and could take on a local flavor, adaptation or hybridization, like modernity itself, which photography was part of, if one accepts that modernity produced different versions that were specific in particular regions’ (Ritter and Scheiwiller 2018: 13). The growth of commercial photography in Tiflis ultimately facilitated the birth of a new form of Realist and Critical Realist school of art in the region, and soon after in Iran. Art historian David Roxburgh writes that the introduction of ‘new technologies of representation’ such as lithography and photography, and the arrival of such mass-produced images from Russia, South Caucasus and Europe, altered traditional arts in Iran (Roxburgh et al. 2017: 3). Lithography and photography also inspired a new genre of satirical illustrations and cartoons, which dealt with the everyday life of people. Tiflis played a vital role in the dissemination of photographic arts, and was home to many talented photographers. It was also an important centre for the new Realist and Critical Realist schools of literature, which focused on the Muslims, Georgians, Armenians, Kurds and other ethnic populations of the region, including those of Iran and Turkey. We can thus say with some certitude that it was this artistic milieu, a unique blend of talented photographers, Realist and Critical Realist painters inspired by a variety of leftist ideologies, that contributed to Mollå Nasreddin’s social realism.8 Itinerant photographers of Tiflis played a vital role in disseminating the new medium. Among them was the Georgian Dmitri Ivanovich Caribaggio Ermakov (1846–1916), one of the greatest photographers of pre-revolutionary Georgia.9 On his mother’s side he was part of the German-speaking Georgian

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126 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN community of Tiflis. Ermakov became a military photographer during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–8 and travelled extensively, taking photographs of various ethnic communities he came into contact with. Around 1870, Ermakov opened a photo studio in Tiflis, where he sold photos of locations and people he had visited and captured with his camera. He was passionate about ethnographic photography. He travelled to remote villages of South Caucasus, Central Asia, Iran and the Ottoman Empire, where he took photos of many diverse subjects. Many of these photos capture the daily lives and occupations of ordinary people. In one photo, there is the Russian customer in a black fedora and white jacket, buying a carpet from an Iranian merchant in the bazaar (see Figure 3.5). In others, there are scenes from bathhouses and the skilled body workers of these institutions. These photographs, estimated at around 30,000 negatives, documented the lifestyles, customs and clothing of the people of the region from the late nineteenth century. They remain an important ethnographic record of the inhabitants. In his lifetime, Ermakov published 192 albums of his photos, documenting the ethnic complexity of the villages and towns of South Caucasus,

Figure 3.12  Scenes from the bathhouses, by Ermakov. http://rolfgross.dreamhosters.com/ErmakovCollection/MyCollection.html Source: Dmitri Ivanovich Ermakov. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index. php?curid=3314226.

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where he paid particular attention to the ethnicities and social classes of the region and their local costumes. Ermakov lived in Iran for a while. He spoke French and Persian, which, combined with his enormous gift as a photographer, made him a welcome presence in the court of Nåsir al-Din Shah (r. 1848–96). In Tehran, he received the title of Court Photographer (akkåsbåshi) from the shah and was able to photograph the harem women, including the shahs favourite Anis al-Dowleh. In the 1870s, Ermakov was employed in the Royal School Photography Studio (Akkaskhåneh-ye Madreseh-ye Mobårak) of the Dar al-Funun of Tehran, where he taught photography to a new generation of Iranians (Ritter and Scheiwiller 2018: 151). Another prolific photographer, who contributed to the burgeoning art of photography in Iran, was the Armenian Antoin Sevruguin (1851–1933).10 Sevruguin was a student of Ermakov and was trained by him, first in Tiflis and later in Tehran, where they both worked. There was a close connection between student and pupil in style and even in photos attributed to them. Some of the photos attributed to Sevruguin might have been taken by Ermakov, who gave the negatives to his student when he returned to Tiflis (Ritter and Scheiwiller 2018: 164).11 Sevruguin sided with the constitutionalists and photographed some of the major historic events and personalities of this period. His photos appeared in Iranian and some European newspapers of the time, though not always with his signature (Zokå 2009: 136). These images circulated back to Tiflis and other cities in South Caucasus, and may have been a useful aid for the artists of Mollå

Figure 3.13  Anis al-Dowleh, a favourite wife of Nåser al-Din Shah. A photo by Ermakov. Source: By Dmitri Ivanovich Yermakov. https://rolfgross. dreamhosters.com, public domain, Yermakov; https://www.pinterest. com/pin/144044888055335877/.

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Figure 3.14  Administering bastinado at a textile shop. A photo by Sevruguin. Source: Bohrer 1999, 74.

Nasreddin in their descriptions of the major events of the Constitutional Revolution.12 The discussion above suggests there were close commercial and artistic ties between Tiflis and Iranian cities such as Tabriz and Tehran. Photographs of the everyday life of the Iranian people, as well as of major political figures, were easily available in the photo shops of Tiflis. These photos would also have been available to the artists of Mollå Nasreddin, who were canvassing for inspiration and looking for images and descriptions of Iranian political figures to present in the periodical. Georgian Realism and Critical Realism The art of photography had inspired a new Realist school of painting in Europe and Russia. The same was now happening in South Caucasus among both academic and non-academic artists. The most well-known Georgian Realist artist, a contemporary of Ermakov, Schmerling and Rotter, was the autodidact painter Niko Pirosmanashvili (1862–1918), also known as Pirosmåni. Today,

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Figure 3.15  Constitutionalists gather outside the British legation in Tehran, Summer 1906. Image attributed to Sevruguin. Source: https://www.thenelsoncollection.co.uk/artworks/categories/2/9523/.

he is considered the father of modern Georgian primitivist painting. Russian avant-garde artists discovered Pirosmåni in 1912, when his work became a sensation in Moscow, but he was already well known in his hometown of Tiflis a decade earlier. Pirosmåni’s work was inspired by the vast popularity of photography in Tiflis, thanks to Ermakov and his contemporaries. Pirosmåni maintained an idyllic view of rural life. His art, with its rich poetic celebration of colours and its deliberate childlike naiveté, suggested a romantic vision of rural life and historical events. Almost every bakery, eatery, green grocery, pub, wine cellar and wine shop had a mural, window or sign that was painted by Pirosmåni, as the impoverished artist used the streets and stores as galleries for his prolific art in return for his daily meals and wine. Pirosmåni was interested in some of the same subjects as the Russian Realist painters.13 His inspiration came from both urban and rural scenes. His art focused on fruit hawkers, porters, wine growers, vendors and farm life. His paintings combined elements from rustic folk art, Georgian crafts, Byzantium and, especially, Persian arts. Pirosmåni modelled his animal

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Figure 3.16  Mousha with a Wine Skin and Mousha with a Keg, by Niko Pirosmåni (1912). Sources: Niko Pirosmani, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons https://www. wikiart.org/en/niko-pirosmani/mush-with-wineskins-1912; Pirosmåni 1983, 119–20.

and human figures on prints in Persian carpets, as well as eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Iranian portraits and drawings. One surviving work of his shows the Iranian emblem of the lion and the sun (Figure 3.18).14 Many of his works show men with typical facial features of the Iranian plateau, features that were shared by Iranians as well as some Georgians, Armenians, Caucasus Azerbaijanis and other inhabitants of the region. The men were often workers or peasants with dark eyes, thickly arched eyebrows, a bony protruding nose and a heavy black moustache, as well as a round chin and cheeks. Pirosmåni’s landscapes included scenes of life that could be seen in any Middle Eastern or Central Asian community, such as feasts in a garden where people joyously sat cross-legged on the ground and around a spread laden with food and fruits (Kuznetsov and Bagratishvili 1983). Pirosmåni even produced a painting of Imam Shamil’s last war with Prince Bariatinsky in 1850 (Figure 3.19). Here, instead of drawing Shamil in humiliating terms, for example as captured or on his knees, he is shown with great dignity and on almost equal terms with the prince. Shamil stands tall, looking the officer in the eyes and holding his own. The cliff on which Shamil is

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standing is only slightly shorter than the one on which the prince stands, suggesting a historical parallelism that was not common in Russian depictions of the Dagestani leader. Tiflis was also home to a new generation of academically trained Realist and Critical Realist artists, who became fascinated with ethnographic portraits of people of the East. The city was the scene of numerous artistic exhibitions in the 1880s, thereby introducing the young artists to a variety of genres. Many were trained by the Tiflis Fine Arts Society or the Caucasian Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts. They went to the St Petersburg Academy of the Arts, where they entered the circle of the Russian Wanderers, and also studied at the Munich Academy of the Arts. In Georgia, they travelled widely in North and South Caucasus, as well as Central Asia. They began to paint mosques, bazaars, peddlers, and highly sympathetic portraits of the rural and urban poor, including the Muslim populations of the region. Richard Karl Zommer (1866–1939), a contemporary of Schmerling, was a famous painter and graphic artist born in Munich. He studied at the St Petersburg Academy of Arts, Figure 3.17  Iran emblem from where he was influenced by the Russian Realist school; he Qajar Newspaper. travelled widely in South Caucasus, including to modern-day Source: The National Iranian Armenia and Azerbaijan; and he spent a decade (­1890–1900) Archives. in Central Asia, including Turkmenistan, where he worked as an ethnologist and on archaeological expeditions. He then studied at the Munich Academy of the Arts before settling in Georgia. His paintings were celebrated for their ‘ethnographic motives’, glimpses of everyday life, their simplicity, and their strong and beautiful colours (Tchogoshvili 2006: 104). Zommer produced highly sympathetic paintings of the people of South Caucasus, its veiled women and turbaned men. His compositions, with titles such as, In Front of a Mosque, Woman in Veil, Caucasian Caravan (Figure 3.20) and Mosque of Shah Ismail in Tiflis, often tell stories of people, their customs and practices. While he was considered a distinguished European Figure 3.18  Iran emblem from Pirosmåni. The lion and sun landscape painter of the period, he was also fascinated by emblem of Iran. Central Asia, a combination which turned him into an Source: Private Collection of original artist (Tchogoshvili 2006: 106). Zommer was a Iraklji Andronikov, 1908–1990. founder of the Caucasian Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts in Tiflis and took part in its many exhibitions. He trained a number of talented students, including Lado Gudiashvili (1896–1980), leaving a lasting impact on his contemporaries in Tiflis. Photography also aided the birth of a new school of Critical Realism in Georgian painting, and artists of this era were often involved with both mediums. Giorgi (Gigo) Gåbåshvili (1862–1936) was a photographer and

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Figure 3.19  Shamil with Bodyguard and Prince Bariatinsky. Source: Pirosmåni 1983.

Figure 3.20  Caucasian Caravan, by Karl Zommer. Source: https://www.sphinxfineart.com/inventory-detail-page/832001/0/caucasiancaravan.

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Figure 3.21  The Market, by Gigo Gåbåshvili. Source: https://www.sphinxfineart.com/artists/244151/giorgy-ivanovich-gigogabashvili.

painter, as well as a contemporary and close friend of Schmerling. Gåbåshvili was also a graphic artist, whose many drawings in charcoal and ink depicted landscapes and representations of ordinary people. He was a great innovator in Georgian photography and a pioneer of Georgian Realism. Gåbåshvili had started as a student of Roubaud and was his assistant for several years, following his example of drawing battle scenes. In 1886, Gåbåshvili went to the St Petersburg Academy of Arts, where he came under the influence of the renegade Russian Wanderers. Gåbåshvili returned to Tiflis in 1888 and travelled widely throughout the region. In 1894, he went to Central Asia, where he was transformed by the experience of painting the Muslim populations of Samarkand and Bukhara (Figure 3.21). Back in Tiflis, he continued to concentrate on ethnic portraits and daily scenes of life in the city, such as in his Corner of the Old Tiflis, completed in 1885. In 1894, he went to the Munich Academy of the Arts, where nearly all his contemporaries had trained. Gåbåshvili became a pioneering contributor to the Georgian School of Realism, particularly with his emphasis on the individual faces of his subjects – Georgians, Armenians, Russians and Caucasus Azerbaijanis (Tchogoshvili 2006: 136–7).15

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134 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN The multi-ethnic artists of Molla– Nasreddin Oskar Ivanovich Schmerling Oskar Schmerling (1863–1938) was born in the North Caucasus city of Stavropol to an illustrious artistic family of German immigrants who eventually settled in Tiflis. His father was a lieutenant colonel in the Russian military.16 As already mentioned, his maternal uncle was Albert Salzmann (1833–1897), a wellknown architect of the city (Tchogoshvili 2006: 33). Schmerling grew up in the Tiflis home of his uncle and was influenced by him. After graduating from high school, Schmerling pleaded with his parents to send him to the St Petersburg Academy of Arts, which he attended for five years (1884–9). He worked under Bogdan Willewalde (1819–1903), a Russian artist of German origin, known for his huge canvases of the Figure 3.22  Oskar Schmerling. history of the Napoleonic Wars of 1813 and 1814. Source: Amateur Photographer Among Schmerling’s Russian and Georgian classKonstantin Zanis. from The Tiflis mates were Gigo Gåbåshvili and Romanoz Gvelesiani Society of Amateur Photographers. (1859–84). Like his two friends, Schmerling was influhttps://commons.wikimedia.org/ enced by Russian Realism and also engaged in various wiki/File:Oskar_Shmerling.JPG. art forms, including graphics and caricatures. The three young artists were interested in drawing buildings and public spaces that were native to the region. In their portraits, they tried to capture the rough impoverished lives of ordinary people of the region, depicting urban and rural populations of Muslims, Georgians and Armenians. Schmerling focused on the harsh life of the rural community in his sympathetic portrayal of poor peasants. Upon graduation, Schmerling received the Silver Medal of Honour from the St Petersburg Academy of Arts. Back in Tiflis, he studied with Roubaud, who encouraged him to attend the Munich Academy of the Arts. He did attend the Academy from 1891 to 1892, where he became friends with Rotter. Life in Munich as an artist and finding a job were difficult. In a mocking short autobiography, he writes: I went to every single magazine’s doorstep in Munich with my caricatures, but Munich is very different from Petrograd ‒ at that time when I was there, you could count up to 5,000 artists alone … [Finally] I started working for a special magazine called Radfar Humor (Cyclists’ Humor). I, having had never put my foot on a bicycle pedal, was reluctant to start living a sportsman’s life. However, soon I realised that in order to do my job, I did not have to ride a bicycle; sitting on a chair was fully sufficient for performing my tasks. I paid my dues to Berlin and my self-development as an artist in 1892 and headed back to the Caucasus with the intention to become a valuable, or not so valuable, member of society.17

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After settling back in Tiflis in 1893, Schmerling started teaching at the First Gymnasium of Tiflis and the Women’s Institute of Transcaucasia (1893–7). He continued his work as a painter and caricaturist and was occasionally involved with theatrical productions. His daughter, René Schmerling, recalled that their house was a salon for well-known artists, architects, painters, photographers, writers and playwrights. Schmerling became a professor and founder of a school of art in Tiflis (1898–1902). Later, from 1902 to 1916, he became the Director of the School of Painting and Sculpture, which was connected to the Caucasian Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts, and a professor at the Tiflis State Academy of Arts. Schmerling is considered a founder of the Georgian art of caricature. Figure 3.23  One of Schmerling’s signatures. He also contributed to Georgian-language children’s books of folk tales and fairy tales (Tchogoshvili 2006: 109). Gradually, his caricatures became extremely popular, and he was published in German, Russian and Armenian. With his contemporaries, Schmerling founded a new school for caricaturists, where he trained a generation of Georgian artists, including Lado Gudiashvili, and also invited Georgian and German artists to teach at his institute, including Rotter.18 Art historian Nino Tchogoshvili argues that as a native Georgian, Schmerling produced highly sympathetic caricatures and graphics of the multi-ethnic society in which he grew up. His work was ‘filled with warmth and reflected a certain nostalgia about the old way of life’ (Tchogoshvili 2006: 111). The Critical Realist paintings of Schmerling, both his watercolour and oil paintings, depicted a variety of common people including shop owners, coal merchants and simple labourers. They exposed the indulgences of the aristocrats, such as excessive drinking and cavorting with sex workers. They had titles such as Portrait of the Old Man, Mountain Dweller, Kurdish Woman with Child and Returning from an Evening of Drinking. A few of his surviving paintings were drawn in the Impressionistic style, indicating that Schmerling was familiar with a variety of styles but preferred Critical Realism and caricature.19 Like his friend Gåbåshvili, Schmerling was interested in capturing the features, clothing and mannerisms of the people of South Caucasus, and did so long before joining the board of Mollå Nasreddin. His work also had similarities to that of Karl Zommer, with its sympathetic portrayal of the ethnic communities of South Caucasus. When Mirza Jalil reached out to Schmerling to join him on the staff of Mollå Nasreddin, he agreed wholeheartedly. Schmerling was by this time a far more established and well-known Tiflis intellectual and artist. But he shared his friend’s passion for progressive social change and agreed to help him, initially without financial compensation. Schmerling’s caricatures, and those of his artist friend Rotter, appeared regularly in Mollå Nasreddin from 1906 to 1914. Between them, the two artists contributed 600 caricatures and 1,200 illustrations to the periodical, until the outbreak of World War I (Mustafayev 2012).

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Figure 3.24  A painting by Schmerling from the Georgian National Museum. Source: Courtesy of the Georgian National Museum.

Schmerling and Rotter were graphic artists for a host of other contemporary satirical publications, including the Armenian Khåtåbålå (Tiflis). Their illustrations and cartoons in Khåtåbålå were thematically similar to those in Mollå Nasreddin. They called for national and ethnic recognition of the minorities of Tsarist Russia, and recognised the rights of other persecuted minorities in the Russian, Ottoman and British Empires. In many of his cartoons, including those of Mollå Nasreddin, Schmerling turned to the daily lives of the people, where he paid keen attention to traumas of domestic life. In one of his well-known illustrations, Schmerling contrasted the enormous burdens women faced throughout their lives to the carefree attitudes of the men in their lives (Figure 3.25). In another, he created three parallel panels of injustice. At the top were the Ottomans who were squeezed by European powers. The bottom panel showed Iran crushed between the shah and the clerics. The middle panel showed a woman squeezed in between two men, suggesting that the traumas that women endured in the highly patriarchal South Caucasian society were no less than what colonised and subjugated nations endured (Figure 3.26).

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Figure 3.25  ‘Husband and wife’. Source: MN 15, 14 July 1906.

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Figure 3.26  The strong rules! Top: the Ottoman Empire crushed between European Powers. Middle: the Muslim woman crushed between men of her community. Bottom: Iran crushed between Qajar rulers and the clerics. Source: MN 42, 20 October 1908.

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Some of Schmerling’s caricatures were inspired by the rural paintings of his friends Zommer and Gåbåshvili, such as scenes that showed vendors on the street (Worker with a Wineskin; Watermelon Seller) (Figures 3.27 and 3.28). Others were inspired by photographs of Tiflis residents (Barbershop) (Figure 3.29); scenes from urban life (Reading Newspaper in Alexander Gardens) (Figure 3.31); or scenes from a group of women friends gossiping (Fresh News) (Figure 3.32). Schmerling was celebrated for his distinguished career as a caricaturist throughout South Caucasus. He continued to publish illustrations and caricatures after the Bolshevik Revolution. His work appeared during the shortlived Georgian Republic (1918–21), in periodicals such as Devil’s Whip (Eshmakis Matrakhi) and The Crocodile (Niangi). He also taught at the newly established Georgian State Academy of Arts in Tiflis, where he was recognised as a founder of the Georgian art of caricature (‘Founder’ 2016). In 1933, the city of Tiflis celebrated the fortieth anniversary of his art and career. There are a few surviving letters from Schmerling to Mirza Jalil, dated from 1925 to 1927. Though Schmerling wrote in restrained language, it is not difficult to see how

Figure 3.27  Worker with a Wineskin, by Oskar Schmeriling. From the postcard series Fading Tbilisi (1928). Source: Beyond Caricature: The Oskar Schmerling Digital Archives, https://schmerling. org/en/images/worker-with-awineskin.

Figure 3.28  Watermelon Seller, by Oskar Schmerling. From the postcard series Fading Tbilisi (1928). Source: Beyond Caricature: The Oskar Schmerling Digital Archives, https:// schmerling.org/en/images/watermelon-seller.

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Figure 3.29  Photo of a barber. Source: Ibrahimov 1997, 91.

Figure 3.30  Barbershop, by Oskar Schmerling. Source: MN 7, 17 February 1907.

he and Mirza Jalil felt about the outcome of the 1917 Revolution and the new Soviet Union, which by this time was ruled primarily by their fellow Georgian, Joseph Stalin. In May 1925, Schmerling wrote longingly of their earlier almost ‘fanatical’ idealism, and indicated that he now only worked with Georgian and Muslim periodicals, presumably because the Russian periodicals followed the hard-line Soviet line. He still lived in his old apartment with his wife and two adult children, but they were restricted to just one bedroom. He worked non-stop, drawing for four satirical publications, but was paid little. He could not save any of his income and had a meagre pension. He longed to move to the by now more cosmopolitan Baku and be closer to his old friends Mirza Jalil and Hamideh Khånum, but could not afford to do so. At one point, he considered leaving his family behind and taking a job with a journal called Turkmenistan in Ashqabad, Central Asia, or even going to Samarkand, so he could support his family.20 And yet, even in these dire circumstances, he whole-heartedly accepted Mirza Jalil’s invitation to once again work with Mollå Nasreddin, which was now published in Baku: I vividly remember the good times when you and I worked together on our little cultural undertaking [Mollå Nasreddin], being almost fanatically convinced that we were doing good for the Muslim people, and thus we are

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Figure 3.31  Reading Newspaper in Alexander Gardens, by Oskar Schmerling. Source: Beyond Caricature: The Oskar Schmerling Digital Archives, https:// schmerling.org/en/images/in-alexander-garden.

contributing to the enlightenment of the Muslim masses. A lot has changed since then, and perhaps changed in a way you and I would have never thought of, yet the desire to work for the benefit of the people of the East stayed with me. I work exclusively in the non-Russian publications mostly for Georgia and to some extent for Muslims. You asked me to work for the ‘Molla Nasreddin’ and not a day goes by without me realising that I must work for you, ever since the day I received your letter. Now I ask you – if you have not yet abandoned your proposal – to recruit me as one of your most devoted staff members.21 The letters also shed light on how the editor and the artist worked together. They suggest that the caricatures and illustrations in Mollå Nasreddin were the product of a close collaboration between the two men: We can work out the mailing arrangements, so that the illustrations will make it on time. And so, if you like the idea, send in the topics, and I’ll start drawing up some sketches for you. If I end up coming up with any topics of my own, of course, I’ll send you something of mine, but for that I really need to understand the spirit of the magazine and its interests. Send at least a few issues of the magazine so I could carefully go through them. Also, do let me know what will be the weekly deadlines I’ll have to meet for the timely delivery of all the illustrations.22

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Figure 3.32  Fresh News, by Oskar Schmerling. Source: Beyond Caricature: The Oskar Schmerling Digital Archives, https:// schmerling.org/en/images/fresh-news.

The cartoons and graphics of Mollå Nasreddin demonstrate a deep understanding of Muslim religious traditions and in most cases could not have been produced without a close exchange between Mirza Jalil and the artists of the periodical. For example, in Figure 3.33 we see a mollå performing four different functions, and his mouth moves depending on the occasion. When he is doing an estekhareh (hoping for an auspicious time to engage in an activity) his mouth does not move (top right). When he prays, his lips slightly part (top left). When he performs a marriage ceremony, his mouth is more open (bottom right), and when he preaches, he almost shouts (bottom left). Such a drawing would not have been possible without deep knowledge of the prayers and the manner in which they were performed by clerics (Figure 3.33). Joseph (Yusuf) Rotter Joseph Rotter’s origins are unknown. A few brief details about his life suggest he was a German Jew who migrated from Germany to South Caucasus, as he signed his personal letters with his Jewish name ‘Yusuf’, rather than his pen name Joseph. Rotter and Schmerling were students at the Munich Academy of the Arts in 1891. Schmerling then returned to Tiflis, where he established a private art school. In 1904, he invited Rotter to join him, and the latter accepted his offer and began teaching at the school.23

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Figure 3.33  ‘Four Prayer Postures’. Artist unknown. Source: MN 17, 26 April 1909.

Rotter published illustrations and caricatures for the same satirical periodicals in South Caucasus to which Schmerling contributed. His work shows him to be a truly gifted cartoonist, perhaps more so than Schmerling. But for some reason, perhaps because of his Jewish identity, he was never recognised or celebrated. Schmerling might have captured this well in his caricature of a

Figure 3.34  A drawing of Joseph Rotter (left) and Rotter’s signature (right). Source: Habibbeyli 1987, 111.

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Figure 3.35  The Parade of Khåtåbålå Contributors. Source: National Library of Armenia.

parade of all the contributors to Khåtåbålå. It shows Rotter, the little bearded man, in a black robe and hat, carrying a huge portfolio and a mop. He is in the front row, but slightly behind the two celebrated artists, Schmerling and the Polish-Georgian Henryk Hryniewski (1869–1937), who are embracing the muse and having all the fun (Figure 3.35). Rotter’s large paintings are displayed at the National Museum of Arts in Georgia, and nearly all of these paintings fall within the Critical Realist school.24 His concerns were similar to those of Schmerling and other Critical Realist artists, the poverty of ordinary citizens and their difficult lives. His paintings have titles such as Lack of Bread in Tiflis, Lack of Oil in Tiflis and Lack of Wood in Tiflis. Elsewhere, Rotter painted a group of officers who took sacks of sugar to their headquarters and used armed guards to protect their precious cargo, which they feared would be attacked by the hungry populace.25 Rotter contributed to Mollå Nasreddin from 1906 to 1914 (Tchogoshvili 2006: 132), but at the start of World War I, he returned to his native Germany. His paintings and caricatures remain at the National Museum of Arts in Georgia.26 Rotter’s illustrations were of a remarkable range. He had a deep knowledge of history and politics, which he incorporated into his political illustrations for Mollå Nasreddin as well as other publications. His politics were always

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Figure 3.36  Iran and Ottoman cattle harnessed to plough. Source: MN 8, 24 February 1908.

left of centre, with a strong hostility towards imperialist powers, especially Britain, Russia, Germany and Austria. His focus was on the ways in which European powers extracted raw materials and cheap labour from the East. In several illustrations, Iran and the Ottoman Empire are portrayed as large cattle harnessed to a plough and used to cultivate the fertile land. The native people of the region then bag the harvest and carry it on their backs to a train, which takes it to European lands. In another illustration, Rotter compares the British occupation of Egypt to the Austro-Hungarian control over Bosnia. No matter what the inhabitants do, they cannot rid themselves of these unwanted ‘guests’ (Figure 3.37). In one cartoon composed of four panels, Rotter predicted an eventual uprising of the people of India against British colonialism. In the first panel, Britain is sitting on an armchair that is crushing a poor Indian. In the last panel, depicting the future, the Indian rises up and topples British colonialism (Figure 3.38). While he worked simultaneously for Mollå Nasreddin and the Armenian Khåtåbåla, Rotter’s illustrations addressed the different concerns of these two publications with regard to the same major political events. For example,

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Figure 3.37  Left: the British in Egypt. Right: the Austrians in Bosnia. ‘It would be stupid to flatten the mountains and burn down the cities! We still can’t get rid of these guests.’ Source: MN 37, 15 September 1908.

in a June 1908 illustration about the Ottoman Empire for Mollå Nasreddin, the illustration emphasises the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire by various imperialist powers – Britain, Russia, Austria and Italy – and predicts the eventual loss of the European parts of the Ottoman Empire to Western powers. Here, the smaller nations of Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia, which have already seceded from the Ottoman Empire, are shown as hunting dogs in the service of imperialist powers (Figure 3.39). But in an illustration for Khåtåbålå, soon after the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, the emphasis is on the demands of the minorities of the Ottoman Empire, including the Armenian, Greek, Kurd, Arab, Jewish, Macedonian and Albanian populations, for equality and autonomy under the same constitutional banner (Figure 3.40). While Rotter (and Schmerling) showed great sympathy for countries that were caught in the clutches of the colonial powers, neither artist lost sight of the fact that the landowning elite in these countries treated their own peasant populations poorly, in much the same manner that the colonial powers treated smaller nations.

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Figure 3.38  ‘England and India’. Panel 1: a hundred years ago. Panel 2: until now. Panel 3: the present time. Panel 4: in the future. Source: MN 34, 23 August 1909.

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Figure 3.39  ‘The Macedonian Question’. Top: the Black Sea. Right: the situation of Turks in Anatolia. Left: the situation of Turks in Europe. Bottom: the future of the Macedonian problem (or the expulsion of Turks from Europe). Source: MN 23, 9 June 1908.

Another remarkable talent of Rotter was his ability to draw illustrations of daily life in the public and private spheres. These meticulously drawn social portraits had just a hint of satire and resembled the artist’s paintings. In one such illustration, a peddler and his donkey are stuck in a mud-filled crevasse in a narrow alley in front of city hall. They are desperately trying to get out. Two men on the right are trying to pull him out, while a little boy is hurling a footstool into the mud so the helpers stand on it and get a better grip. A third man on the left is standing on another footstool, and he is pulling the donkey by the ear, providing some comic relief to the scene. The mayor and his clerk watch this scene from a window with bemused detachment (Figure 3.42). In another scene, we watch a group of Kyrgyz men, who are returning from the hajj pilgrimage in Mecca, huddled in a crowded train. They are sleeping on the floor with their livestock. Despite their wretched condition, they are happy and thank God for returning them home comfortably on a train (Figure 3.43).

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Figure 3.40  Constitutionalism and the Ottoman Empire. Source: Khatablari 1908.

A third such illustration shows life on a street corner on a Friday, when stores are to be closed. A fruit seller is sitting next to his ware, smoking his pipe, oblivious to the world around him. A scribe is taking down a letter that a peasant is dictating. Meanwhile, two men are standing by the door of another store (perhaps an apothecary), which is surreptitiously open. One is quietly receiving a package while the other waits (Figure 3.44). In a world without television and video cameras, Rotter captured public modes of entertainment such as cock fights and dog fights in his cartoons. Sometimes he provided a panoramic view of the scene, paying great attention to the individuals who had set up the fight and the audience. In one such illustration titled The Audience at a Baku Theatre, we see a group of people anticipating the start of a dog fight (Figure 3.45). On the left, the men and boys have hoisted themselves up above a wall to get a better view of the fight and cheer on the dogs. On the right, a group of older men stand watching the scene from their windows. Across from the dog fight is a group of young women sitting on the roof of a building. They have covered themselves in their veils and are watching the fight. In the middle are two leashed dogs and their owners, who will soon start the fight.

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Figure 3.41  The World of Harvest. The Lord and the Overseer. Source: MN 37, 2 October 1907.

From time to time, Rotter combined his deep interest in photographic-style drawings with his interest in global politics, as seen in a caricature where the shah of Iran is portrayed as a fruit seller (Figure 3.46). In Old Tiflis, hawkers (kintos) were considered men of ill repute. They belonged to the skid row, the run-down part of town that was occupied by drug addicts, alcoholics and vagrants, as well as male and female prostitutes (Figure 3.47). As Erast Kuznetsov writes, the kinto was a ‘foul-mouthed cheat, a pimp, reprobate, and a performer of disreputable ditties’ (quoted in Pirosmåni 1983: 40). Hawkers had inspired Niko Pirosmåni in his idyllic view of urban and rural settings. But Rotter used the kinto in a manner that was closer to his supposedly degenerate character. The kinto here is Muhammad Ali Shah, who had just carried out a coup against his own people (June 1908). Under the caption ‘World Politics’ we see the shah, who has placed the sweet fruits of Tehran on his tray and is trying to sell them. Rotter was also an illustrator of fairy tales and mythological works. In 1908, Gheyrat Press, owned by Mirza Jalil and Ömar Fåeq, published an edition of Shåhnåmeh of Ferdowsi, illustrated by Rotter (Figure 3.48). This book includes some iconic scenes from the Shåhnåmeh, such as a love scene between Rostam and Tahmineh, the fight between Rostam and his son Sohrab, and the scene

Figure 3.42  ‘In Front of the City Hall’. Source: MN 33, 17 November 1906.

Figure 3.43  Kyrgyz Hajjis at Orenburg Station. ‘Fortunately, they were able to go and return. For this blessing the Kyrgyzi brothers suddenly opened their eyes to a higher level of culture. May God spare their animals.’ Source: MN 12, 14 March 1910.

Figure 3.44  ‘Friday, the day stores are supposed to be closed!’ Source: MN 8, 26 May 1906.

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Figure 3.45  The Audience at a Baku Theatre (dog fight), by Joseph Rotter. Source: MN 5, 3 February 1907.

where Sohrab dies in the arms of his distraught father who has realised he has killed his own son. From time to time, Rotter combined his drawings of magical and mythological fairy tales with religious and political commentary. One of his most detailed illustrations for Mollå Nasreddin is called The Donkey of Dajjal (Figure 3.49). Both the Shii and Sunni believe in a ‘false messiah’ (al-masih al-dajjal) who leads people astray. He is a one-eyed monster who appears as a cleric, but in reality is an ‘Antichrist’ figure who arrives with his donkey. Dajjal attracts a great number of followers. But eventually, the Mahdi will return, defeat him and restore justice (Winter 2008: 316). Here again, we see the influence of Mirza Jalil and Ömar Fåeq who must have explained to the artist, in some detail, the character of Dajjal and how he has been historically envisioned in Muslim religious texts. There were limits to what the artist could do given the modesty conventions of the Muslim community. But occasionally Rotter found a mischievous way of including drawings of semi-nude women. These were usually a reference to angelic beauties that awaited the faithful in Heaven (Figure 3.50). Rotter (and Mirza Jalil) satirised men who daydreamed about the beauties they might receive after death. In addition to being a remarkably versatile illustrator and caricaturist, Rotter was also a professional numismatist. He was a connoisseur and

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Figure 3.46  Muhammad Ali Shah as a fruit seller. ‘From the World of Politics: Come buy Tehran! Sweet Tehran for sale!’ Source: MN 27, 7 July 1908.

Figure 3.47  A kinto fruit hawker. Source: Pirosmåni 1983, 40.

Figure 3.48  A scene from Shåhnåmeh. ‘Rostam and Sohråb’. Source: Baku: Gheyrat Publishers 1908.

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Figure 3.49  The Donkey of Dajjål, by Joseph Rotter. Source: MN 41, 4 November 1907.

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collector of rare coins and might have earned his living in this way. His letters show he had a vast familiarity with the culture and history of the antiquity and the medieval eras. Throughout his years in South Caucasus, he placed ads for the acquisition of rare coins, and several surviving letters from this period suggest his passionate commitment to numismatics. In one he wrote to a client: I do not collect any Russian and Muslim coins that do not have any engraved images on them. I will take any Greek, Roman, Byzantine coins; any coins from the Achaemenid, Arsacid and Sassanid periods, as well as any Kufic ones with engraved human figures on them. If you have the opportunity, send these 1,500 pieces with Alexander the Great and others engraved on them to me, without getting stolen on their way.27 In a subsequent letter, Rotter informed the potential seller that he should not be afraid of being cheated out of his rare coins. ‘Do not be afraid. Figure 3.50  ‘The Angel who was gifted to My name is Rotter. And my name must stay Karbalåi Haqverdi’. clear. All others can stain theirs.’ In exchange, he Source: MN 44, 3 November 1908. offered to return all the coins he did not purchase with detailed descriptions of each one, adding: ‘Knowledge makes money as well. So that in the future you would know which ones happen to be the good coins, and which ones are not worth much.’28 There is no other information on him for the next decade. During the Weimar Republic, we come across his name as a contributor to a German illustrated book of fairy tales, which was published in Leipzig in 1923.29 There is again no trace of him after this date; he simply vanishes from history, making us wonder if he was a victim of the Nazis. A transnational artistic collaboration Schmerling’s family background and Rotter’s passionate interest in numismatics, an expensive hobby if not a professional trade, suggest they both enjoyed comfortable middle-class circumstances. They were drawn to working with Mollå Nasreddin out of a strong desire to share their artistic talents and progressive ideas with the Muslim South Caucasian community. Another shared characteristic of these men was the transnational and cosmopolitan nature of their art and collaboration. For these revolutionary artists, social satire had no national identity. The Georgian-German Oskar Schmerling and the

158 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN German-Jewish-Georgian immigrant Joseph (Yusuf) Rotter were simultaneously drawing illustrations and caricatures for the South Caucasian Muslim periodical Mollå Nasreddin and the Armenian satirical journal Khåtåbålå. Their illustrations and caricatures were similar in content and style. Their strong criticisms of imperialism and colonialism were combined with sympathy for smaller nations and the ethnic minorities of each empire. Their attacks on autocratic rulers of the region included criticisms of the religious establishment, as well as rituals which no longer seemed compatible with modernity. Most of all, they were supporters of the weak and the poor, especially impoverished and defenceless women and children. Whether they were writing about the Caucasus Azerbaijanis or the Armenian communities, a substantial part of their illustrations dealt with domestic abuse: a husband’s infidelity in marriage, sexual harassment and violence towards women, child abuse and paedophilia experienced by both young girls and boys, and the general privation of the poorer classes of society. The artists also used very similar conventions of physiognomy for these different periodicals. The imperialist powers were always shown as aggressive, overweight and cunning; the local rulers were oblivious or intoxicated; landlords were always squeezing their peasants dry; the Muslim and Armenian women who fought against abuse were depicted as young and beautiful; while the men and women who supported traditional practices had coarse, dishevelled and unattractive features, suggesting ignorance and rigidity of character. We will return to these details in Chapters 7 and 8, where we examine the influence of various European schools of art on Schmerling and Rotter. Notes   1. See JMQ: 56–7.   2. See population chart of census of 1897 in ‘Tiflis’, Wikipedia. Available at (last accessed 22 June 2020). See also Anderson 2011: 29.   3. Touraj Atabaki shows that the number of Iranian migrant workers in Tiflis was around 5,000 in 1910 (Atabaki 2003: 19). The other smaller communities were: Jews (1.8 per cent), Ukrainians (1.7 per cent), Greeks (0.8 per cent), Assyrians (0.6 per cent); Ossetians (0.5 per cent) and others (1.5 per cent). Information provided by Marina Aleidze based on the First Russian Imperial Census, conducted in 1897. Email exchange 14 August 2020.   4. Meat products that follow the dietary practices of Islam.  5. Behzåd’s signature does not appear in any of the cartoons of Mollå Nasreddin. Layla Diba suggests this connection based on stylistic similarities between Schmerling’s work and Behzåd’s. Layla Diba, ‘Border Crossings: Iranian Artists in Czarist Russia and Georgia’. In The Caspian World: Connections and Contentions at Modern Eurasian Crossroads. Cornell University Press. Forthcoming. Special thanks to Diba for sharing her research.  6. Stalin’s forced collectivisation in the 1930s destroyed many agrarian German communities. When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, the Russians treated Caucasus Germans as a ‘fifth column’ and deported them to Central Asia and Siberia. Many died on the route or of starvation. The community was allowed to return to its home after Stalin’s death, but few did so (Ulrich 2015).

tiflis and its hybrid artistic community

  7. Premier Otto von Bismarck, who feared a greater radicalisation of the workingclass movement, instituted medical insurance and pensions for the workers but outlawed socialist parties. By 1890, the young Kaiser Wilhelm II, a patron of the arts, had removed Bismarck, and the socialists were represented in the Reichstag.  8. Photography arrived in South Caucasus and Iran not long after its invention in Europe in the 1840s and was immediately embraced by the elite. Remarkably, the ulema, who had historically opposed the art of painting and portraiture, approved of the new technology. Photography was not seen as a creative art that reproduced the human form, but as a scientific achievement, which meant there was no religious objection to it. In this way, the common person who could never have afforded to have a painting of a landscape, a portrait of himself and his family, or a drawing about his profession, was able to have a picture of all three thanks to the camera, making the technology immensely popular in the Islamicate world. This left a lasting cultural and aesthetic influence on the population (Hodgson 1974: 59).   9. His name is spelled in different ways in English, including Jermakov, Yermakov and Ermakov. A collection of his photos exists at the Tiflis State Museum (Hannavy 2008: 1:494–5). He was born in Tiflis. His father was an Italian immigrant and an architect by profession, and his mother was a Georgian of German-Austrian descent. Ermakov graduated from the Russian Topographic Academy in Ananuri, outside Tiflis. His photo exhibitions in Moscow, Italy, Turkey and Iran won numerous awards. He also participated in several archaeological and architectural expeditions. He took hundreds of pictures of historical sites, many of which no longer exist, and have remained in historical memory only through his photos. In 1907, he was elected as a board member of the Moscow Archaeological Society (Caucasus Department) and in 1912 he became a founding member of the Tiflis Fine Arts Society. See also ‘About History – The Photography of Dmitri Ermakov’; and ‘Dmitri Jermakov, 1846–1916’. 10. Sevruguin was born in Iran to an Armenian-South Caucasian family. His father worked for the Russian embassy, but after his father’s sudden death, the family returned to Tiflis, where he grew up. 11. Servuguin had trained as an artist before studying with Ermakov. His early training as an artist, and familiarity with painting conventions, can be seen in his photographs. 12. Many of Sevruguin’s photos were destroyed in the spring of 1908 when the Russian-backed anti-constitutionalists set fire to the buildings in his neighbourhood, forcing him to seek protection in the British legation, despite his Russian citizenship. Later some of his other photos were confiscated and destroyed in the 1930s during Reza Shah’s rule (Ritter and Scheiwiller 2018: 154). 13. For details, see Chapter 8. 14. Thanks to Karina Ter-Hakopian from Moscow for the image of the lion and Elham Malekzadeh from Iran for the Iranian emblem. 15. Gåbåshvili’s paintings should be divided into two periods. In the later stage of his career, his graphics and oil paintings were influenced by Symbolism. Thanks to Nino Tchogoshvili for this information. 16. The best source of information on Schmerling is the English-language website Oskar Schmerling, ‘Beyond Caricature: The Oskar Schmerling Digital Archives’, 2020. Available at (last accessed 3 July 2020). 17. Schmerling 1916; trans. slightly modified. 18. René mentions the following artists as former students of his father: Lado Gudiashvili, Shalva Dzneladze, Ketevan Magalashvili, Alexander Tsimakuridze, Mikheil Chiaureli. See the entry on Schmerling 2018. 19. These works are held at the National Museum of Arts in Georgia, the State Historical and Ethnographic Museum of Georgia, and in various private collections.

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160 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN 20. Schmerling to Jalil Memedqolizadeh, 25 May 1925. Institute of Manuscripts of Azerbaijan, Baku, Call Number A-6, Q-232, S.V. 234. 21. Schmerling to Jalil Memedqolizadeh, 7 May 1925, Institute of Manuscripts of Azerbaijan, Baku, Call Number A-6, Q-232, S.V. 234. 22. Schmerling to Jalil Memedqolizadeh, 7 May 1925. To survive in the new regime Schmerling complied with state requests to sketch official gatherings, though he much preferred drawing caricatures for Mollå Nasreddin: ‘I can’t get to work on [the caricatures], as we have the Congress of Trade Unions in session, and I have to hang around there all day long sketching portraits and scenes from the proceedings.’ See Schmerling to Jalil Memedqolizadeh, 25 May 1925, Institute of Manuscripts of Azerbaijan, Baku, Call Number A-6, Q-231, S. V. 235. 23. Information based on email from Isa Habibbeyli, 23 October 2013, from Nakhchivan. Hamideh Khånum also refers to Rotter’s poor knowledge of Russian and his immigrant roots. It is sad that we don’t have a single photograph of this prolific artist. 24. For more information about this museum see ‘Art Museum of Georgia’, Wikipedia. Available at (last accessed 28 January 2022). 25. Thanks to Teona Jikia, personal communications, email exchanges with authors on this subject, 25 May 2014. 26. Information based on personal communications, email from Isa Habibbeyli, 23 October 2013, from Nakhchivan. 27. Yusuf Rotter (Tiflis) to Memed Ali Sidgi (Baku), n.d., Institute of Manuscripts of Azerbaijan, Baku, Call Number Fond No. 6, S. V. 489-I. 28. Yusuf Rotter (Tiflis) to Mamad Ali Sidgi (Baku), n.d., Institute of Manuscripts of Azerbaijan, Baku, Call Number Fond No. 6, S. V. 489-II 29. The title of this book is Balladen. Volksschatz Deutsche Jugendbücherei, 1923.

PART II

Reimagining the Folk Trickster and Rethinking Gender Norms

CHAPTER 4

The Wise Fool and the Trickster Nasreddin The legendary Nasreddin is the most popular character in the folklore of the Middle East, Central Asia, the Balkans, Southern Russia and Transcaucasia. There are some regional variations of his name,1 as well as several stories about his origin. Persian and some Arabic sources suggest he came from Kufa (present day Iraq) and lived in the second half of the ninth century ce. Turkish sources insist he was a Turk and a contemporary of the Turko-Mongolian conqueror Timur (d. 1405), who invaded Anatolia, the Middle East and India (Marzolph 1990: 239; Modarres 1970: 6:189; Downing and Papas 1965: 3; Gurkas 2005). Persian and Azerbaijani sources call him Mollå Nasreddin. The term mollå can cover a variety of minor secular as well as religious ranks – thus emphasising that mollå does not necessarily designate a Shii religious scholar or functionary (for which the more respectable/respectful term in Persian is åkhund). It is a semantic chimera, referring to any person in a community with a degree of literacy/ education and thus with some formal or informal authority.2 Stories attributed to Mollå Nasreddin come from many sources. They include tales of Nasreddin Hodja (Turkish spelling Nasreddin Hoca), the Arab trickster Johå, and other fools of classical Persian literature, some of which circulated in manuscript tradition for several centuries. Nasreddin is thus a composite figure who emerged in the late nineteenth century, though his ‘presence in the Persian Figure 4.1  A seventeenth-century miniature of tradition is much older, in fact dating from Nasreddin, currently at the Topkapi Palace the beginning of the present millennium’ Museum Library. (Marzolph 1995: 158). Marzolph has sug- Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ gested the term ‘Nasreddinia’ to refer to all File:Nasreddin_(17th-century_miniature).jpg, artist unknown, Creative Commons. these variations in his name.

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Figure 4.2  Nasreddin Hodja statue in Bukhara Liab-i-Haouz Complex. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:Nasr_Eddin_Hodja_statue_in_Bukhara_ Liab_-i-Haouz_complex.JPG.

Figure 4.3  Nasreddin Hodja in Ankara. Ankara Amusement Park, Nasreddin Hodja and Donkey. Source: Nevit Dilmen, CC BY-SA 3.0, https:// commons.wikimedia.org/w/index. php?curid=1628950.

The first modern printed edition of Nasreddin Hodja stories appeared  in  Turkish in 1837. An Arabic edition was published in Cairo in 1864, and a Persian one in 1881 (Marzolph 1990: 243; Marzolph 1996: 1018– 19). The move from oral and manuscript tradition to modern print edition involved important changes in the folk character. The sexually and religiously transgressive stories of Nasreddin were gradually shed, leaving behind a vast majority of the tales. The character of Mollå Nasreddin was made into an educational tool for children, or alternatively portrayed as a ‘cunning philosopher’.3 By the turn of the twentieth century, hundreds of anecdotes, folk tales and vignettes in Iran were attributed to Mollå Nasreddin, a not-so-pious Muslim cleric, whose foolish deeds and clever sayings turned him into the most popular Iranian and Azerbaijani folk character.4 As with most tricksters, the vague origins of Nasreddin contributed to his enormous popularity and increased the charm and mystery of the stories attributed to him. The humour surrounding Nasreddin transcends ethnicity, religion, national boundaries, age and sometimes gender. The tales deal with ageless human dilemmas, with injustice, narrow-mindedness, arrogance and fraud. They also address many social and cultural concerns, from unfulfilled bodily needs and desires to stifling rituals and taboos. This chapter will briefly explore some theoretical perspectives on the trickster figure in Western scholarship on folklore. Then, we turn to Nasreddin as a distinct transgressive character and popular figure in Persian, Turkish and Middle Eastern literature. The wise fool and the subversive trickster Carl Jung, who was influenced by Nietzsche and Freud, believed that the retelling and revisiting of folk tales satisfied the individual’s desire for non-conformity without

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recourse to rebellion or violence. Our amazement and enjoyment in hearing trickster tales is rooted in the psychological release gained when bits and pieces of our subdued desires are permitted to float to the surface without fear of reprimand (Jung [1959] 1992: 150). Michel Foucault saw the fool as the gateway to the imagination. The simpleton lived at the border of reason and instinct, of the real and the imagined, between the world of mortals and that of spirits, ghosts and goblins. The fool’s ability to transgress conventional boundaries showed the hypocrisy of the rational world, and betrayed the ignorance of the pompous theologian, the arrogant scholar or the wealthy lord (Foucault 2001: 11). Mikhail Bakhtin saw the carnivalesque fool as a social equaliser, who symbolically subverted norms and privileges (Bakhtin [1965] 1984). Folk humour was powerful because of its ‘grotesque realism’ (19). By calling attention to the nude body, the lower half of the body, the belly, the genitals and the buttocks, as well as actions involving ‘defecation and copulation, conception, pregnancy, birth’, the trickster tales created a sense of degradation (Bakhtin [1965] 1984: 21). In sum, the wise fool and the carnivalesque have been envisioned in two ways. On the one hand, the trickster is a ‘safety valve’ for the social order, offering a little respite before normal hierarchies are reinstated. On the other hand, the trickster can open the door to the world of imagination and present us with a glimpse of alternate forms of being. Lewis Hyde (1998) believed the trickster figure was simultaneously a conservative and a radical figure. He argued that in societies with a strictly hierarchical and powerful religious order, one often saw the emergence of a form of ‘sacred dirt’, or a transgressive figure that entered and was a part of a religious realm, but also mocked it. By crossing the boundary between the sacred and the profane, the trickster operated as a ‘safety valve’. The figure allowed people to engage in activities deemed irreverent and unholy, fleetingly turning the hierarchical order upside down, and momentarily providing a psychological release. However, in the long run, such a release helped maintain the social order by siphoning off violent impulses in a harmless manner, and therefore maintaining the status quo. In a strictly ordered society, violent impulses do not always focus on the established hierarchy. Violence can target ‘others’ who are different, resulting in ethnic cleansing and gender violence. In this context, the trickster figure can play conflicting roles. It can play a destructive role if it channels violent impulses towards eradicating these ‘others’, thus bringing about mass carnage and a bloodbath that gratifies the majority, before returning to a state of ‘normalcy’. Conversely, this crossing of social boundaries can rattle rigid social divisions, target the elite and provide a glimpse of a more diverse and egalitarian social world (Hyde 1998: 187–8). The wise fool of Persian literature The wise fool appears in classical Persian literature from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries. Persian literary figures initially held the Arab trickster

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Figure 4.4  A Gohå (Johå) story-cloth, by Ahmed Yossery (2007). Depicting a version of ‘The Miller, His Son and the Donkey’. Source: The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons. wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15094548.

Gohå in contempt for his irreverent and indecent sayings.5 It was only with the Sufi poets, such as Attår (d. 1220), Sanåi (d. 1150), Sadi (d. 1291) and the renowned Rumi (d. 1273), that the earlier condescending attitude was replaced with one of admiration (Marzolph 1990: 239–40). This is because in the Sufi tradition, sainthood was not always confined to wise and serious people; it was occasionally bestowed on fools as well: Insane and lunatic men have also been occasionally accepted among their sacred ranks … Contrary to Jewish tradition, which considered the ‘fool’ impious or wicked, the Muslims regarded him as people who were excused and freed from religious and social duties. Their insanity was sometimes recognized by the Sufis as a divine madness (Junun-i Ilahi). (Zarrinkoob 1970: 198) Annemarie Schimmel points out that in the works of Attår, ‘social criticism is often put into the mouth of a lunatic. Attår has a whole group of these mentally deranged persons who struggle both with God and with the earthly rulers’ (Schimmel 1975: 304). Zarrinkoob locates no fewer than 115 tales about audacious wise fools in Attår’s work (Zarrinkoob 1970: 199; see also Yaghoobi 2017).

the wise fool and the trickster nasreddin

Figure 4.5  Looking for a sane human being. Source: MN 48, 23 December 1907.

Johå is not the only wise fool of the early Islamic period. Another famous character is Bohlul the Fool, also known as Bohlul the Wise (805 ce), who lived in Kufa.6 In the eleventh century, Bohlul emerged as an early wise fool in Arabic and Persian literature (Marzolph 1996: 319), and remained popular in Persian and Turkish tales through the twentieth century.7 Bohlul himself questions the boundary between wisdom and folly. When asked to count the fools in the city, he responds that it is better to count the wise, since the fools are too many (Modarres 1970: 5: 212). He is therefore similar to the Greek philosopher Diogenes who searched the city for a sane man. Many Nasreddin tales lament a lack of common sense among people, and the inability to see the ramification of one’s own actions. In one tale, Nasreddin sits on a tree and starts cutting the branch on which he is sitting. Someone walks by and warns him not to do so or he will hurt himself. Nasreddin disregards the advice and continues. The tree branch breaks and Nasreddin is injured, whereupon he starts looking for the ‘wise’ man who had predicted his downfall (Figure 4.6). Nasreddin often rides his donkey backwards. When he is asked why he does so, he answers that he is not the one facing the wrong direction, it is

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Figure 4.6  ‘I beg you, please, don’t cut the tree. It will crush your head when it falls.’ Source: MN 7, 14 February 1910.

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his donkey. But then he becomes angry when, at the destination, he realises that it is not where he wanted to be (Figure 4.7). In his Mathnawi, one of the greatest works of Classical Persian poetry, Mawlana Jalål al-Din Rumi (1207–73) includes many anecdotes that later became standard Nasreddin tales in both Persian and Turkish. Some of these tales encourage tolerance towards non-Muslims. One such tale that became a standard Nasreddin story concerns a Muslim, a Jew and a Christian who travel together. At a tavern they receive a small free plate of halva (wheat pudding). Since they had already eaten their dinner, the three men decide to wait until the next morning to eat the dessert. But because the plate of halva was small, they agreed that whoever had the best dream would eat the halva for breakfast. The next morning, the Jew said that Moses took him to a glorious feast in the heavens. The Christian said Jesus took him to the height of the universe to a marvellous spread. The Muslim said, ‘The Prophet Muhammad appeared in my dream and said, “Look Figure 4.7  Nasreddin (Mollå Shukur) fellow! Moses and Jesus took your two friends to riding his donkey backwards. ‘This is the heavens and gave them exquisite banquets. how I ruin your girls’ school in Why don’t you get up and finish this humble dish of Målibayli (Karabåkh).’ halva instead?” That is why I got up in the middle Source: MN 6, 7 February 1911. of the night and ate the halva!’ According to Rumi, the moral of the tale is that those who follow opulent and extravagant dreams of reaching the heights of life, of attaining glory and riches, often miss the real opportunities under their noses (Rumi 2003: 5:1030). But another take on the tale might be that Muslims, Christians and Jews can be friends, they can travel and share meals, and occasionally they might even cheat one another in a good-humoured way, without recourse to violence. Modern distinctions between entertainment and ethics, sacred and profane, or even classical and folk literature, are difficult to pinpoint in Rumi’s work. The Mathnawi includes numerous popular and vulgar folk tales alongside more morally upright ones and blurs the boundaries between classical and folk genres, thus challenging our modern and precise segmentation of Persian literature into mutually exclusive distinctions. Many of the tales are simply for entertainment, such as the story of the husband who in the morning brings home three mans (units of measurement) of meat and asks his wife to make a stew for dinner (Figure 4.8). Once he leaves for work, she makes a big stew out of the meat, invites over her women friends, and they have a feast. When Nasreddin returns home and asks about his dinner, his wife tells him that the cat ate the meat. Surprised, he takes a scale out and weighs the cat, which turns out to be exactly three mans. So, he asks his wife, ‘If this is the cat then

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Figure 4.8  ‘The cat and the meat’ (Graphic by Noureddin Zarrinkelk). Source: Anvar 2020.

where is the meat? And if this is the meat, then where is the cat?’ (Mowlåna 1996: 5:887). There are also many outrageous stories in the Mathnawi, including tales of men who put on a veil and enter the women’s section of the mosque, men who fondle other men or women in the midst of religious sermons, homosexual sex in the mosque, and women’s complaints about sexually ungratified lives. Yet after recounting a few pornographic verses along these lines, Rumi often turns to serious theological issues, such as the lives of the prophets, as he uses the tales to draw moral and religious conclusions. He admits, ‘My dirty jokes (hazl) are not really dirty jokes, but instructions’ (Mowlåna 1996: 5:2497; and Schimmel 1975: 319). The Sufi poet Jåmi (d. 1492) used anecdotes about simpletons to criticise the emerging religious orthodoxy of the fifteenth century. Jåmi, who had a Sunni Hanafi background, was critical of Shii clerics and their liberal access to sex through temporary marriage. He also blamed them for their excessive adherence to religious rituals and regulations. Some of the satirical poems in his Mathnawi Haft Awrang mock the obsessive manner in which rituals of ­ablution – the washing of hands, face and feet before daily prayers – are carried out by believers. He points out that Islam originated in sandy Arabia where there was very little water. Yet, Shii clerics required their followers to wash themselves multiple times in pure water before performing their daily

the wise fool and the trickster nasreddin

prayers. But if washing one’s hands and feet once before each daily prayer was good enough for the Prophet, why was it not good enough for others? (Jåmi 1996: 57–60). Obeyd Zåkåni (c. 1300–72) remains the most outstanding satirist of classical Persian poetry. Zåkåni grew up in an aristocratic Sunni family in Qazvin before moving to Shiraz. He founded a new school of social criticism that mercilessly ridiculed rulers and religious elites as well as commoners. A respectable poet and judge, who had perfected the art of ribaldry, Zåkåni’s bawdy poems were written for a small community of literate aristocrats and were extremely frank in sexual matters (Browne 1914: 3:230). Modern anthologies of his work usually delete these portions of his poems, which mention private body parts and sexual acts. Zåkåni’s Joyous Treatise (Resåleh-yi delgoshå) is a collection of Arabic and Persian anecdotes that builds on earlier traditions of the wise fool, and also invents many new tales. There are three types of fools in these stories. There are the decent and good-natured commoners such as Johå and Bohlul, who mind their own business unless someone wants to make fools of them. Another common trope is of a more transgressive figure, such as the clown Talkhak (or Dalqak). Finally, there is Abu Bakr Rabåni, a drunken and impoverished intellectual, who ridicules his own miserable social and economic milieu (Seyyedi Dasht Tus 1996: 139). A common theme in Zåkåni’s work is criticism of religious practices, even when they concern good deeds such as giving alms (zakåt). In one story, Johå routinely steals sheep, slaughters them, then donates the meat to the poor. When asked to account for his bizarre conduct, he explains that his good deed, donating the meat to the poor, cancels out his bad deed of stealing the sheep. This leaves him with the fat and the skin which he sells at a profit, making a good living out of the transaction (Zåkåni 1964: 266). At other times, Zåkåni mocks sacrosanct beliefs of both Sunnis and Shiis. Shiis believe that the First Imam, Ali, should have become the first Muslim caliph, rather than the fourth, suggesting that the first three caliphs, Abu Bakr (r. 632–4), Umar (r. 634–44) and Uthman (r. 644–56), were usurpers. Zåkåni writes that a Shii went to a mosque and noticed the names of the first four caliphs on the walls. He wanted to spit on the names of Abu Bakr and Umar, but instead spat on the name of Ali. Annoyed and embarrassed by his disrespect, he said to Ali, ‘Well, serves you right! This is what you get for sitting next to such rotten fellows!’ (Zåkåni 1964: 265). No one is exempt from Zåkåni’s sharp humour – not clerics, not kings, not imams, nor even God himself. Thus, in another anecdote, Zåkåni questions the idea that God is just, and pokes fun at the restrictions in mosques. A Shirazi man (a city known for having fun-loving residents) was cooking opium in the mosque. A servant of the mosque, who was partially blind, deaf and crippled, yelled at him for doing so. The Shirazi said, ‘God has not been so just to you, why do you guard his house so scrupulously?’ (Zåkåni 1964: 279). Many of these anecdotes from the Joyous Treatise later became Nasreddin stories, though in more polite language.

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172 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN Reading Nasreddinia as subversive Nasreddin is not a typical mythical hero. Nasreddin’s mother is not a royal virgin and his father is not a king. No one tries to kill him when he is born, and no one tries to save him. He never has a kingdom, nor fights dragons, beasts or giants, and he never marries a princess. Instead, he ‘is the little man who speaks FOR the little people of this world and TO the little people of this world’. He is a ‘counter-hero’, who deals with o ­ rdinary problems through ordinary means (Walker and Uysal 1990: 388; emphasis in original). Nasreddin does, however, share some common characteristics with the Jewish prankster, Rabbi Hershel Ostropolier, as well as the German trickster, Till Eulenspiegel, and the African-American, Br’er Rabbit. The tales of Nasreddin are often about people at the margins of society, illiterate peasants and the urban poor, and their entanglements with the powerful and rich. They deal with legends, customs and beliefs of commoners, whose traditions have been least influenced by modern Figure 4.9  Till Eulenspiegel, by Hans education (Dundes 1980: 3–4). Baldung Grien. These stories rely on many trickster tropes disSource: Hans Weingartz / CC BY-SA 2.0 cussed by Jung, Foucault and Bakhtin. They are DE, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/ index.php?curid=6807091. about repressed instincts and behaviours deemed unacceptable by proper society. They offer new ways of thinking about social relations and often reveal neglected forms of wisdom. The weapons of Nasreddin, Bohlul and Johå are the degradation and humiliation of those in positions of authority and power. This grotesque realism accomplishes two subversive acts: it debases powerful sources of authority and helps envision an alternative world order. Mollaˉ Nasreddin’s guile and dirt-work Nasreddinia employ two additional tropes: (1) guile (zerangi), or the ability to negotiate and interpret language and context deftly; and (2) mastery of interpersonal relations, especially when dealing with a higher authority. Anthropologist William Beeman writes that among Iranians, interpersonal relations have an aesthetic dimension, and the ability to deftly control interpersonal relations is seen as an art form. People are measured by the degree to which they have mastered the art of verbal performance: The elaborate weaving and intertwining of designs in the finest Persian carpets; the extraordinary complexity of rhyme, meter, imagery, and word play in classical Persian poetry; and the intricate improvisatory

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sweet-sadness of melodic line in traditional Persian music all convey some of the feeling and texture of everyday social interaction. It is not unreasonable to compare interpersonal relations in Iran to art, for negotiating the webs of everyday personal relations and interaction situations requires consummate skill even for those born into the system. Consequently, there are rewards for the adept and setbacks for the clumsy. (Beeman 1986: 1–2) The essence of successful interpersonal dialogue is the ability to maintain ambiguity, uncertainty and even confusion in the minds of others. Guile involves ‘thwarting direct interpretation of [one’s] own actions or deliberately leading others to erroneous interpretations of these actions, while being able to successfully interpret the actions of others’. It also involves a healthy mistrust towards the actions and deeds of others (Beeman 1986: 27).8 Beeman traces the origins of this ambiguity to the Shii practice of pious dissimulation and multiple potential readings of religious texts by Sufi mystics. He also suggests that ambiguity is a principal characteristic of classical Persian poetry, where the gender of the beloved is often left purposefully vague, allowing the reader the opportunity to interpret the love-object as male/female, or as divine/earthly (Beeman 1986: 25). This artfulness has deep roots in Iranian folklore. Dick Davis (1999) has argued that the powerful hero of the epic Shåhnåmeh was not just a strong warrior but also a trickster like Ulysses. He used an arsenal of deceit and prevarications to defeat his enemies, but died in the end as a result of tricks played on him. Similarly, Jerome Clinton (1999) has suggested that guile is a pervasive presence in the Shåhnåmeh; despite the consistent and ubiquitous condemnation of all forms of dishonesty, and the parallel exhortations to honesty and truth, lies and deceit are familiar weapons in the armory of heroes as well as villains. There is no gender difference in this regard. To be cunning and have guile are acceptable tactics in war for both men and women (Clinton 1999: 223–41). However, the cunning nature of Nasreddinia is not just aimed at winning. Many of these anecdotes perform a type of ‘dirt-work’, in the manner described by Douglas and Hyde. Here, ‘dirt-work’ refers to trickster tales that routinely blur the boundary between the sacred and the profane. The sharia includes thousands of rules that define polluting and purifying actions for believers. Blood, semen, urine, dogs and many other things and people, including non-Muslims, are deemed najes, ritually unclean. As in Orthodox Judaism, detailed regulations describe daily conduct (toilet, preparations for daily prayers), relations between men and women (after sex, during menstruation, after child birth), and interactions between Muslims and non-Muslims (on the street, during trade and commerce), as well as between humans and animals. These rules are far more wide-ranging and detailed in Shiism than in Sunnism but exist in both. Nasreddin, we should remember, is a mollå, a figure of ‘sacred dirt’ that can playfully question the most intimate rituals of Islam and get away with it. In the remainder of this chapter, we examine four types of Nasreddin tales, and the social relations they question.

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174 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN The impoverished and the powerful Some tales of Mollå Nasreddin constitute a type of folk resistance against sources of authority – kings, emirs and qadis (religious judges) (Beeman 1986). Impoverished men are first and foremost concerned with their daily meal, and many of the stories of Nasreddin concern food. They depict clever ways of fetching food, ingratiating oneself with the rich in order to get food, and imagining food when there is none. The tales also serve as a critique of the greed and corpulence of clerics and elites, as well as their corruption. The hungry trickster becomes creatively deceptive in satisfying his urge for food (Hyde 1998: 17). Nasreddin is never one to miss a feast. Even if he is not invited, he finds other ways to get his share of the meal. In one story, a neighbour has a feast but does not invite Nasreddin and his wife. A few days later, the couple feign a big argument. Nasreddin’s wife comes out of the door screaming and runs to the neighbour’s courtyard claiming that her husband is beating her, knowing that their neighbour has a social obligation to mediate between them. The neighbour does intervene and invites Nasreddin and his wife to dine with them as a way of reconciling the two. In this way, the couple succeeds in getting a free meal out of the neighbour who had not invited them to his feast a few days earlier. (For other examples of the cunning of Nasreddin’s wife, see Tourage 2007.) If feigning an argument is one way to get a free meal, a more obvious one is getting food through flattery. In the tale ‘The Servant of Eggplant’, Nasreddin describes sycophants who flatter the men in power in order to keep their stomachs full. Nasreddin is invited to the house of the governor for dinner. There is a wonderful eggplant stew on the spread that the governor likes very much. Nasreddin, who is a consummate orator, tells a number of tales about the benefits of eggplant for digestion. An hour later, the governor gets indigestion and begins to curse the eggplant. Nasreddin now reverses his words, telling stories about the dangers of eggplant for digestion. The annoyed governor asks, ‘How come an hour ago you were telling us about the benefits of eggplant and now you talk about the dangers of eggplant?’ Nasreddin answers, ‘Sire, I am a servant of yours, not a servant of the vegetable!’9 In other stories, impoverished people use their imagination to satisfy their hunger. A poor man takes his dry loaf of bread, dips it in a pond where ducks are swimming, and imagines he is having duck soup. In another story, an impoverished man comes across a vendor on the street with a big pot of steaming stew. The impoverished man takes out a loaf of dry bread, holds it above the steaming soup, and when the bread gets slightly moist, eats it hungrily. When he is finished, the vendor asks for payment. The man protests, and the vendor appeals to a local judge, who in this story is Nasreddin. After hearing both the complaint of the vendor and the explanation of the poor man, Nasreddin takes out a few coins, rattles them in his hand, and says to the vendor, the ‘price of the steam from your soup is this rattling sound of the coins in my hand. Now get out! You have been adequately compensated!’10 Another concern of the poor is clothing. Nasreddin’s tales successfully use the theme of proper attire to ridicule the social hierarchies of the time. In

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Figure 4.10  ‘New clothes’ (Graphic by Noureddin Zarrinkelk). Source: Anvar 2020.

‘Nasreddin and the Feast’, the trickster acts more like a Sufi mystic, criticising those who pay inordinate attention to the material world. One day after work, Nasreddin rushes to a dinner party wearing his simple work clothes. When he arrives, he is directed to the far end of the spread, only to find that the more respectable and well-dressed guests have been seated at the head of the spread, closer to the best foods. He rushes home to change into his best clothes and returns. This time, he is directed to the head of the spread. Nasreddin digs into the food, but instead of eating, he starts pouring handfuls of rice into the long sleeves of his robe. The host and the guests express their astonishment, but Nasreddin responds that when he first came in his work clothes, he was asked to sit at the bottom of the spread. Now he is asked to sit at the head of the spread. So obviously the food is for his clothes and not for him. A number of stories deal with qadis, as in ‘The Impoverished Man and the Soup Vendor’, where Nasreddin is a judge who sides with the victim. In other tales, he plays a plaintiff who confronts dishonest judges. In ‘The Qadi and the Containers of Honey’, Nasreddin gives a lesson to a corrupt qadi, who is known to accept bribes from plaintiffs in return for taking their side. When his case comes before the judge, Nasreddin brings a half-dozen containers of honey, which he fills with dirt, spreading a thin layer of honey at the top of the containers. He sends them to the judge before his case is presented. The judge opens one of the containers, and seeing that it has honey, renders a judgement in favour of Nasreddin. After the qadi takes the containers home and orders

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176 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN them open, he realises that he has been tricked. He calls his servant to fetch Nasreddin. The servant comes to Nasreddin’s house and says, ‘The qadi would like to see you. He says there is a problem with the judgement he rendered today, and he would like to discuss it with you.’ Nasreddin looks stoically at the servant and says to the man to tell the qadi there was no problem with the judgement, the problem was with the containers of honey. At other times, in the manner of Bakhtin, Nasreddin undresses the qadi and humiliates him in public. In the story of ‘Mollå and the Drunken Qadi’, Nasreddin comes upon the leading qadi of the town in a meadow, half-naked and unconscious after a bout of drinking. Nasreddin steals the qadi’s robe and turban, leaving him naked in the field. The next morning, when the qadi wakes up, he sends his servant to search for his clothes. The servant finds Nasreddin wearing the qadi’s robe and turban, and brings him in. The qadi asks Nasreddin, ‘Is this robe yours?’ Nasreddin says, ‘No, your honour, it belongs to a naked drunk man, who was lying unconscious in the meadow! I will be happy to return his clothes, if you find him for me!’ The qadi realises that he has no option but to let Nasreddin go, and he leaves. In ‘Timur and Nasreddin’, a classic Turkish tale, Nasreddin Hodja suggests that the powerful Mongul ruler (d. 1405), who killed tens of thousands, is a worthless person. One day, when Timur is in a good mood, he asks Nasreddin, ‘How much do you think I am worth?’ Nasreddin responds, ‘Fifty dinars!’ Timur says, ‘My clothes alone are worth that much!’ To which Nasreddin replies, ‘My point exactly!’ Here, and elsewhere, when Nasreddin confronts men of great power he literally or symbolically disrobes them, thereby humiliating them in public. These examples suggest that the trickster Nasreddin is granted much leeway in folk tradition. He is a liminal figure who does not fit into any one social category, yet belongs to them all, moving fluidly in between social classes while simultaneously critiquing them. He can degrade, debase and undress the powerful and the wealthy. Through such grotesque realism, he levels the ground and shows the vulnerability of those who are in power, creating a moment of psychological respite for ordinary people, as well as pointing to the deficiencies of those in power. Religious rituals, the clerical establishment and daily life As Hasan Javadi has pointed out, there are at least three types of satire targeting religion in Persian literature: first, works that express atheistic or agnostic sentiments, such as the Rubayyiat of Omar Khayyam (d. 1131), or the poetry of Iraj Mirza (d. 1926) and Sadiq Hedayat (d. 1951); second, works that express intolerance towards non-Muslims or towards other sects/ethnicities within Islam, as in the poetry of Khåqåni (d. 1190) and sometimes Ferdowsi (d. 1020/1026); and third, works aimed at one’s own co-religionists, which extol moderation and criticise orthodoxy. This third genre of satire, to which Nasreddinia belongs has a long and robust history in classical Persian literature and can be found in the works of famous writers like Rumi and Håfez (d. 1389) (Javadi 1988: 49–90), as well as in Nasreddinia.11

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Unlike the Sufis and the Mutazalites, Nasreddinnia do not pose probing philosophical questions about religion and theology. But they show Nasreddin trying to cut corners, to skip rituals whenever he can, and do get by with as little religious practice as possible, while retaining his position as a Muslim cleric. These tales suggest that the average Muslim is too busy to pay meticulous attention to the required rules of ablutions, to perform his daily prayers in an exact manner, to focus on lofty thoughts while in the mosque, or to fast for the entire month of Ramadan. Nasreddin is a real human being with all his frivolities, desires and limitations, and like the rest of us, he tries to hide his weaknesses. Theft is a serious crime under Muslim law, which exacts severe penalties. But Nasreddin omits no one from his bizarre sense of justice, and steals not just from ordinary mortals but also from God himself. Like other classic tricksters, he steals not to get rich, but to ‘disturb the established categories of truth’. In this way, he opens possibilities to other ways of thinking about justice (Hyde 1998: 13). One of the classic tales of theft describes the day Nasreddin comes home to find out that a thief has stolen his front door. Unable to find it, Nasreddin goes to the local mosque and hauls its front door

Figure 4.11  ‘The all-knowing God!’ (Graphic by Noureddin Zarrinkelk). Source: Anvar 2020.

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178 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN home, saying aloud to whoever can hear him, ‘Since God is all knowing, let him catch the thief, and get back his door!’ In another story, Nasreddin challenges the notion of the purity and sanctity of the mosque. Passing by a mosque where he sees people beating a dog, he intervenes to ask why they are beating an innocent animal. He is told that the dog went into the mosque and polluted it, so the mosque now requires extensive ritualistic cleansing. Nasreddin says, ‘Leave the poor animal alone. If he had any sense, he would do as I do, and never set foot in the mosque.’12 Other tales reveal the frustration of ordinary people with religious obligations and the need to keep up appearances of religiosity. In the month of Ramadan, all Muslims are required to fast from dawn to dusk. There are some exceptions, including elderly people, travellers, ill people and pregnant or nursing women. In this month, women wake up early in the morning to prepare a large breakfast, the only meal of the day until the breaking of the fast that evening. As a result, there is a lot of hustle and bustle in the neighbourhood around 4 a.m., when the lights go on and the family prepares to sit down and eat breakfast. In one tale, Nasreddin does not fast during Ramadan, but he makes his wife get up every morning to prepare the customary breakfast. One day, when she has had enough, she yells at him, ‘Mollå, you don’t fast! Why do you make me get up every morning so early and make breakfast?’ Nasreddin, quite perplexed by this naive question, answers, ‘What? With no noise coming from our house, do you want people to think I am not a Muslim?’ Another tale that deals with fasting during Ramadan has Shii origins. The tenth day of the month of Muharram, called Ashura, is a day of mourning. Nasreddin was present at an Ashura sermon, where a cleric declared that God considers one day of fasting on Ashura equal to six months of fasting at other times. That year, Nasreddin did not fast during Ramadan, instead he paid a visit to the cleric. When the cleric asked why he was not fasting, Nasreddin explained, ‘I fasted on the day of Ashura. As you said in your sermon, God now owes me six months. Therefore, I will not fast in the month of Ramadan this year, and for the next five years.’ Even the venerable tradition of pilgrimage to Mecca is ridiculed by the wise fool. Zåkåni writes, in one tale, that an Arab man was told, ‘You are old and have wasted your life. Repent and go on a hajj pilgrimage.’ He said, ‘I don’t have money to go.’ He was told, ‘You own a house, sell it and use the money to go.’ He said, ‘Where would I live when I return? And if I don’t return and stay at the Kaba, wouldn’t God say, “You idiot! Why did you sell your house and move into mine?”’ (Zåkåni 1964: 251). This tale is a strong criticism of the hajj pilgrimage, which is considered the Fifth Pillar of Islam. Anyone with the physical and financial ability to afford such a journey is required to make the pilgrimage once in a lifetime. The problem is that ‘afford’ is a relative term. In this case, the man with a house was considered by his community as someone who could afford the pilgrimage, when in reality he would be homeless upon his return. An interesting dimension of Nasreddinia is that there are very few tales that treat the practitioners of other religions with hostility. When non-Muslims,

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mostly Jews and Christians, are characters in Nasreddin stories, the humour is generally benign. Instead, the emphasis is on the commonalities of people, their intermingling, and their sharing of meals and abodes, though it also includes a portrayal of the Muslim as cunning and full of guile. One of the common ploys of Nasreddin is to trick his non-Muslim companions into giving him a free meal. Yet, this act of breaking bread and sharing a meal with a ritually impure non-Muslim is itself the violation of a grave religious taboo, one that Nasreddin successfully accomplishes, demonstrating his fluid mobility between religions. In the tale of ‘The Atheistic Nestorian’, we read that during Lent, when Christians are supposed to avoid meat, a hungry Nasreddin comes across a Nestorian Christian who is eating meat and immediately joins him in his meal. The Christian, who is annoyed by this unwanted guest, asks, ‘You are a Muslim! How is it that you are eating the meat of an animal that has not been slaughtered in the proper halal Muslim way?’ Nasreddin replies, ‘It doesn’t matter. I am among the Muslims the way you are among the Christians.’ In a more complex tale, Nasreddin pokes fun at the Muslim law of retribution (qisås), and the biblical notion of ‘an eye for an eye’: The police were chasing a thief who escaped to a house. He bumped into the lady of the house, who was pregnant. She was so frightened that she had a miscarriage. The thief then ran to a neighbouring mosque and climbed above a high minaret. But after the police chased him up there, the thief threw himself down onto the alley and landed on an old man, who died instantly. The thief frantically got up, but now bumped into a Jew, who fell on the ground and landed on a nail, losing an eye. When the thief was finally caught and brought before Qadi Nasreddin, the victims and their relatives demanded retribution. Nasreddin told the man whose wife had a miscarriage, ‘Since this young thief has caused your wife to miscarry, you must put him with your wife in a private place so they make a baby for you.’ To the man whose elderly brother had died, Nasreddin suggested an equal retribution, ‘You must go above the minaret and jump on the thief to kill him.’ And to the Jew, he said, ‘You have the right to take out the eye of this thief in retribution. However, since a Jew is worth only half a Muslim, you must first let the thief take out your other eye, then you can blind him in one eye.’ Needless to say, all three plaintiffs left in great haste and decided to forgo their retribution. While this tale is a spoof on the strict laws of retribution, it does contain a kernel of truth, which is what makes it so powerful. Under sharia, a non-­Muslim man blinded by a Muslim man would first have to pay him for the price of one eye, before demanding retribution, since the eye of a Muslim is worth twice that of a non-Muslim. In these tales and many others, Nasreddin questions sacrosanct aspects of religious doctrine – from fasting during Ramadan and going on hajj, to the ritual sanctity of the mosque and the impurity of dogs, to the inequitable laws of retribution and regulations prohibiting the mingling of Muslims and non-Muslims. Nothing is sacred and everything can be mocked.

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180 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN Female tricksters and women-centred tales The issues and ideas raised in folk tales originated from people of different genders, so that often the sex and gender of the authors were unknown. As Wendy Doniger (1998: 135) writes, it is best ‘to regard the author of most [folk] texts as androgynous’. Folk tales and myths represent a vast cultural tradition and, as such, express both the male and female points of view. While Nasreddin is presented as a male Muslim cleric, the stories of Nasreddin are told and retold by both women and men. The tales thus express the desires, fantasies and frustrations of people of different genders. The folk tales of Nasreddin are born out of the enormously diverse Middle Eastern cauldron, expressing their multivocality in many ways. At times, especially with the older Johå tales that have been preserved in the works of Obeyd Zåkåni, a patriarchal and misogynistic voice is unmistakable and dominant. These tales express men’s fear of shrewd, conniving or unconventional women, who challenge the normative patriarchal order. Often, the stories deal with wives, concubines and slaves of important men, who successfully cheat on their husbands and masters. Sometimes, these male-centred stories are not so different from classical pornography. They seem to reflect male sexual fantasies that are attributed to women. Among the themes are women’s constant preoccupation with the size of a man’s penis, and various descriptions of rape and/or sodomy. Other tales, however, reflect women’s personal and familial concerns. The stories of Nasreddin that deal with intimate personal relations are curiously centred on the home, the bathhouse and the village market. In this regard, they are closer to female domestic spaces than traditional male ones, where courage and cowardice, the raising of armies or the fighting of enemies are present. A number of Nasreddin stories deal with cooking and kitchen utensils, often reflecting typically female concerns, such as anxiety about not having sufficient food in the house when guests arrive. One of the best-known tales, ‘Mollå and the Pot’, would make a great deal more sense if the dialogue took place between two women, Nasreddin’s wife and her neighbour, instead of the way the story is commonly recounted: Nasreddin goes to the neighbour’s house and asks to borrow a large pot. The next day when he returns the pot, the neighbour notices a small pot inside the big one. Nasreddin explains, ‘Your pot was pregnant and last night it gave birth to this baby pot, so I brought them both.’ The man, thinking he has a fool for a neighbour, thanks him and takes both pots. A few days later, Nasreddin once again borrows the big pot. This time, he does not return it. After a week, the neighbour goes over and asks for his pot. Nasreddin rubs his hands in great regret and says, ‘May you live long! I don’t know how to give you this bad news. Your pot was again pregnant but this time it died during delivery.’ The neighbour gets angry and says, ‘How could a pot die?’ Nasreddin says, ‘Well, the same way it gave birth last week!’

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Figure 4.12  ‘The pot that gave birth!’ (Graphic by Noureddin Zarrinkelk). In this drawing Zarrinkelk draws the neighbour as a woman. Source: Anvar 2020.

This story is in many ways a woman-centred one. A large pot is a luxury few can afford, both in terms of its cost and the storage space it requires. It is common for Middle Eastern women to run to each other’s houses and borrow a bigger pot when guests are invited, and one needs to make more rice or stretch the small piece of meat by making a bigger stew out of it. But the other issues raised in this story also reflect women’s concerns: multiple pregnancies, pregnancies hidden from view because of a woman’s veil, and death during childbirth. All are daily concerns of women, and yet, the protagonist of the story is the male trickster Nasreddin. This undoubtedly makes the story more humorous, but it also conceals its likely feminine origins. In most Western and Eastern folk tales, the shrewd and conniving woman is a villain who is ultimately punished, often with a moralising ending clumsily tacked on to the story (Doniger 1998: 116). However, because ruse and cunning are desirable attributes in Nasreddinia, the tales of Nasreddin’s wife (or sometimes his daughter) allow women to be tricksters in their own ways. In this way, the tales subvert gender norms and undermine or reverse the patriarchal order. One of the biggest cultural taboos of the Middle East, regardless of religion, was and remains premarital sex for women. Some Nasreddin tales deal with this subject and describe clever women who engage in premarital sex but manage to avoid social ostracism. In ‘Three Month Pregnancy’, Nasreddin’s

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182 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN wife gives birth to a baby three months after their marriage. Soon neighbours begin to gossip and Nasreddin hears about it. He asks his wife: ‘Doesn’t it take nine months for a woman to have a baby?’ She shakes her head in disbelief and says, ‘Really Nasreddin, I am surprised at you. Haven’t I been your wife for three months?’ ‘Yes, indeed you have been,’ he replies. ‘Haven’t you been my husband for three months?’ ‘That is also true,’ he responds. ‘Haven’t I carried this baby for three months?’ ‘True, very true,’ he answers ‘Well then,’ she says with great conviction, ‘three plus three plus three makes nine!’ And Nasreddin has to agree.13 Occasionally, these gender transgressions verge on heresy. Zåkåni offers a tale about a woman who claims to be a prophet. When she is told that the Prophet Muhammad had declared there would be no prophet after him, she responds, ‘He said, there will be no prophet after me. He did not say, there will be no prophetess after me’ (Zåkåni 1964: 272).

Figure 4.13  ‘Don’t pay heed to what people say!’ (Graphic by Noureddin Zarrinkelk). Source: Anvar 2020.

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The contrast between inner and outer locations within the home constitutes a basic interactive pattern in Iranian culture. Traditional Middle Eastern homes were divided into an andaruni, a place for women and children, and a biruni, where male guests were entertained. The need to observe and preserve the strict physical border between men and women’s places is endlessly reproduced in the genre of advice manuals known as Mirrors for Princes. Linguistic meaning must be analysed according to its social context, which is defined by time and place. People speak differently in different contexts, depending on whether they are in the andaruni or the biruni, alone or in public, around children or in the company of adults, with people who share their ethnicity and religious sentiments, or with those who do not. With these distinctions in mind, we see that people constantly ‘frame’ and ‘fine tune’ their conversations (Beeman 1986: 64–6). In some Nasreddin or Johå stories, the trickster is baffled by the absurdities of the social context and the widely different rules operating in the andaruni and the biruni, in nature and in human interactions. This creates hilarious situations when he follows his own common sense rather than the social rules. For example, in one story Nasreddin takes his cow to the bazaar to sell it, but he has no takers. A friend tells him that if he claims his cow is three months pregnant, he can sell it immediately. Nasreddin does as his friend tells him and comes home with a good profit. As he walks into his house, he sees they have guests. Nasreddin’s wife quietly tells him that there is a potential suitor for their daughter, and he has brought his family to see her. Nasreddin tells his wife he knows just what to tell the guests to seal the deal. He goes into the room, talks about his daughter’s many virtues, and adds as a clincher, ‘The best thing about her is that she is three months pregnant with a baby!’ After the suitor and his family bolt out of the house, a baffled Nasreddin wonders why a pregnant cow is considered a good deal, but not a pregnant daughter, who is sure to produce a child. Sexual transgressions and paedophilia Sexual transgressions are a major preoccupation of the Nasreddin tales. Modern editions, which have become children’s storybooks, launder these tales. But a significant portion of earlier tales revolved around such themes. The Turkish folklorist Seyfi Karabas has compared the erotic Nasreddin tales to those of the Native American Winnebago trickster Wakdjunkaga (Radin 1973). Karabas (1990) suggests that in the first stage of his life, Nasreddin is discovering his own sexuality, experimenting with bestiality, incest, homosexuality and various types of rape. Later, he is socialised and settles into a heterosexual married life. But in our reading of the tales, because there is no particular order of presentation, we can never be sure if Nasreddin is socialised. In fact, the trickster neither renounces male homoeroticism nor celebrates normative heterosexuality. He is forever crossing boundaries and rejecting neat categorisations. Thus, just as he moves fluidly between religions and religious perspectives, his sexual identity is also fluid.

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184 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN The modern collections of Mollå Nasreddin stories, published in Persian, have minimal references to transgressive sexual practices, whether adult samesex relations, pederasty, bestiality or sex in sacred places. However, many such stories have survived in the works of Obeyd Zåkåni and in a Turkish collection of Nasreddin Hodja tales compiled by Pertev Boratav (1996).14 Some stories portray Nasreddin as having sex in the mosque with his donkey or with other men, thus defiling the place in multiple ways. This grotesque identification of sacrosanct sites with the activities of the lower stratum of the body (sex, urination and defecation) is a type of ‘dirt-work’ that challenges orthodoxy, offering temporary relief from it.15 As we have seen, Nasreddin’s tales often challenge normative assumptions about social relations, and they do not let us down here. The tales suggest that, contrary to common perceptions, samesex relations were not exceptions, and did not necessarily replicate society’s normative power relations, or maintain distinctions and hierarchies between active (penetrative) and passive (receiving) partners. For example, a practising Muslim man could be the passive partner in a same-sex relationship with a younger person or a non-Muslim. A common theme in Zåkåni’s tales is that to move up the social hierarchy, a youth must have sex with older men: In your childhood do not withhold the favor of your arse from friend or foe, relative or stranger, those near or remote, so that in your adulthood you can reach the rank of shaykh, preacher, world champion, and chief of protocol. (quoted in Sprachman 1995: 46) No one is spared the accusation of homosexuality, including kings and religious leaders. In one tale, Sultan Mahmoud is terrified and begins to weep as he listens to a sermon where a cleric is lecturing about the Day of Resurrection. In this tale the cleric warns that any man who has sodomised a boy during his life would be punished in the next world. He would be forced to carry that boy on his shoulders and walk over the narrow bridge of purgatory, where any slip of the foot might land him in hell. Talhak the clown tells the king, ‘Oh Sultan, do not weep. Be happy that on that day you will not be left on foot either’ (Zåkåni 1985: 78). Sultan Mahmoud is thus accused of being both an active partner in a homosexual relationship, presumably because he is crying and is worried he may fall, as well as a passive partner, a far more serious accusation in the culture, especially for a sultan (Zåkåni 1964: 26). Other tales discuss homosexuality as a rite of passage much like circumcision. In one such tale a young Christian man converts to Islam and his father asks him how he was treated. The young man says, ‘These Muslims are strange people. In daylight they circumcise you. At night they sodomise you!’ (Zåkåni 1964: 266). Many transgressive tales of Johå take place in mosques and seminaries. Here we witness a double transgression, since an act that is forbidden everywhere is taking place in a sacred space. In one of Zåkåni’s tales, the Sufi master Mawlånå Qotb al-Din is having sex with another man in a small cubicle in a seminary. A third man pushes the door open. Mawlånå asks him what he wants. The man asks if there is room for him to perform his prayers. Mawlånå

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replies, ‘Are you blind? Don’t you see there is so little space here we have to go on top of each other?’ (Zåkåni 1964: 295). Finally, the tales often question the active/passive distinction between partners, and go so far as to suggest that a Muslim amrad, a young man who is a passive partner in a homosexual relationship, may indeed be engaging in sex with non-Muslim men. Thus in one tale an amrad prostitute is asked how he is managing during the month of Ramadan, when Muslims are expected to abstain from sex during the day. He responds, ‘May God save the Christians and Jews’, hence admitting to the fact that inter-ethnic sex did happen, and a Muslim man could be the presumed passive partner in such a relation (Zåkåni 1964: 268). Of course, the story is doubly transgressive as it is taking place during Ramadan. The grotesque realism of Nasreddin and other Muslim tricksters brought kings and clerics down to earth and injected a form of ‘sacred dirt’ that offered comic relief. The tales of Nasreddin also subverted gender and sexual norms, revealing the absurdity of patriarchal gender relations and sexual mores. To this end, trickster tales served as both a safety valve for the social order, and opened the door to alternative forms of existence and social interactions. Did the periodical Mollå Nasreddin apply some of these tropes to powerful people of its time, such as kings and clerics? Did it try to expose the hypocrisy of men in power? Did it question what society considered to be ‘dirt’ or ritually impure, and mock the strict distinction between pure and impure people and actions? Did columns and poems blur the boundary between sacred and profane? Did the stories play with men’s fear of shrewd and unconventional women and women’s extra-marital affairs? And finally, did Mollå Nasreddin refer to tales of pederasty and homosexuality and, if so, to what end? These and other questions will be explored in the next chapter.

Notes 1. The Turks, Greeks, Serbs, Croatians and Albanians, nations that were part of the Ottoman Empire, call him Nasreddin Hoca (pronounced ‘Hoja’). Some of the puns attributed to Nasreddin originated in the Arab world, where the trickster is called Johå (Djohå). Nasreddin was called Efendi in later Istanbul printed collections. In Central Asia, be became known as Ependi. Through Uyghur adaptations the trickster became åfanthi, ‘respected teacher’, and part of the popular culture in modern China (Marzolph 1996: 1018–19; Marzolph 1990: 239; Bushnaq 1986: 1). 2. Thanks to the anonymous reviewers who suggested this additional clarification. 3. Hakki Gurkas (2005) points out that the Turkish folklorist Pertev Naili Baratov has collected 594 old Nasreddin tales, while the Azerbaijani folklorist Tahmasib gathered 512 of them. In contrast, the 1837 Turkish edition of Nasreddin Hoca tales has only 134 tales. A Russian edition may be the most complete, with 1,238 stories. See M. C. Xapиtohob 1986. 4. Another source for some of the stories was the sixteenth-century collection of anecdotes by Safi, Latåif al-Tavaif (1967). 5. The Arab satirist Gohå is said to have been a contemporary of Abu Muslim Khoråsåni, the Iranian rebel leader who helped overthrow the Umayyad dynasty

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186 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN and brought the Abbasid caliphs to power in 750. Marzolph writes that Johå first appeared in the collected poems of Manuchehri (d. 1040), Naser Khosrow (d. 1072) and Adib Saber (d. 1143), who all treated him with disdain. 6. Bohlul is one of several individuals in the early Abbasid era known as Wise Fools (Oqalå al-Majånin). Like other trickster figures, little is known about the facts of his life, although we know that his name was Wahib b. Amr b. Mogira (d. 190/805). 7. Shii authorities suggest he was a cousin of the famous Sunni caliph, Hårun al-Rashid (r. 786–809). Subsequent writers developed an elaborate genealogy for Bohlul and passed him as a model Shii and a disciple of the Sixth Imam, Jafar Sådiq (d. 148/765) who died twenty years before Hårun’s reign began (Marzolph 1989; Modarres 1970: 5:214–16). 8. Although Beeman (1979) stresses its Iranian roots, one comes across numerous examples of such cleverness in other folk traditions as well. 9. An earlier version of this story, attributed to Sultan Mahmoud, appears in Zåkåni 1964: 272. 10. A similar story is attributed to the Jewish trickster Hershel Ostropolier. 11. Similar examples from the nineteenth century include Yaghma of Jandaq (1782–1859) and Qaani (d. 1853 or 1854) (Javadi 1988: 49–90). 12. An earlier version of this story, attributed to Mawlana Sharif al-Din Damghani, appears in Zåkåni 1964: 279. 13. Several different versions of this story exist. See, for example, the two in Zåkåni 1964: 260–1 and 272. 14. I am grateful to Hakki Gurkas for translations of a selection of these tales. 15. We should note that the Quran, like sacred Jewish and Christian texts, regards male homosexuality as an abomination (Quran 26: 165–6; 15: 73–4; 7: 80–1; 11: 78–83), though there is no mention of female homosexuality. But the Quran and sharia law also show compassion for the repentant (Quran 4: 16). Such relations were socially tolerated if they were not flaunted. Male homosexual relations were generally assumed to take place between a senior and a junior partner. The boy or younger man was expected to be the passive object of the relationship (maful), while the adult was viewed as the active partner (fae). Passivity was a stigma and a source of shame for an adult man. The idea that two adult men would continue to have homosexual relations was widely viewed as scandalous.

CHAPTER 5

Recreating the Trickster Tales and Tropes in Azerbaijani Language A close reading of the first six years of the journal Mollå Nasreddin demonstrates that the title of the periodical was no simple appropriation of the trickster Mollå Nasreddin’s name. Rather, in addition to reproducing some original Nasreddinia, the editors skilfully recreated the trickster trope for their time and place. The weekly periodical imitated the plots of the classic folk tales, presented an updated version of the characters and situations previously discussed, and created new tales addressing modern concerns. Sometimes the connections between the original tales and the periodical’s recreations were obvious, as in tales that revolved around the folk Mollå and his wife. At other times, the relationship to the trickster was subtler, but the stories or columns performed a type of ‘dirt-work’, where Mollå exposed the hypocrisy and corruption of his social milieu. There were also occasions when the stories were far more explosive than a typical trickster tale, such as when Mollå Nasreddin revealed the actions and the names of some highly influential living people in South Caucasus and Iran. This chapter will look at the recreation of some of the tropes utilised and addressed in the periodical. We will see how Mollå Nasreddin called attention to the suffering of migrant workers, pleaded for the reform of Shii/ Muslim rituals and practices, criticised more traditional women who turned to charms and incantations to achieve their goals, and revealed the pervasive sexual abuse of boys. In recreating these trickster tales, the periodical used a variety of literary forms. A common device utilised was the fictional epistolary exchange, usually in the form of ‘Letters to the Editor’. Others were humorous journalistic investigative pieces, mock interviews, fake advertisements, gossip columns and non-political news pieces, including reports of the latest fashion, literary works and witty epigrams, as well as cartoons. Thus, the journal used a variety of genres, from the seemingly respectable text and poetry to the inferior cartoons and caricatures, giving the form, as well as the content of the journal, an intertextual and hybrid identity. Migrant workers and poverty The harsh lives of the impoverished, especially those of Iranian migrant workers who were at the bottom of the social hierarchy, was a regular concern of the journal. These men were exploited and harassed by everyone, including

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Figure 5.1  Recently, police officers in Tiflis found and confiscated weapons known as ‘sickle’ from Iranian workers. Source: MN 24, 14 June 1909.

their employers, the Iranian consulate offices in South Caucasus, the police who arrested them on the flimsiest of charges (Figure 5.1), and even the charitable organisations that collected money on their behalf cheated them. The periodical showed how other Muslims, who were Russian citizens, tormented the ‘fresh off the boat’ migrants with ethnic slurs and occasional violence (Figure 5.2). In one tale, Mollå Nasreddin revealed the corruption of a charity in Yerevan that collected money for Iranian migrants. Here, the periodical used the classic format of the trickster tales, where Mollå’s wife gives him money and sends him on an errand to the bazaar, but Mollå ends up doing something foolish with the money, and when he returns, his wife reproaches him. Then Mollå explains his reasoning, and the reader realises that there is some logic to his bizarre behaviour. The tale below offers an example of this type of reinvention of trickster tales, while all along the periodical reassures its readers that this is an original tale: Old Mollå Nasreddin Tales Many of our readers routinely ask us to publish classic Mollå Nasreddin tales in our periodical. For this reason, we acquired a new edition of the late

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Mollå’s stories, which was published in Iran, and will occasionally reprint some tales such as the one below: ‘One day Mollå Nasreddin’s wife gave her husband 2 abbasi and 2 kopek to buy her 3 arshin [around 2 metres] of colourful cotton fabric (cheet).1 A day passed, a week passed, a month passed, and there was no fabric. Finally, Mollå’s wife asked, ‘Hey Mollå! What happened to the money?’ Mollå said, ‘I pocketed the money!’ She yelled back, ‘Is it a decent thing to pocket money that has been entrusted to you?’ Mollå said, ‘If it isn’t, then why does the [Iranian Charitable Organisation] of Yerevan pocket the money that has been entrusted to them by the impoverished and the working people?’ (MN 22, 1 September 1906: 7) Undocumented migrant workers were not just cheated by charities, they were also robbed by their employers and merchants, who charged them heavily, then got them thrown in jail for unpaid debts. To expose this practice, Mollå Nasreddin turned to fake ads, a common device in the pages of the paper, to show how secondand third-generation migrants, who were now employers, robbed new immigrant workers: Advertisement I announce to our Iranian brothers who have fled the oppressions of [their Iranian] khåns and landowners that I have opened a bakery. I invite my fellow Iranians to apply for a job to earn a living.   Requirements for Employment:  First, they must leave their mattress and quilt with me as security deposit.  Second, at the completion of the work, they may receive 99 Iranian-style beatings instead of wages.   Address: Hotel Street in Caucasus, Bakery of Gardener Ughli (MN 18, 5 May 1909: 7)

Figure 5.2  Caucasus Philanthropic Society. Q: ‘Where is your school after all these years?’ A: ‘Hopefully in the near future.’ Source: MN 14, 16 April 1911.

In addition to being abused and robbed of their hard-earned wages by their employers, migrants also faced discrimination from other workers. As elsewhere in the world, citizens accused migrant workers of taking away their jobs even though migrants performed the harshest and least desirable types of work. After the Constitutional Revolution, pressure on Iranian migrant workers to return to their homeland increased. In a mock ‘Letter to the Editor’, an Iranian migrant in Yerevan explained that he used to think a Caucasus Azerbaijani at

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Figure 5.3  Iranian peasants who owe a debt to Russian citizens. Governor: ‘Throw them in the stable until they pay their debts.’ Source: MN 23, 13 June 1910.

his workplace hated all Iranian migrants, since he routinely badgered them and said, ‘Get lost! Go back to Iran.’ The migrants would respond, ‘We won’t go back, because the doctors there are quacks and if we get sick, they give us fake medicine and bury us alive.’ More recently, after the ratification of the Iranian Constitution in December 1906, the same person had started saying, ‘Get lost! Go to Iran! Go and claim your freedom. You won’t get anything by staying here!’ Assuming that ‘freedom’ and ‘constitution’ were some tangible commodities, like cash, that were distributed back in Iran, the migrants now believed the man who had been harassing them all these years was right to tell them to go back to Iran, to claim their share of the constitution! (MN 1, 6 January 1907: 3). Occasionally, Mollå Nasreddin played the role of a simpleton who uncovered how people in power loot the impoverished. Some of these powerful people were Iranian diplomats who worked at consulates in South Caucasus. In the tale ‘Where Was the Money of Iranian Workers Spent?’, Mollå Nasreddin travelled to the Jolfå customs office and watched Iranian workers crossing

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Figure 5.4  Club of Muslims of Baku. Source: MN 34, 25 August 1908.

the border back to Iran. As they left Jolfå, they emptied their pockets before the customs officers. Mollå observed that the workers had very little with them – some food, a few trinkets and gifts for their families, and around 2 manåts cash.2 He wondered aloud to himself where the rest of their wages had gone. Iranian migrants were paid a salary of 1–2 manåts per day. They were very frugal, ate little and tried to save their hard-earned cash for their families back home. But after months, and sometimes years, of working in South Caucasus, where was the rest of their money? Finally, someone took Mollå Nasreddin by the sleeve and showed him a beautiful building on one of the more prosperous streets of Tiflis. The building belonged to Arfa alDowleh, the former Iranian Consul General in Tiflis. Mollå found out that Arfa al-Dowleh had several other properties in the region, totalling around 200,000 manåts. He wondered aloud how Arfa al-Dowleh had saved so much on an annual salary of around 1,400 manåts, so that his assets in the region totalled ‘150 times’ that salary! This must have been where the money of the migrant workers had gone – the fees, dues and the taxes they paid the consulate for work permits. Through this piece of investigative journalism, Mollå Nasreddin revealed the corruption of the influential Arfa al-Dowleh, who by then had become the Iranian ambassador in Istanbul (MN 27, 6 October 1906: 2–3).

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Figure 5.5  Departure of the old consul, arrival of the new one. Source: MN 11, 15 March 1909.

Religious rituals, the clerical establishment and daily life Nasreddin was not always the cleverest person in the folk tales. Occasionally, he met his match. There would be another trickster who pocketed the money or stole the food before he did. In the pages of Mollå Nasreddin many high clerics were in this latter category. They found various ways of becoming rich, including setting up theological seminaries. Mollå Nasreddin mockingly called these seminaries ‘print shops’, since they churned out hordes of junior clerics referred to as mollås and seyyed (descendants of the Prophet). These men were then tasked with collecting the annual religious taxes from believers and turning over most of it to senior clerics. In Tabriz, two well-known anti-constitutionalist senior clerics had made a fortune in this way. The ‘print shop’ of the Leader of Friday Prayers annually ‘fabricated six thousand mollås’. The ‘print shop’ of Seyyed Hashem produced ‘four thousand seyyeds’ each month (MN 33, 17 November 1906: 3). The other way senior clerics made money was to issue fatwas in return for handsome contributions. Mollå Nasreddin now announced that Gheyrat Printshop, where the journal was printed, would sell copies of such (mock) fatwas. Among them were ‘fatwas against constitutionalism for 1/2 kopek’, ‘fatwas against journalists for one qoroush’, ‘fatwa against the periodical

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Figure 5.6  Endowments in Mashhad. Source: MN 37, 13 September 1909.

Mollå Nasreddin for 1/4 kopek’, and the most expensive, fatwas ‘against unity of Shiis and Sunnis, against New Method schools, against schools for girls, and against anyone [modern enough] to eat his porridge with a spoon for one manåt’ (MN 2, 13 January 1908). Other stories dealt with clerics who had amassed fortunes by taking over charitable endowments and pocketing contributions to the mosque. In a tale called ‘The Bazaar’, we read about a shopkeeper, who was new to Tiflis, sitting in his store and waiting for customers. A friend came by and said, ‘Aren’t you a Muslim? Today (21st day of Ramadan) is the anniversary of the martyrdom of Imam Ali [d. 661], why is your store open? Close the shop so we go to the mosque and hear about the great attributes of our imams and the sufferings of that saint.’ Thereupon, the shopkeeper closed his store and went to the mosque with his friend. At the mosque, he asked his friend, ‘Whose endowment created this mosque?’ His friend says, ‘I don’t understand such things. I only know that the mosque has been inherited by the cleric Shariatmadår [beholder of the sharia] who is sitting on the altar.’ The shopkeeper said, ‘Brother, mosques belong to God, and God is eternal. How can a mosque belong to someone else?’ His friend said, ‘Idiot, don’t you know that the prophets inherit from God, and the ulema likewise inherit from the prophets. Why shouldn’t they? Now stop talking because if the inheritor [Shariatmadår] hears you, he will kick you out of the mosque and also declare you an atheist.’

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Figure 5.7  Collecting donations at a mosque: ‘His Honour needs 600 manåts. But he will accept the money on the condition that you kiss his hand first.’ Source: MN 40, 26 October 1907.

So the shopkeeper sat quietly. After a while, and some ‘nonsensical’ sermons, Shariatmadår announced that he owed 3,000 manåts and asked for donations to pay off his debt. Otherwise, he warned the congregants, he planned to sell his belongings and leave that city. The men at the mosque became quite agitated and assured him that they would collect the money he needed. After a great deal of cajoling, and pretending that he could not possibly accept their contributions, Shariatmadår pocketed the significant sum that was collected. At this point, the shopkeeper turned to his friend and said, ‘You came to my store and made me lock up. You said, “Today we commemorate the martyrdom of our Imam, let’s go to the mosque and hear a bit about that tragedy.” What happened? … These mollås force people to close their shops and come to the mosque, so the mollås could open a shop inside the mosque!’ In this way, the shopkeeper realised two things: first, that he had been tricked, and second, that the clerics were far smarter than he was (MN 44, 25 November 1907: 3–6). In many of the tales and illustrations of Mollå Nasreddin, shaitån [the devil] was portrayed as a close confederate of the clerics. The Quran speaks of several different types of evil, including Iblis and shaitåns. The bigger devil,

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Figure 5.8  Top right: The (devilish) Europe and the Ottomans: ‘Let’s take a nap.’ Source: MN 48, 30 November 1908.

Iblis, is the fallen angel who refused to bow to Adam and was expelled from Heaven (Quran 20: 117; 38: 77). Shaitåns are somewhat smaller demons who live close to humans and interact with them. They whisper into people’s ears, encouraging them to commit sinful and forbidden acts (Quran 17: 53; 4: 119). In the cartoons of Mollå Nasreddin, Shaitåns appeared frequently in sketches that dealt with machinations of imperialist powers and internal power games among Muslims. Shaitåns represented European demons, who robbed Sultan Abdul Hamid (r. 1876–1909) of his belongings and dismembered the Ottoman Empire (MN 2, 13 January 1912) (Figure 5.8). But they also had a lively presence within the Muslim community and caused all sorts of mischief. Yet they refused to take responsibility for all the misdeeds that were attributed to them. In a ‘Letter to the Editor’, a shaitån complained that newspapers had wrongfully accused him of tempting Muslims into sinful acts. One man committed a murder, another got drunk, a third gambled and a fourth stole the property of orphans. A shaitån was blamed for all these actions when he had nothing to do with them. In fact, he had migrated to Europe a decade earlier and was no longer in Muslim lands. He had left because there were too many shaitåns in the Muslim world and the field was crowded. Unfortunately, he had not made much progress in Europe, as the Europeans did not seem to fall for his schemes. For example, when he told them that reading newspapers was haråm (religiously forbidden), they scoffed and ‘read even more newspapers’. Now in his letter to Mollå Nasreddin, shaitån declared, ‘On the Day of

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196 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN Judgement if [these Muslims] claim that shaitån deceived us, I will be there and tell God that they lie and I had nothing to do with their misdeeds’ (MN 32, 10 October 1908: 8). Religious superstitions and remedies for ailments Many of the columns dealing with superstition reflected the views of simple people, who lived in constant fear of natural calamities such as illnesses, food insecurities, locust swarms and other inexplicable incidents and events. In the absence of proper medical care and scientific knowledge, the common person attributed these incidents to an inauspicious person or thing (an evil eye, a bat, an owl, a black cat), and looked through old religious texts for cures. As a result, Mollå Nasreddin reproached åkhunds and mollås who sold prayers and talismans, feeding the public’s belief in superstition. The periodical did not dismiss all forms of traditional medicine; rather it mocked the most egregious forms of superstitious beliefs and remedies, especially those that were recommended by Muhammad Båqer Majlesi,

Figure 5.9  Right: Book of Adornment of the Believers (advice by Majlesi). Left: Book of Adornment of the Shaitån (advice by non-Muslims). Source: MN 21, 26 May 1908.

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one of the founders of Shii orthodoxy in late seventeenth-century Iran. Majlesi’s Persian-language Hilyat al-Mutaqqin (1983) (The Adornment of the Believers), had fourteen chapters on the dos and don’ts of proper living. A portion of the book was devoted to medical advice such as how one might reduce fevers, treat colds, or cure ear and eye aches. Sexual dysfunction, for example, was cured by applying collyrium (burnt almond) to one’s eyes (MN 23, 9 June 1908: 2–3). There was also plenty of advice on recognising auspicious and inauspicious times for travel. According to Majlesi, if a person saw any of the following, such as: a screaming crow on his righthand side, a dog that raised his tail, a wolf sitting on its tail and barking … If he saw an owl hooting, an old whitehaired woman walking towards him, or a female donkey with cut-off ears approaching then travel was dangerous and had to be avoided, unless the person also recited a long prayer provided in the book (Majlesi 1983: 281–2). In the ‘Letters to the Editor’ and other articles, Mollå Nasreddin showed how these remedies harmed the community both mentally and physically.

Figure 5.10  ‘Oh God! Why is this owl hooting? God protect me from its evil!’ Source: MN 17, 28 April 1907.

Figure 5.11  Eclipse of the sun. But the officers think the killings have once again begun. Source: MN 4, 27 January 1907.

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198 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN Although the stories and accounts were fictional, they were based on real incidents, where desperate people had acted in the absence of proper scientific knowledge. For example, an impoverished man described how he arrived home and saw his mother paralysed with fear because there was an owl sitting on a branch next to their house. She viewed this as an omen of horrible things to come and demanded a proper talisman to ward off the evil (MN 18, 5 April 1907: 6). Similarly, when a total eclipse of the sun occurred in January 1907, another ‘Letter to the Editor’ begged God to have mercy on his people, as ‘there were going to be miseries again; diseases would spread, famine would return; a locust plague, an earthquake; war between kingdoms; peasants’ rebellion; collision of the plants; collapse of the universe’, all because of the sinful actions of a few people (MN 2, 13 January 1907: 8). Local clerics and soothsayers offered solutions for impending catastrophes, often based on Hilyat al-Mutaqqin’s remedies. They sold prayers to ward off cholera or recommended the sacrificial slaughter of tens of sheep to prevent the spread of other pandemics, a ritual which already at the time was known to contribute to the spread of diseases (MN 35, 17 September 1907: 7; MN 36, 24 September 1907: 7). The mocking of Hilyat al-Mutaqqin angered some observant readers of the periodical, so the journal published a tongue-in-cheek letter of apology. Here, the editors expressed frustration that while Iranians and Ottomans were battling significant political upheavals in their nations, and while the Russian government had prevented the building of a mosque in St Petersburg, the readers of Mollå Nasreddin were taking umbrage at the journal’s criticisms of Hilyat al-Mutaqqin, forcing the editors to ‘apologise to its Muslim brethren’ (MN 9, 28 February 1910: 3). Religious rituals and holidays Other subjects of satire in Mollå Nasreddin were Muslim holidays and rituals. The rituals of Muharram, which take place during the first month of the Islamic year to commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, were the most important of these events. Other important rituals and events included fasting during the month of Ramadan, which took place in the ninth month of the year; the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, which took place on the last month of the year ; and in the same month, Eid Qurban (Arabic: Eid al-Adha), or Feast of Sacrifice, which honours Abraham for his willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac. These holidays were festive occasions for the community but also an important source of income for the clerics who declared the start and finish of the events, based on the lunar calendar, and delivered a variety of communal prayers and sermons, for which they were compensated. Mollå Nasreddin did not treat all these rituals and holidays the same way. It viewed some as dangerous, some as wasteful, and others as practices that required moderation. In almost every case, the journal was concerned with the social ramifications of a holiday or ritual. What was the social cost of a particular ritual? What was its impact on the impoverished and on women and children who were on the margins of society? And could the time, energy

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and funds that were used on these rituals be better spent on other, more productive projects? Muharram rituals The harshest criticisms were reserved for the Muharram rituals, especially the processions of self-flagellation, which were observed by Shii Muslims. There is a large body of scholarly literature on Muharram performances in Iranian and Islamic Studies. Some have traced these rituals to ancient Mesopotamian rites and similar traditions in Manichaeism, Judaism and Christianity, showing that the rituals of lamentation, wailing and self-­ flagellation were not unique to Shiism but practised in all these religions (Beeman 1979). Other scholars have focused on taziyeh passion plays and the physical, spiritual and emotional links that are formed between the performers and the audience in these plays (Hegland 1983a; 1983b). Still others have explored the themes of martyrdom and the unjust usurpation of power by earthly rulers as significant aspects of the central narrative of Shiism, an analysis that has been popular since the Iranian Revolution of 1979. In an earlier work, Janet Afary and Kevin B. Anderson explored the enduring popularity of these rituals as a rite of repentance, and their similarity to early

Figure 5.12  Guarding your weapon is essential, so you can use it during highway robberies and Muharram rituals. Source: MN 51, 20 December 1909.

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200 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN Christian rites of penance which also included fasting, self-mutilation and baring the chest (2005).3 Here we might ask, what was Mollå Nasreddin’s reading of these Shii rituals and practices? As founders of a new discourse of Muslim Enlightenment, the artists and writers of Mollå Nasreddin were concerned with what they saw as the grotesque and violent dimensions of the festival, as well as the skirmishes and injuries that resulted from the street processions. In their criticism of these rituals, whether in Iran or the Caucasus, the artists pioneered a new form of graphic arts that focused on everyday life, reflecting a deep sympathy for the marginalised sectors of society, especially the urban poor, women and children. In several columns about Muharram, we read that ‘Muharram was a holiday for men, not for women’. It was a festival by men and for men, especially clerics, who made a handsome income from sermons at mosques and other social gatherings (MN 5, 3 February 1908: 2). It was a time when ‘men dyed their beard red with henna so it shined like the feathers of a peacock’. Now, they could show off their looks at the mosques and at various commemorative ceremonies.4 Muharram was a time when everyone found religion. The bandits who robbed and stabbed travellers during eleven months of the year suddenly became pious and used the same dagger they stabbed people with for self-mortification during the Muharram rituals.

Figure 5.13  Upper: Russian Army. Lower: Homeland’s (Iran) Army: the Fedayeen, devotees of the homeland. Source: MN 5, 31 January 1910.

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The periodical was particularly critical of the elaborate nature of this festival in Iran and of the huge sums that were spent on it: especially considering that Iran did not have a regular army, nor provided for the basic needs of its citizens. Yet, it seemed Iranian clerics had an army of their own. Flagellants participated in the Constitutional Revolution and were called Fedayeen (devotees of the nation), yet remained devoted to clerics (Figure 5.13). The Iranian government had no money to spend on education, health, infrastructure and other basic social needs of its people, yet numerous eulogisers (rowzehkhavan) collected hundreds of thousands of manåts during Muharram and fed their devotees sumptuously. And what exactly was the content of their sermons? They were primarily against modern intellectuals and their demands that flagellation and other such rituals with pre-Islamic origins be banned. One common trope of the folk trickster was to start out saying he could not possibly say something, as it would offend the dignitaries, but then going ahead and saying much of it anyway. Thus, at this point Mollå Nasreddin backed off, saying it could not continue writing in this vein because ‘people would say Mollå Nasreddin writes against religion … and so, we lock our mouth, and do not say anything, so people won’t get upset at us’. Indeed, if we speak too much, the periodical lamented, we might end up where the viziers of the tales of A Thousand and One Nights ended: ‘The king did not like the advice of the wise vizier and ordered that the head of ‘Mollå Nasreddin be cut off.’ And on this note, the tongue-and-cheek piece ended (MN 5, 31 January 1910: 2–3). The rituals of self-mortification were similar to sports competitions. In every village and town, local merchants and guild leaders formed their own factions, known as dasteh. Each dasteh had its own eulogisers, processions, passion plays and areas set aside for entertaining people with tea and food. Whichever dasteh showed greater zeal during self-flagellation gained greater admiration and respect from the community. Since flagellants were rewarded by local merchants and guild leaders, these events became highly competitive. Sponsors urged flagellants to beat themselves harder and harder, showing off their ability to spill more blood and endure greater pain.5 As a result, the damage to the bodies of the flagellants was often severe. The tenth day of Muharram, known as Ashura, marked the day of martyrdom of Imam Hussein, and it was the culmination of the festival. On Ashura, flagellants entered a state of ecstasy, and the beatings reached a climax. That night, the men returned home bloody, bruised and even disabled (Figure 5.14). Some were unable to go back to work for weeks or months because of the severity of their injuries. Many flagellants were day labourers and could not afford to be away from work for so long. In addition, their care and sustenance were left to their impoverished wives and children. Mollå Nasreddin was also concerned with the communal violence exhibited during this month. Sunni Muslims, a minority in South Caucasus, were easy targets of persecution during Muharr Army. Which recounted Hussein’s death at the hands of Caliph Yazid I, a precursor of Sunnism. Many hid in their homes out of fear of violence. There were also routine confrontations on the

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Figure 5.14  Child: ‘Mother, I’ve been hungry for several days. Give me some bread’. Mother: ‘My son, your father joined self-flagellation rituals ten days ago. He is injured and hasn’t been able to go to work. Don’t cry, or at least be quiet. Maybe I’ll ask the neighbour for some bread.’ Source: MN 3, 17 January 1910.

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Figure 5.15  The day of Ashura in a village near Baku. Source: MN 5, 1 February 1909.

streets. When two dastehs, moving in opposite directions of the same narrow alley, collided, neither side gave way and the result was bloody mayhem. Iranian migrant workers constituted a large portion of the flagellants, and much of the anger of Mollå Nasreddin was aimed at the Iranian embassy, as well as Iranian merchants and clerics who fanned these flames. In some cities of South Caucasus, clerics had banned self-flagellation, but in other towns, they rewarded those who joined. And in more zealous towns and villages, clerics went even further, adding flagellation to routine funeral processions (Figure 5.16). The Iranian consulate was a big promoter of the holiday, as the event strengthened religious communal ties between the Shiis of South Caucasus and Iran. Each year, the consul himself performed the symbolic gesture of washing of the flagellants’ hands with rose water as well as compensating them (Figure 5.17). Where was the leader who would stop these actions? Mollå Nasreddin asked. ‘A hero is one who on the day of Ashura, stands before processions of men who are cutting their heads with daggers and stops them. He takes away their daggers and throws them in the sea’, and thus ends this spectacle that brings about so much physical injury to the Muslim community. ‘Why do you let the porters, workers and the impoverished engage [in such practices], then

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Figure 5.16  ‘New Method’ funerals in Transcaucasia. Source: MN 13, 29 March 1909.

become injured and unable to work?’ Another concern of Mollå Nasreddin was the negative publicity that this festival of mourning generated among Russian and European observers. ‘Foreigners come and watch us, draw images of the practice, publish them in their books, and introduce us as “savages” to the whole world’ (MN 6, 10 February 1907: 2). These criticisms of religious processions were remarkably bold and unprecedented at the time, as was the manner through which the journal confronted the high clerics.6 Fasting in Ramadan One of the most important rituals of Islam is the custom of fasting during Ramadan. It is one of the Five Pillars of Islam, with the others being profession of faith, prayer, giving alms and pilgrimage to Mecca. Fasting during Ramadan lasts for twenty-nine to thirty days, depending on the cycles of the moon. Adult Muslims must fast from sunrise to sunset, and only a few categories of people are excused. These include the sick, the elderly, the traveller, and women who are menstruating, pregnant or breastfeeding. During the fast, Muslims are supposed to refrain from food, drink, tobacco and sex, as well as other ‘sinful’ acts. They must devote themselves to spiritual thoughts and

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Figure 5.17  Iranian consul and flagellants. Source: MN 3, 17 January 1910.

Figure 5.18  Those who broke their fast and ate in public received a hundred lashes. Ramadan in Tabriz. Source: From the Iranian newspaper, Esteqlål.

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206 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN charitable deeds. In Iran, local authorities enforced fasting, and those who publicly broke their fast were subject to fines and bastinado (Figure 5.18). But in Russian-controlled South Caucasus, fasting was enforced through moral suasion by one’s elders and clerics. Of course, as with any other religion, not everyone fasted or observed these stringent requirements for a whole month. Some Muslims fasted part of the month, some a few days of the month, and others secretly ate but maintained the appearance of fasting. Then there were many on the margins of society who fasted but had no time or inclination for spiritual thoughts and deeds. These people went about their daily lives of eking out a living, sometimes continuing to steal and rob (Figure 5.19). The pangs of hunger and thirst, and the inability to smoke, put them in a foul mood, leading to outbursts of anger towards the people who were closest to them, especially their wives and children (Figure 5.20). A comedic element of Nasreddinia lies in the manner through which the trickster crosses the boundaries between sacred and profane, especially when these boundaries are quite rigid. The trickster Nasreddin cuts corners, misses rituals and gets by with as little religious observance as possible. But what does the Mollå in the journal do? In one story, Mollå Nasreddin focused on those who did not fast. Not fasting was in fact ‘a hundred times’ harder than fasting, because the act of covering up one’s deed was difficult when one lived in a religiously observant part of town. We learn that a man who was discreetly chewing a piece of bread nearly choked on it, as he tried to swallow it when a cleric passed by. Another who was smoking pushed his lit cigarette inside his mouth and suffered a severe burn, when he saw his observant uncle across the street. But not everyone suffered as much. Mollå Nasreddin divided the nonfasters into three groups. First, were the shy and timid rural people who were newcomers to the city, often teachers who were learning the Russian language and the city’s etiquette. These men tried earnestly to fast, but the urge to smoke or the pangs of hunger were overwhelming, occasionally leading them to steal a bite of food from a window sill or hide in a lavatory to smoke. Second, were the more urbanised Russian-educated Muslims and the more well-to-do merchants. These men quietly got themselves invited to the houses of their Russian friends, where they ate and made merry behind closed curtains, away from the eyes of the clerics and their own community (Figure 5.21). The merchants also arranged to travel out of town, for example from Baku to Tiflis, which had a small Muslim population. As travellers were excused from fasting, they no longer were obligated to fast and could eat as they wished during Ramadan. If they were unable to travel, they feigned heart trouble and obtained a doctor’s prescription with a recommendation to eat during Ramadan, and thus avoided fasting. Finally, there were the highly educated Russified Muslims who were the most brazen. Members of this group had no fear of flouting the ritual and even bragged about their non-observance to their Russian friends. To these Muslims, not fasting was a measure of civilisation. If their Russian friends asked why they were not fasting, they answered that they were too educated to bother with such uncouth rituals (MN 29, 20 October 1906: 2–3).

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Figure 5.19  ‘Preoccupations of Rajab [The bandit], son of Bailam, in the month of Ramadan’. Top right: early morning, stealing a lamb. Top left: at noon, armed robbery. Middle right: at sunset, stealing fruit. Middle left: to his wife: ‘Damn you, didn’t I tell you to make me kabob for dinner.’ Bottom right: time to break the fast. Bottom left: Praying: ‘Thank you God for your generosity.’ Source: MN 40, 6 October 1908.

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Figure 5.20  ‘I’m fasting. Leave me alone, or I’ll wreak havoc.’ Source: MN 38, 22 September 1908.

These stories of how one evaded fasting would have been familiar to the average reader of the paper, and would have reminded them of the trickster Nasreddin and the many ways in which he also avoided fasting. But the periodical managed to convey another message as well. Not everyone should be blamed for breaking their fast, as it depended on the circumstances. The readers sympathised with the village teacher who had every intention of fasting but halfway through broke his fast because he was starving or desperate for a smoke. However, they resented the more privileged men who faked illnesses or travelled to avoid fasting, as well as those who belittled the ritual of fasting and equated it with a lack of civilisation. The point was not whether one fasted or not, but the circumstances within which this non-fasting occurred. The men who had intended to fast, but could not, were to be forgiven and not forced to fast. But the men who used their money and privilege to escape fasting, or the ones who condescended towards their more religious fellow Muslims, were to be ostracised. Pilgrimage to Mecca and Eid Qurban The hajj pilgrimage takes place during the last month of the Islamic year, and the ceremony itself lasts about a week. In the early twentieth century, it was an overland journey. Camels and horses were the means of transportation,

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and the journey back and forth to Mecca took two to three months from South Caucasus or north Iran. Men who had made the pilgrimage were called hajjis, while the women were called hajjiyehs. These honorific titles were attached to their names for the rest of their lives. But the trip was expensive and difficult for people from outside Arabia to undertake. An average shopkeeper had to save for years to be able to pay for the arduous pilgrimage (Figure 5.22). Many could barely afford the trip but went anyway because others in their cohort had done so, causing them to become jealous of a friend’s newly acquired title of hajji. These men who should not have undertaken such expensive trips somehow scraped together the money and went to Mecca. But in doing so, they placed a great burden on their families, often leaving them in desperate circumstances for months while they were away (Figure 5.23). However, for more enterprising merchants and aspiring clerics, the trip was profitable. Merchants might combine it with a business venture on the way back, purchasing slaves in Mecca and selling them in Iran, while low-level

Figure 5.21  Privately eating during Ramadan. Source: MN 29, 20 October 1906.

Figure 5.22  Top: leaving for hajj. Bottom: returning from hajj. Source: MN 8, 22 February 1909.

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Figure 5.23  Pilgrimage to Mecca. Wife to husband: ‘Where are you going, leaving these poor kids hungry and thirsty?’ Husband to wife: ‘To tell you the truth, I can’t stand it that Hajji Muharram is called “Hajji”, but I am not!’ Source: MN 33, 11 September 1911.

eulogisers enhanced their social standing, becoming more respectable and hence more sought after upon their return from Mecca (see Dehkhodå 2016: 262–70). Mollå Nasreddin routinely complained about the exorbitant cost of the pilgrimage. Ordinary people saved for years to pay for a trip that took months and involved a variety of expenses in addition to transportation, food and accommodations. But the periodical also objected to the fact that the hajj pilgrimage (or even the pilgrimage to Karbala, Iraq) offered easy penance, freeing the sinner from the guilt of all the misdeeds he had committed in his life simply by virtue of having gone on this pilgrimage. The newly minted hajjis or karbalåis did not necessarily change their lifestyles after their return. In fact, many resumed their unlawful enterprises, knowing there was the possibility of repentance through a future pilgrimage (Figure 5.25). On the last day of the Hajj pilgrimage, at a place near Mecca called Mina, pilgrims sacrifice an animal (camels, sheep or goats) in remembrance of the faith of the Prophet Abraham, who nearly sacrificed his son for God, and to whom Muslims trace their ancestry. A similar ritual of sacrifice is observed

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Figure 5.24  Highway bandit on pilgrimage to Karbala: ‘I’ve killed almost 100 people, maybe the Imam will forgive my sins.’ Source: MN 24, 14 June 1909.

throughout the Muslim world on this day of Eid al-Adha or Eid Qurban (the Feast of Sacrifice). The meat of the animal (a camel, cow, sheep or goat, even a pigeon according to one’s means) is divided three ways: one portion for the impoverished, a second for friends and relatives, and a third to take home. Hundreds of thousands of animals are slaughtered on this day and the meat often goes to waste. Progressive Muslims, such as the writers of Mollå Nasreddin, complained about the enormous waste, let alone the killing of so many innocent animals, and instead called for monetary donations to charitable causes (Figure 5.25). Once again, Mollå Nasreddin resorted to its tactic of saying it could not possibly say something, and then saying it anyway. The periodical announced that it was in total disagreement with other Azerbaijani newspapers, which wrote laudatory statements in support of the holiday, only ‘to fool people’ and make them believe that these predominantly secular journalists were ‘religious and pious’. Mollå Nasreddin would not stoop so low. However, since the periodical did not dare say anything negative about Eid Qurban, it would simply postpone the matter, ‘We will promise you that in 50 years we will provide detailed explanation about Eid Qurban’ (MN 1, 6 January 1908: 2).

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Figure 5.25  Eid Qurban. Fatwa: ‘One may not make a cash donation. Blood must be spilled!’ Source: MN 15, 23 April 1911.

Religious freedom and rights of minorities Shii religious texts routinely warned their followers not to have close physical contact with non-Muslims and to beware of the supposed treachery of Sunni Muslims. A hadith attributed to the Fifth Imam, Muhammad Båqer (677–732), required Shiis to wash their hands if they came in contact with non-Muslims. Another hadith attributed to the Sixth Imam, Ja‘far Sådeq (702–65), warned Shiis to never befriend non-Muslims (Majlesi 1983: 213). Yet another hadith, attributed to the Seventh Imam, Muså Kåzem (745–99), enjoined Shiis to never ‘share a meal with a Zoroastrian, nor sit with him on the same carpet, nor talk with him’ (Majlesi 1983: 213). A Shii man could visit a Jewish doctor if he was sick, but could not socialise with him. Shiis were never to become friends with any Sunnis (Majlesi 1983: 213). In contrast, the folk trickster, who was not of any particular Muslim denomination, had a tolerant disposition towards all fellow Muslims and nonMuslims. He travelled, shared meals and swapped stories with everyone. And even when he bested non-Muslims in some challenge, or tricked them to get

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more food, he did so in a good-natured way. These trickster tales were based in the reality that Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians and Muslims of various denominations frequently interacted in bazaars and caravanserais and broke bread. They thus emphasised the similarities of people of different faiths. Mollå Nasreddin followed a pattern similar to that of the folk trickster with regard to non-Muslims. When Shii clerics expelled three students from a school because the students’ first names were ‘Omar’ (a clearly identifiable Sunni name), or when a new school was named ‘the Shii School’, for the sole purpose of refusing admission to Sunni students, Mollå Nasreddin named the clerics in its pages. It also criticised åkhunds who in some public gatherings advocated for greater unity of Sunnis and Shiis, but in others inflamed sectarian divisions (MN 15, 15 April 1909: 5). Mollå Nasreddin wrote about anti-Semitism and the harassment of Jews in the Muslim community. We recall that the folk trickster had mocked Muslim laws of retribution because, in a conflict between people of different faiths, ‘an eye for an eye’ became ‘one Muslim eye for two non-Muslim eyes’ if the case went before a qadi. In the same way, Mollå Nasreddin mocked the idea that there could be justice for Jews when they entered the public sphere, even though Jewish doctors, midwives, musicians and entertainers were a regular presence in Muslim homes, and, in Tiflis, shops and institutions owned by Muslims and Jews could be next door to each other (Figure 5.27).

Figure 5.26  Shii and Sunni Clerics: ‘Don’t take our public expressions of solidarity seriously. Listen to our sermons in the mosques.’ Source: MN 5, 31 January 1910.

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Figure 5.27  Sidewalk cobbler in front of Jewish reading room on Mikhailovsky Street in Tiflis. Source: MN 7, 17 February 1908.

In a ‘Letter from a Jew’, we read that Shmuel went to the Muslim bazaar to buy some honeydew for his family. He entered a shop and selected a few honeydews, then asked the shopkeeper to weigh them. While he was busy with his purchase, he heard a man telling another, ‘Hasan, brother, It’s a Jew.’ Then, as Shmuel was paying for the honeydews, he heard another guy saying to his friend, ‘Hasan, brother, It’s a Jew.’ Finally, as Shmuel was about to leave the store with his merchandise, someone hit him hard over the head, pushing his hat down all the way over his face. After returning home, Shmuel ‘wrote’ a letter of complaint to Mollå Nasreddin describing the incident and asking for some redress. Mollå Nasreddin started the letter by reminding its readers, in a tongue-and-check manner, that harassment and persecutions of Jews in the Muslim community was pervasive and that it was quite dangerous for a Jew to shop alone in a Muslim bazaar: Shmuel the Jew must thank God a thousand times because he went all alone, with no friend and support, with no guns and cannons, to a bazaar in Baku, and he returned safe and in one piece. This itself is a great fortune! Moreover, Shmuel the Jew should keep in mind that he should not complain and go so far as sending a letter to the newspaper for a miserly honeydew or

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watermelon! Finally, he must not forget that he bought a melon from the Baku bazaar, then returned home safe and in one piece. This in itself is a great fortune and enormous luck! (MN 36, 24 September 1907: 2) Elsewhere, the paper went further, and in a backhanded way supported the calls for freedom of religion, which at the time were being discussed in the Russian State Duma. The Himmat Party and Muslim Duma members had supported the idea of religious freedom because they hoped that in the majority-Christian Russian Empire, the law would reduce discrimination towards Muslims and give them greater control over their religious institutions. However, Mollå Nasreddin could see the future implications of such a law. Freedom of religion, the periodical predicted, meant that ‘Ivan could become a Muslim’, but it also meant that ‘Hasan could become a Christian’. Once Muslims started travelling around the world and saw the higher standard of living of non-Muslims, they might get ideas and decide to take advantage of this freedom of religion: When a Muslim man sees that a Jewish woman is carrying a book and attending a school or college, when he sees that in the fierce cold weather of Manchuria, and in the battle between the Russian and Japanese soldiers, Russian women are applying first aid to Russian soldiers, then this man returns and sees the situation of our Muslim women, he might well feel compelled to marry a Jewish woman. No, no! We don’t want freedom of religion. Let everyone stay in their own religion … Be careful Muslim Duma members, don’t forget the words of this wise, white-bearded Mollå Nasreddin. (MN 13, 31 March 1907: 8) Conjure women and women’s guile In 1906, no other publication in South Caucasus, Iran, or elsewhere in the Muslim Middle East, came close to Mollå Nasreddin in its unbridled support for women and children’s rights. As we shall see in the next chapter, the journal tackled many sacrosanct topics and crossed highly sensitive boundaries, from child marriage and forced marriage to polygamy and domestic violence, while its graphic caricatures on these subjects elevated the biting satire. However, in some areas, the periodical was highly critical of women, particularly those who turned to charms and incantations to achieve their goals in life. There is a large body of stories in Middle Eastern literature, including the Thousand and One Nights, where women use guile to achieve their aims. They trick their husbands into abandoning a rival wife or fool predatory men with designs on them (Mills 1999; Najmabadi 1999). As good communicators, these cunning women become boundary crossers between the physical and sacred worlds (Hancock-Sheridan 2002) and offer help to other women. They try to read their clients’ fears and concerns and give them charms and potions that promise to bring about the desired change. In appealing to the spirits, they may pursue benevolent or malevolent designs. They deceive and seduce, but ultimately wish to assert control. In this sense, they are similar to conjurers in African-American folklore, who claimed to heal physical and emotional

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216 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN ailments through charms, curses, spells, amulets, herbs and potions. Through such devices, these women (and men) claimed they could separate or bring together lovers, increase fertility or cause miscarriage, induce fortune or misfortune, divide or unite people, and even cause death (Saber 2018: 376). In constructing its radical satire, Mollå Nasreddin tapped into this wellknown genre of Middle Eastern literature and invented conjure women and men who expressed women’s daily concerns. As a champion of Muslim Enlightenment, the periodical poked fun at these conjurers and their methods of resolving conflicts. Still, the journal had sympathy for people whose only weapons in life were guile and cunning. These female-centred tales of Mollå Nasreddin were written by men. However, in a number of cases, they addressed women’s genuine fears and concerns, and may thus have been based on the letters to the editor or the experiences of women in their community.7 In addition, some of the details of these tales published after 1907 correspond to Hamideh Khånum’s life (Siegel n.d.: n. 26). In some tales, written in a mock epistolary form, the periodical reproduced the traditional tropes of the conjurer, who was usually an illiterate but cunning and deceptive person. These and other such characters with names such as Jahraji Khåleh (Aunt Spinning Wheel), Pari Khåleh (Aunt Pari) and Dabåni Chatdåkh Khåleh (Sole-Cracked Auntie), used a variety of methods to keep their husbands interested in them or to get rid of a co-wife. They procured love potions and incantations and secretly rubbed wolf oil on the skin of their co-wife, a tactic that made her smell bad and repulsive in bed (MN 12, 23 March 1908). To get hold of money to purchase these remedies, the women used a variety of ruses. They stole from their husbands, shoplifted, and pickpocketed at public bathhouses. Despite its criticisms of such women, Mollå Nasreddin showed sympathy for the underlying causes of their appeals to charms and incantations and called for educational, social and legal reforms that empowered women. A fictional exchange between two such women appeared in several issues of the paper in 1906 and 1907, where Mollå Nasreddin reproduced the trope of the female conjurer. Mollå Nasreddin’s portrayal of conservative and ‘ignorant’ men and women followed standard conventions of physiognomy (see Chapter 7). Such women were portrayed with coarse features and unflattering clothes. In contrast, when the journal portrayed a more congenial female character, she was drawn as more elegant and beautiful. One day out of the blue, Jahraji Khåleh ‘wrote’ a letter complaining about the periodical’s portrayal of more traditional Muslim women. After exposing a variety of hitherto secret actions of women, such as their appeals to sorcery and fortune tellers, the extraction of poison from snakes to harm a rival or an enemy, and the burning of wild rue to ward off the evil eye, the weekly was now further traumatising more traditional women by claiming they were spendthrifts and calling them illiterate. On top of everything, caricatures of such women were often degrading and repulsive to the eyes. Jahraji Khåleh continued, ‘When our Russian-educated men see these illustrations [of ours] they get scared and go after Russian women. Quite often they also

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Figure 5.28  Trip to the bathhouse. Source: MN 20, 18 August 1906.

marry Russian women.’ Her other complaint was that the journal had called Muslim women ignorant about money and spendthrifts. ‘Why do you blame us women? At which school did you ever teach us arithmetic, so we would learn how to spend money?’ (MN 28, 13 October 1906). A week later, another character named Pari Khåleh ‘wrote’ a response to Jahraji Khåleh, cursing her for writing to Mollå Nasreddin and further dishonouring women folk. ‘May your hand dry up so you no longer write such outrageous things.’ Pari Khåleh did not see why women should not steal from their husbands so they could purchase love potions and other such remedies. Pari Khåleh also objected to Jahraji Khåleh’s argument that Muslim girls must attend school. ‘Whose honour would accept such a thing? If so, what would be the difference between Muslim and Armenian women?’ In her view, it was ‘atheist Muslims’ who were bent on sending girls to school. All the evils of the world were caused by the unveiling of women, from the 1905 Muslim–Armenian wars to the earthquake in Shamåkhi and even the revolution in Iran. When women sent such letters to newspapers, it was a sign that the world was indeed coming to an end (MN 29, 29 October 1906).

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Figure 5.29  In Goychåy (village of Garagoyunlu). The famous Mollå Nasr Bey tattoos a prayer onto a woman’s stomach. ‘In an hour the pain will pass, I assure you of this.’ Source: MN 47, 22 November 1909.

Figure 5.30  Husband (left panel), wife (right panel). Source: MN 12, 3 June 1906.

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A few weeks later, Jahraji Khåleh wrote back. Now it was her turn to curse Pari Khåleh for revealing women’s secrets. Jahraji Khåleh said she had not done anything wrong. She had only said, ‘Uncle Mollå, don’t mess with women so much, don’t open up so much, don’t expose their shortcomings so much.’ Now Pari Khåleh had done more damage by revealing even more secrets of women. ‘For example, you said “Zeinab Baji steals money to buy love incantation”. Now think about it a bit. Was my writing to a newspaper worse or your revealing of our secrets to men?’ (MN 32, 10 November 1906). Jahraji Khåleh then turned her ire towards Mollå Nasreddin. The periodical had published a cartoon that showed a Muslim man abandoning his tearful wife and child for a Russian woman (Figure 5.30). How could one blame such a woman if she searched for incantations, or appealed to a mollå for a potion or talisman? Or visited a shrine in the hopes of gaining back her husband’s affection? Indeed, women seemed to have no option but to turn to witchcraft to win back their husbands: May God hit you with one such affliction. If once you tasted such sorrow, you would understand why we women pursue love incantations or steal money from the pockets of our husbands. You would understand how dishonourable is your revealing of our secrets to the public (MN 32, 10 November 1907).8 Sexual transgressions and paedophilia A fourth area where Mollå Nasreddin played trickster to expose secrets was its discussions of sexual dalliances as well as sexual violence, particularly with boys. In 1716, during the era of Peter the Great, Russian laws criminalised same-sex relations in the army and the navy. The law did not make a distinction between paedophilia and adult same-sex relations. Those who engaged in consensual sex were flogged, while those who committed rape were executed. In 1832, civilians were also subjugated to sodomy laws. They were punished by deportation to Siberia and work in its internment camps for four to five years (Healey 2018). However, in the early twentieth century, same-sex relationships remained an implicitly recognised cultural practice throughout the Muslim world, including South Caucasus and Central Asia, and among all social classes, despite Quranic prohibitions on male homosexuality. Such relations were to respect certain discreet conventions. Many homosexual relations (lavat) were asymmetrical, taking place between an older man and a pubescent boy. Public knowledge that a boy from a respectable family had been penetrated (maful) in his youth was damaging and could destroy his reputation. The reputation of the man who had penetrated him (fael), however, would not be tarnished (J. Afary and Anderson 2005: 155–62; J. Afary 2009: 79–100). Nasreddinia reflected these realities. The power of folk humour was in its ‘grotesque realism’, the levelling down of people of power. One mechanism used to achieve this effect was to draw the reader’s attention to the activities

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220 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN of the lower half of the body and thereby degrading the object of the humour. Sexual transgressions were a routine preoccupation of the trickster Nasreddin. He neither renounced male homoeroticism nor celebrated normative heterosexuality, thereby forever crossing boundaries and rejecting neat categorisations. In trickster tales, no one was spared the accusation of homosexuality, including kings and religious leaders. Many transgressive tales of Johå took place in mosques and in seminaries, suggesting that an act that was religiously forbidden was also taking place in a sacred space. Others involved kings and emirs, where the trickster poked fun at these powerful men’s sanctimonious behaviour. Here, the joke was often about how a certain dignitary was raped in childhood, thereby humiliating him. The trickster did not demand justice for children, nor did he ask that the violators be brought to justice. He simply recounted the story. The periodical Mollå Nasreddin held itself to a different set of social and ethical standards. Although the institutions of slavery and royal harems no longer existed in South Caucasus, sex with underage boys (and child marriage) remained a common practice despite laws of the Russian state that prohibited both.

Figure 5.31  Dancing boys (Bacheh Bazi). Ramadan celebrations in the city of Bukhara. Source: MN 40, 26 October 1907.

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The periodical was committed to establishing normative heterosexuality alongside monogamous marriage, both of which were relatively new practices in the region. The journal strived to convince the public that paedophilia in its generic sense, both sex with boys and the marriage of young girls, was a discredited custom that had to end. To this end, the weekly recreated the trickster’s accusations of paedophilia, but in three very different contexts. First, paedophilia was seen as a vice that was imported from Iran. This was a common belief in the region, where Iranians, Arabs and Turks each blamed the other for importing the perceived vice into their society. Mollå Nasreddin went on to accuse religious teachers and Shii clerics in Iran and South Caucasus of molesting young boys in the maktabs and seminaries. However, in addition to divulging the secret lives of these men, as the folk trickster would have done, the journal used the accusation of paedophilia to promote the New Method schools. It claimed that while students who went to the religious maktabs were not safe, those who attended the modern schools were protected from molestation. (MN 7, 19 May 1906; MN 28, 18 July 1910). Thus, the accusation of paedophilia was used to discredit the traditional maktabs and religious seminaries. The journal routinely spoke of the prevalence of paedophilia in Iranian schools and seminaries. In fact, this was one of several ‘vices’ of the old homeland that the journal routinely railed against. In a discussion of Tabriz (Iran) schools, we read that ‘one of the sciences that are taught there is paedophilia’ (MN 40, 26 October 1907: 2–3). In a tale about the city of Rasht (Iran), we learn that the journalist Mollå supposedly ‘visited’ several clerics and posed the same question to all of them, ‘Is paedophilia wrong?’ No one wanted to answer him. Each cleric or wealthy hajji shoved him out of his house and told him it was none of his business, including one who kept a ‘beautiful boy’ at his residence (MN 12, 23 March 1908: 7). Second, the journal reasoned that it was not a lack of access to heterosexual sex that fostered paedophilia. In a society where both men and women married young, marriage was nearly universal, and the tradition of temporary marriage was rife, heterosexual sex was available to all social classes. Therefore, lack of sex with women was not a reason for the continuation of paedophilia: What is the reason? Are women scarce among us Muslims so that instead of marrying a woman, [some men] take boy concubines? No, for sure, this is not the case. Because we see that men of other nations find a woman and marry her, whereas some of our men take four wives. Indeed, for some four is not enough, and they also engage in one to two-hour temporary marriages. (MN 37, 2 October 1907) The journal concluded that paedophilia was an ‘old inherited disease that was passed on to us by our ancestors thousands of years ago and it will remain so until the end of the world’ (MN 22, 31 May 1909: 7). According to Mollå Nasreddin, there were a couple of solutions to this pervasive problem. The first solution was to protect boys in the same way that

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222 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN one protected a garden full of delectable fruits by building a wall around it or the same way families protected women by covering them in veils: We must prevent our beautiful and handsome boys from leaving the house until the age of twenty-five. If an essential errand comes up, we can ask the boys to wear a veil, so that when they are on the streets men cannot see their faces, and therefore not be in a position to determine if the boy is handsome or unsightly. A second solution is that after age eight and until they reach the age of twenty-five, we send our sons to the United States, Japan, Australia, Russia, Germany, or Italy. (MN 37, 2 October 1907) The ridiculous nature of this solution was meant to show why the practice of veiling women was also an erroneous custom. It was obviously not the boys or the women who needed to be veiled, but the sexual predators, who had to be punished and stopped. Sex-segregated parks, coffee shops, bathhouses and many other male gathering spaces, were places where semi-covert pederasty was tolerated and even celebrated. One reason men tried to keep their wives secluded was so they could more freely engage in semi-covert pederasty. Therefore, according to the periodical, a better solution to this problem was to end gender segregation (MN 23, 13 June 1910). Removing gender segregation and bringing women into the public sphere would not only benefit women, it would make it much harder for men to continue engaging in pederasty. To further emphasise this connection, the journal reported that a woman from Tiflis had written a ‘Letter to the Editor’ to complain about her husband’s behaviour. They lived near the Botanical Gardens of Tiflis, which was a lovely place to visit in spring. ‘Poor me! I have never been inside this garden. My husband won’t let me go there and I can’t go without his permission. If I went, I would have to trick him, and if he found out he would kill me.’ Many other women, ‘Russians, Georgians, Jews and Europeans’, went to the garden, but Figure 5.32  Panels from the biography of the no Muslim women. One day, she saw her famous Ali Efendi Osman Båbåzadeh. Top: He husband, in an elegant outfit, going to the claimed to possess healing powers. Middle: He sold fabricated hajj certificates. Bottom: He used garden. She begged him to take her along, the funds to molest young boys in bathhouses. but he yelled so loud that she nearly died Source: MN 32, 6 September 1911. of fear. When she asked him why he would

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not take her, since she would wear her veil and no one would recognise her, he said, ‘Do you want people to say I am a dishonoured man?’ Realising that he would never take her to the botanical garden, the wife decided to go anyway. She and a friend put on their veils and pretended to go to the cemetery, but instead went to the edge of the garden where they could look through the hedges. There, she saw all the husbands, including her own, ‘each with a boy promenading in that garden and enjoying themselves but would not take their wives so they were not dishonoured!’ (MN 23, 13 June 1910). A third way to end the practice of keeping boy concubines, as far as the journal was concerned, was to use it as a political cudgel to degrade highly powerful people. This was a tactic that Mollå Nasreddin used against Iranian anti-constitutionalists, including Muhammad Ali Shah himself. It was well known that the Iranian court had an entirely different standard with regard to pederasty. Qajar kings, as with previous Iranian rulers, received gifts of young boys, which they added to their harems. The most well liked of these boys would move up the hierarchy after reaching adulthood. He might become a

Figure 5.33  Dancing boys. Source: MN 7, 19 May 1906.

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224 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN military officer or even governor of a region. Qajar monarchs such as Nåsir al-Din Shah had well-known boy concubines, while there were rumors that the new king, Muhammad Ali Shah, was also inclined towards boys. In one Mollå Nasreddin tale, we read that when Mohammad Ali was the crown prince of Tabriz, and before he became king, he was dreaded by many in the city. ‘Young children did not dare play in the streets and alleys’ for fear of being snatched away by agents of the crown prince and taken to his harem (MN 5, 3 February 1907: 2–3). We also learn that it was not only impoverished urban and rural boys who were gifted to him. Rather, ‘boys of respectable families were [also] brought to his private garden’, where they were raped (MN 25, 30 June 1908: 6). In another tale, an Iranian political dissident and refugee in South Caucasus lived in fear of the king’s retaliation. Yet his biggest fear was that the shah would ‘send someone, to snatch my son, and take him to his harem’ (MN 35, 1 September 1908: 6). In a fourth mocking tale, we read that Muhammad Ali Shah had ordered the murder of all the constitutionalists but offered the title of brigadier-general to any boy in the country who would spend a night with him (MN 31, 4 August 1908: 3). These accusations, aimed at the shah and other royalists, may not have been true, but they were built on the common knowledge that pederasty was pervasive among the elite, which

Figure 5.34  Dreams. From left to right: at age 25, at age 50 and at age 80. Source: MN 2, 13 January 1908.

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proved to be extremely effective propaganda in levelling down and degrading these powerful men. This was not the first time a newspaper so openly addressed the subject of sexual abuse of boys by Muslim clerics and members of the royalty. But what was new about Mollå Nasreddin’s treatment was that, unlike previous discussions of the subject, the reader’s gaze was turned towards the perpetrators rather than towards blaming the victims. However, the new discourse had severe limitations, as it lumped together paedophilia with consensual same-sex relations. When a Qajar prince settled in Russia, the journal pointed out that the police had become highly suspicious of him because ‘young gymnasium students with elegant clothes, tall and handsome young men, were visiting his house’. Eventually, a police informant entered the house to see if some sort of political conspiracy was going on. But when he entered, he saw the prince sitting next to a group of students. ‘He had one arm around one student and the other arm around the other’ and was reciting love poems. This was the same prince who had spent 50,000 manåts on clothes, presumably to make himself more attractive to the young boys he courted, but also to provide them with gifts of clothing, which was common in such relationships. This is how Iran’s resources were spent, ‘You ask me why the people of Iran are suffering from hunger and where the money is spent. The answer is here’ (MN 49, 7 December 1908). Thus, in the pages of Mollå Nasreddin, accusations of homosexuality became a powerful

Figure 5.35  ‘Mollå officiates a brotherhood vow ceremony. (Say he officiates a wedding ceremony.)’ Source: MN 16, 2 May 1910.

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226 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN tool to berate disliked political adversaries. The journal could have accused the prince of having multiple heterosexual companions, but obviously the charge of homosexuality was a far more potent one. Mollå Nasreddin also criticised the continuation of ‘brotherhood vows’, which had remained common in Iran, South Caucasus and Central Asia (Figure 5.35). Brotherhood (or sisterhood) vows were ceremonies of same-sex commitment between two consenting partners, and officiated by a junior (male or female) mollå.9 Such consensual homoerotic relations were bound by a number of rules of courtship, not unlike those of the Greco-Roman world, as discussed in the works of Kenneth J. Dover and Michel Foucault (J. Afary and Anderson 2005, Ch. 5). The more established partner (often older) used a variety of gifts to court the younger person, sometimes pursuing him for months. Often, he promised to train the junior partner in the arts of manhood, to provide him with fine clothing and food, and even tutors, as well as to provide social contacts that would advance the younger man in his future career. Sometimes, the relationship was confirmed in a ritual ceremony, and a ‘vow’ before a cleric, where the two men became ‘brothers’. Such vows may or may not have had erotic dimensions. But it was a way for two men, or two women, to publicly affirm their commitment to one another. It was not uncommon for the older partner to leave an inheritance for the younger man, or arrange a suitable marriage for him, once the younger man reached an age where it was no longer proper for him to be in such a relationship. Traditionally, this was when the junior partner grew a full beard. According to Mollå Nasreddin, it was around twenty-five when the younger partner would form his own family.10 The result was that the new discourse of Mollå Nasreddin, while bravely condemning paedophilia, also condemned more consensual same-sex relations and paederasty, and mocked the ancient rite of brotherhood vows. By the second half of the twentieth century, this new discourse would become dominant throughout the Middle East, South Caucasus and Central Asia. Modern gay relationships were viewed the same way as paedophilia. A historical amnesia set in, where people forgot that brotherhood and sisterhood vows could have erotic dimensions. When gay commitment ceremonies and gay marriages emerged in the United States, they were regarded as ‘sinful’ Western innovations, utterly unprecedented in the Muslim world. This situation has continued into the twenty-first century and has led to non-recognition of LGBTQ rights in the region.

Notes 1. There are six kopeks in each abbasi. 2. Each manåt is 100 kopeks. 3. We should also note the routine transgression of strict gender boundaries in such rituals, see J. Afary and Anderson 2005: 51. 4. On this and some of the homosocial dimensions of the festival in the late twentieth century, see J. Afary and Anderson 2005: 53.

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5. An excellent account of the relationship between the merchant sponsors and their flagellants in Yazd, Iran, appears in Papoliyazdi 2018. 6. However, Mollå Nasreddin was not free of prejudice towards other colonised people, especially Africans and Native Americans. Here and there, the periodical called on Muslims of South Caucasus not to act like the ‘savages’ of Patagonia (parts of modern-day Argentina and Chile), Habashis (modern-day Ethiopians), and Siberia. See, for example, MN 5, 1 February 1909. 7. Among the authors of these tales was Ali Razi Shamchizade. He was a member of the nationalist Musavat Party and was later executed during the 1938 purges in Russia. After his death, Shamchizade was initially blacklisted in the Soviet Union. But his writings and poems reappeared in the mid-1960s and thereafter. 8. We might ask, ‘From whose perspective are these narrations constructed?’ In the pages of Mollå Nasreddin, men are representing fictional female characters and writing women’s stories. To what extent are these exchanges based on input from women in the community, such as Hamideh Khånum, who regularly commented about the content of the journal to her husband in her letters? Much more research needs to be done to answer such questions, starting with letters of Hamideh Khånum to her husband and any other letters to the editors that might have survived in the archives. 9. Not all ‘sisterhood vows’ had an erotic dimension; rather, some were meant to indicate fictive kinships. Hamideh Khånum recalls that in the Kurdish town of Aliåbad, on their way to Tabriz, she and Mirza Jalil stayed with a family. Eventually, Hamideh Khånum was asked by two women of the family to enter into a ‘sisterhood vow’ with them. The ceremony was new to her, and she recounts it in some detail: ‘Khånum Åghå and Åghå Khånum had become so intimate with us that at the end they said, let us be soul sisters (sigheh båji) and we agreed to that. Therefore, the Mullå was called. We hooked each other’s pinky finger and the Mullå read a prayer and then we gave everybody presents for the sake of our soulsisterhood. Then he congratulated us on our sisterhood. From then onwards we were considered to be almost like blood relatives of the Khan’s family’ (Javanshir 2016: 79). 10. For a more detailed discussion of such vows and their origins, see Afary 2009: 79–107.

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CHAPTER 6

A Champion of Women’s Rights

By the turn of the twentieth century, the subject of women’s education had become a hot journalistic topic. The Russian-language newspaper Kaspiy (The Caspian) and Azerbaijani-language newspapers such as Sharq-e Rus (East of Russia), and Irshåd (Guidance) published hundreds of articles promoting girls’ education and called for the greater integration of women into the public sphere. Muslim South Caucasian educators were ahead of the Iranians with regard to women’s education, but they lagged behind the Ottomans who had progressed much further. The first secular modern schools for Iranian women opened after the Constitutional Revolution of 1906 (Afary 1996: 177–95). These schools were held in modest settings, often in the houses of women’s rights activists, nothing like the palatial school that Taghiyev built for girls in Baku. In contrast, in Turkey, the first medical school of midwifery had opened in 1842, the first secondary school for girls (kiz rustiyeleri) was established in 1858, and the first teacher-training college for women (dar al-muallimat) was founded in 1870 (Kandiyoti 1991: 28). By the early 1900s, a few brave Muslim South Caucasian women had gone to medical school in St Petersburg and returned to practise medicine. They were celebrities in their communities, as the idea of a Muslim woman doctor was still a novel concept (MN 25, 22 September 1906).1 Leila Khånum Shåhtakhtli was the first woman of her community to study medicine in Europe, with the help of a scholarship from Taghiyev. During her third year of medical school, she died of pneumonia in Switzerland. Her tragic loss was mourned in the pages of Mollå Nasreddin in a full-page editorial (Figure 6.1). These efforts to promote women’s education and to provide them with greater access to the public sphere did not include reforming family and marriage laws, however. The Russian state had placed family law in the hands of the religious authorities of its various ethnic communities. From time to time, in highly contested cases involving the Muslim elite, religious authorities would turn to the Russian state to settle disputes. The state welcomed such interventions as a sign that its sovereignty was recognised by the community. As Robert Crews has shown, when the state did intervene, ‘it did not make the cause of women’s emancipation a major focus of the empire’s approach towards Islam in the nineteenth century and did not adopt the reformist language of their European contemporaries’ (Crews 2006: 147). Instead, in the Muslim parts of the empire, the state saw its role as an enforcer of the sharia

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Figure 6.1  ‘Leila Khånum Shåhtakhtli (1886–1908) died in Switzerland during her third year of medical school.’ Source: MN 52, 28 December 1908.

Figure 6.2  Masthead of Mollå Nasreddin’s Editorial Page. Source: MN 51, 20 December 1909.

(Islamic canonical law). When the sharia gave certain rights to women, such as the right to divorce or the right to inheritance, the state enforced such rights. Likewise, the state also recognised rights in the sharia that strengthened male authority, such as the right of a man to polygamy. Thus, as far as family law was concerned, the Russian state allowed for different regulations in each of the religious communities within its empire (Crews 2006: 147). In this context, Mollå Nasreddin’s treatment of Muslim women’s rights was ground-breaking. Unlike others, it did not limit itself to the argument that women must be educated so they could become better wives and mothers, advancing the nation. Rather, the journal addressed many facets of women’s difficult lives. It adopted a deeply sympathetic view of the girl child herself, explored the many abuses that girls and women endured during their lives, and called for legal reform of marriage and divorce laws. Beginning in 1909, the masthead of the editorial page reflected these views. It showed a patriarch beating a young, unveiled woman with a cudgel as she dropped to the floor defencelessly. Two women flanked the image. On the left was a fully veiled woman who remained motionless and observed the abuse. On the right was

230 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN a female trickster, wearing a short-sleeve modern dress, standing over the head of three men who represented the patriarchal order. The female trickster looked sternly into the eyes of the abusive man, warning him to stop, as the girl on the floor reached out to her for help. The journal published stories and printed cartoons on the various facets of a woman’s life, from birth to old age, including subjects such as the stigma of giving birth to a girl, malnourishment, lack of education, segregation, child marriage and forced marriage, domestic violence, polygamy, temporary marriage, easy divorce, competition from non-Muslim women and, finally, veiling and dress code. To provide a sense of the explosive nature of these articles and graphics, we have composed a narrative that takes us through the many stages of a woman’s life, as discussed by the journal, thereby providing a broad overview of the range of subjects that the periodical addressed with regard to women’s rights. Birth of a girl The birth of a girl was a calamity for a mother unless she had previously given birth to several sons (Figure 6.4). Having seven sons and one daughter seems to have been the ideal arrangement, an attitude that was exemplified in giving baby girls names such as Basti (Suffice), Kåfi (Enough), or Gyzyetar (Enough Girls) (Quluzadə 2006: 247). It was assumed that the sex of the child was determined by the quality of a woman’s womb. People talked about two kinds of women, those who gave birth to girls and those who gave birth to boys. To have given birth to multiple daughters but no sons was enough of a reason for a man to divorce or take another wife (Quluzadə 2006: 248). The principal reason for the disdain of a girl child was that her family did not benefit from the time and money they would invest in raising her, and they would have to pay an additional sum to marry her off. To arrange for a proper formal marriage (nikah) for a daughter, the girl’s family had to come up with a respectable trousseau (jahiz). In impoverished rural and urban families, this included clothes, quilts, bedding, woven carpets and kilims, and other household items. But in more well-to-do families it included cash, silver vases, land, property and expensive carpets. In return, the boy’s family arranged for the wedding celebrations; provided gifts of clothing and jewellery; made a relatively small contribution known as milk money (süd pulu); and promised a larger mehr (mehriyeh), which was a marriage portion payable to the wife at any time after the marriage but almost always paid after divorce or the death of the husband. The bride’s family often used the milk money to purchase their daughter’s trousseau. But they might also use it to finance the marriage of one of their sons, the bride’s brother. After the wedding ceremony, the bride moved in with her in-laws and worked under the supervision of her mother-in-law, becoming a helper to her. There was thus a major difference between the marriage of a daughter and a son. A girl’s family lost her labour power just as she was becoming a productive member of the family (Figure 6.5). Nor did they gain the labour of their

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Figure 6.3  A Woman’s Burden. Source: MN 28, 14 July 1908.

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Figure 6.4  Top: wife gave birth to a son. Bottom: wife gave birth to a daughter. Source: MN 31, 2 August 1909.

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new son-in-law. But the groom’s family maintained the labour of their son and received an additional labourer, the bride for their family. By law, the children of the union also belonged to the man’s family in case of the death of the husband or divorce. There was also a difference between trousseau and mehr. The trousseau, which the girl’s parents provided, was money out of the pocket of the bride’s family to the groom’s family at the time of the wedding. But the mehr was the promise of an amount to be paid at some future time to the bride. If the marriage was successful and lasted until the death of the husband, the mehr (which was not indexed to inflation) was negligible after many years of marriage. Moreover, if there was a divorce, the husband would use the mehr to negotiate the terms of the divorce, including physical custody of any children whose guardianship remained with the father and his family. This was why there was a common saying, ‘Nobody has ever paid the mehr and nobody has ever received it.’ In impovFigure 6.5  ‘My daughter, enough, you have erished communities, there was no mehr and grown up. It’s time to get married. No more instead, a copy of the Quran would symbolically studying.’ replace it. Finally, by tradition, it was the sons Source: MN 27, 11 July 1910. (which in practice meant the daughters-in-law) who took care of the parents of the groom in sickness and old age. As a result, having a son served as a pension for old age, while having a daughter was a drain on the resources of her family. For all these reasons, the birth of a daughter was not a welcome occasion in the family. It was one more mouth to feed with no benefits to gain (Afary 2009: 19–49; Tucker 1998: 43–4).2 With a measure of ethnocentrism, such attitudes towards girls from the time they were born were covered by Mollå Nasreddin. Among the [pre-Islamic] Arabs it was a custom to smother a baby girl upon her birth. Thank God we are better than those Arabs! We don’t strangle girls. But truth be told, we don’t think having a girl is such a good thing either. (MN 25, 8 July 1907: 6–7) The birth of a girl augured a bad omen for the family, starting with the mother. When a woman gave birth to a son, the whole family rejoiced. She was fed nutritious food for forty days and given gifts as an expression of thanks. When a woman gave birth to a daughter, the house fell into mourning and she got little more than plain bread for her meals (MN 25, 8 July 1907: 6–7). Malnourishment of women and girls continued throughout their lives. In many impoverished families, the father and the male children ate first, or had

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Figure 6.6  Women eat last. Source: MN 4, 28 April 1906.

the richer meat dishes, while the women and girls lived on a diet of vegetables and leftover meat. Child marriage, forced marriage, elopement and marriage as escape from poverty Child marriage had been outlawed by Tsar Nicholas I, who increased the age of marriage of girls to sixteen and for boys to eighteen in 1830 (‘Child Marriage’ 2015). Islamic law, however, allowed for the marriage of girls as early as the age of nine, while for boys it was fifteen. Usually, several years passed between the signing of the marriage contract and the actual wedding, but this was not always the case. In many impoverished Muslim families, girls were married at nine or even earlier. Marriages were arranged by families so that neither the groom nor the bride had a say about whom they married. As Mollå Nasreddin saw it, this situation led to many unhappy marriages, not just for women but also for men, who might be led to believe they were marrying one woman they had seen but ended up with another in the wedding chamber (Figure 6.7). Shii and Sunni law granted the girl’s father (or her male guardian) the right to contract a marriage on her behalf before she was nine. Once she reached

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Figure 6.7  Right: ‘What a beautiful girl; I will approach Aunt Fatima to ask for her hand’. Left: ‘Oh my God! This is not that girl!’ Source: MN 18, 5 May 1908.

the age of nine, her consent was required. However, due to their age, young girls were neither aware of this provision, nor in a position to argue with their parents and guardians about an unwanted marriage. When a girl was somewhat older (in her teens), she might strenuously object to a marriage, but the family had its ways of coercing or tricking her. A father or brother would claim he had power of attorney over his daughter or sister, marrying her regardless of her wishes to whomever he wanted (Figure 6.8). Child marriage was common in the Middle East, including in Iran and South Caucasus, among all religious denominations, including Jews, Zoroastrians and Christians. Parents were anxious to arrange the marriage of a daughter quickly, not just to get rid of another mouth to feed but to avoid a potential sexual scandal as she became older. Custom (but not religion) required that girls be virgins at the time of their first marriage. This was the primary reason families opposed sending their daughters to modern schools, which would have involved travelling some distance away from home. Parents feared that their daughters might be caught speaking to a boy, let alone being sexually harassed on the way to school or even at the school. A mere rumour of this

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Figure 6.8  Top: Uncle Borj Ali and the girl’s brother. Middle: a mollå recites the nuptial agreement with the consent of the girl’s brother. Bottom: Uncle Borjali to girl: ‘Stop yelling, you are legally mine!’ Source: MN 9, 28 February 1911.

Figure 6.9  Top: ‘Hey, hey girl, quickly get up! A man is coming.’ Bottom: ‘Whenever a man enters a house, he must cough loudly so unrelated women quickly run away and hide.’ Source: MN 40, 4 October 1909.

sort would damage a girl’s marriage prospects and ruin the family’s reputation. Her supposed lack of virginity on the wedding night would dishonour her and her entire family (Vieille 1978: 455). As a result, strict rules of segregation were maintained to prevent the interaction of a girl with any unrelated man or boy. This included rules that required her to leave the courtyard of her own house, and hide herself, when an unrelated man entered the house. Many urban families in South Caucasus and Iran pulled their daughters out of traditional schools around the age of nine or ten, then married them around the age of twelve, even if the marriage itself was not consummated until several years later. In Iran, Jewish, Zoroastrian and Armenian families followed the same pattern. But in the cosmopolitan city of Tiflis, more urbane Muslims, as well as Jews and Christians, married their daughters in their late teens. The practice of early marriage had become limited to the more traditional sectors of the Muslim community. While many premodern African and Latin American societies provided girls with instructions about intercourse and sexual pleasure, in Iran and

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Figure 6.10  Twelve-year-old Jewish girl goes to school, while twelve-year-old Muslim girl gets married. Source: MN 17, 28 April 1907.

South Caucasus, such rudimentary sex education was seldom shared among Muslim, Jewish, Christian and Zoroastrian families. Parents were concerned that talking with their daughters about sex might make them curious to explore it or frighten them to the point that they rejected marriage altogether. The only thing girls were usually taught about sex was that there was a fragile curtain between their legs that could rupture with any strenuous activity, and she had to protect it until she was married. Often, a girl had no idea how she was supposed to protect herself or in what ways she could lose her virginity. As a result, on her wedding night, she was terrified about not being found to be a virgin for whatever reason. The groom, regardless of his age and experience, was also under tremendous pressure to perform and prove his virility on the nuptial bed. The family would wait outside the door and expect the groom to come out with proof of the girl’s virginity (a bloody sheet) (Figure 6.11). Such rushed and stressful nuptial defloration could lead to a long series of traumas in the marriage (Shahri 1990: 1:259). As noted earlier, sharia law stated that when a girl reached the age of maturity (defined as nine years old), her permission for marriage was required. If she did not give her consent at the wedding ceremony, even if her parents and her guardians had arranged the marriage, the marriage would be annulled. But how many girls knew of such a law or could muster the courage and resources to stand up to their parents and guardians and express their disapproval at the wedding ceremony?

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238 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN In a moving story about child marriage, Mollå Nasreddin introduced the sensitive topic of marital rape of young girls. It did so by telling the story of a girl’s marriage, presumably from the Nakhchivan region, through her eyes. As soon as she turned eight, suitors began to appear at the family doorstep. The female relatives of potential suitors – grandmothers, mothers and aunts – were welcomed and had conversations with the girl’s mother. However, the young girl had no idea who they were and why they had come to her house. Every time she asked her mother what was going on, she was told it was none of her business. An older girl would have known that they had come to ask for her hand. She might use this opportunity to show her opposition to the match if she knew of the boy and disliked him. For example, when she brought the tray of tea to the guests, she might act in an impertinent way towards them, signalling her displeasure, in which case the boy’s family would leave. But in the story Mollå Nasreddin recounts, the girl was too Figure 6.11  Congratulating the groom and young for this kind of awareness, and her peeking into the newly-weds’ chamber. family purposely kept her in the dark. Soon Source: MN 35, 24 September 1907. after, the girl’s family would ask her to wear the veil. She was told that, as she was now a ‘big girl’, she should not leave the house without her veil, talk to strangers, or in any other way embarrass her family. Suitors showed up again, and there were gatherings where tea and sweets were served. Whenever the girl asked her mother what was going on, she was told, ‘None of your business’. Then one day, several female relatives arrived at their house. They held her tight so she would stop fidgeting, plucked her eyebrows, used eyeliner around her eyes, put rouge on her cheeks and trimmed her hair. Then they carried her out of the house amidst much jubilation. The girl kept yelling, ‘What have you done to me and where are you taking me?’ But she was told to shut up or her father would ‘cut her ears off’. The distraught eight-year-old was then dropped off at some stranger’s house, and her family turned around to leave. The young girl cried and pleaded with her mother not to leave her alone, but she left anyway. Then a man with a thick neck entered the room. The journal abruptly ended the tale at this point, stating that according to Russian law, the punishment for the rape of a girl was exile in Siberia for several years. But in our community, the man who forcibly took a little girl as his wife was ‘congratulated’ on the next day by everyone (MN 25, 8 July 1907: 6–7) (Figures 6.12, 6.13).

Figure 6.12  ‘Wives and socks are the same, one size fits all.’ Source: MN 10, 10 March 1907.

Figure 6.13  ‘She’s my wife, I get to decide! None of your business (in Ganja).’ Source: MN 1, 6 January 1908.

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Some marriages took place through the so-called kidnapping of a girl by her suitor and his male friends. Often these were not actual kidnappings but elopements, meaning they took place between two consenting people of meagre means whose families disapproved of the match, usually for financial reasons. But this arrangement could also be an elopement with the quiet agreement of the parents on both sides. In this way, they would not be shamed in the community for lacking the funds to properly marry their son or daughter. By tradition, the ‘kidnapped’ young woman was kept in a room while the female relatives of the groom asked her to agree to the marriage. Once she agreed, the man’s family visited the girl’s parents and negotiated the modest details of the nikah contract. In such cases, there would be no wedding ceremony and the girl would receive none of the gifts she would customarily receive on such an occasion. In a world with no birthday or graduation parties, a wedding was the only occasion in a woman’s whole life when she was celebrated. Many women, even when they willingly eloped, later deeply regretted having missed out on this one celebration in their lives (Figure 6.14).3 But sometimes, according to Mollå Nasreddin, the girl really was kidnapped, meaning she had not consented to the marriage (Figure 6.15). Her family may or may not have discreetly arranged her marriage, but she would have been

Figure 6.14  Top: ‘Yesterday the boy came and asked for the hand of their daughter. They turned him down.’ Middle: ‘Today: the boy and the girl ran away.’ Bottom: ‘Tomorrow: the parents of the girl plead with the boy to quickly arrange the wedding.’ Source: MN 50, 13 December 1909.

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242 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN unaware of it. One day, as she was going somewhere, the man and his friends would show up and forcibly take her to the groom’s house. There, the man’s family pressured the girl to agree to the marriage, telling her that since her honour had been besmirched through the kidnapping, she was better off marrying their son. The next day, the groom and his relatives showed up at the girl’s house, gave the father a gold coin (the milk money), and received his consent. At this point, Mollå Nasreddin informed its readers, ‘If the girl cooperates, he controls her by beating and cursing her. If she does not, he divorces her and takes a new wife since divorcing a wife is easier than drinking water’ (MN 8, 24 February 1908: 3). Even older girls were not immune from such forced marriages (Figure 6.16). In August 1910, Mollå Nasreddin reported that in Shaitån Bazaar, an educated young woman, meaning someone who had studied both the Azerbaijani and the Russian languages, was forcibly married. She Figure 6.15  Kidnapping the bride. was an orphan, and her guardian had arranged Source: MN 5, 5 May 1906. her marriage to a much older widower. She kept pleading, ‘I don’t want to marry an old man who dyes his hair with henna,’ but they kept beating her. When she threatened to kill herself, her uncle said, ‘I will murder you myself.’ On her wedding night she was forced into the wedding chamber. The relatives kept saying it was her wedding and she should be happy. She cried, saying it was more like her funeral. Yet this union did not have a happy ending for the groom either. The strong-willed bride stood up to her very old husband and beat him up on the wedding night (MN 31, 8 August 1910: 6). Such tales were not unusual in the region. Some resolute young women refused to cooperate in such forced marriages, and some got their way.4 There were other types of forced unions. In one report, an older wealthy man seemed to ask for the hand of an impoverished girl for his son. But, unbeknownst to her, the girl’s family would agree to marry her to the father in return for a heavy bride price. On the wedding night, the young woman expected to be united with a handsome young man but realised she had been tricked and married to the boy’s father. However, by then it was too late and too embarrassing to protest (Figure 6.17). Finally, there were a variety of unhappy marriages where a girl’s poverty and her family’s inability to secure a comfortable life for her led her to marry an older man. In one cartoon, a young woman had two suitors: a young impoverished teacher and an old wealthy merchant. Desperate for a better life, she chose to marry the older man. She got the clothes and the home she wanted, but the merchant was controlling and jealous. He kept her shut in the house

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Figure 6.16  Forced marriage. Source: MN 33, 1 September 1910.

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Figure 6.17  ‘Marriage’. Top: the father of the girl and Mohammad Qaråbaghi from Eshqåbåd. Mohammad: ‘God willing I want to ask for the hand of your daughter for my son Timur.’ Middle: the night before the wedding. The girl dreams of her husband. Bottom: (wedding night) ‘Sweetheart, sweetheart, don’t think I am old.’ Source: MN 6, 7 February 1911.

and monitored her every move so no other man could see her (Figures 6.18, 6.19). Another woman, also desperate for a comfortable life, married a very old rich man. Her family promised her that her husband would die soon, leaving her with a fortune. But he had lived much longer than anticipated. By then she had five children and wished him dead every day (Figure 6.20)! What happened to these women who lived such unhappy lives with more well-off men? According to Mollå Nasreddin, some secretly took up with the servants in the house. A June 1907 cartoon by Schmerling showed the lady of the house playing with the servant and pouring jugs of water over his head (a veiled reference to sex), while the daughter did the same with the servant’s son (Figure 6.21). Others also took secret lovers. Another cartoon, also by Schmerling, showed a beautiful young wife sneaking out of the room and embracing her young lover in the hallway, as her old husband slept, drooling and oblivious to what was going on in his own house (Figure 6.22). Rumours of women taking lovers, and even of love brokers (dalal-e mohabat) arranging trysts between married women and available men, were common in Iranian and South Caucasian societies (Afary 2009: 44–9). Domestic violence

The writers and artists of Mollå Nasreddin had a critical eye towards domestic violence and its endemic nature. Azerbaijani historian Zumurud Quluzadeh writes that domestic violence was as common and widespread in South Caucasus as it was in Iran. Girls, boys and young wives were routinely punished for minor infractions by their elders, fathers and husbands. While boys were required to obey only adult males, girls were expected to obey the orders of female and male elders. An old Turkish proverb said, ‘Whoever does not beat his daughter, will slap himself [will come to regret it]’ (Quluzadə 2006: 248). For a relatively young married woman, a minor transgression that would merit such a punishment might be looking out of a window that faced an alley. For a young unmarried woman, it might be going to the courtyard of her house without permission from her elders (Figure 6.23). The duty to enforce rules of segregation and other patriarchal norms on younger women fell upon older men and women, as well as upon sons and

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Figure 6.18  Rich hajji and impoverished teacher. Top: mother: ‘My daughter, which one do you want to marry?’ Daughter: ‘I want to marry the hajji.’ Bottom: ‘My daughter no one else is to blame. It is your own fault. You wanted a husband who was rich, gave you freedom, spent lots of money on you so you buy beautiful clothes and look attractive to men. As a result, now you sit home like a prisoner and you can’t complain.’ Source: MN 29, 11 August 1911.

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Figure 6.19  Trip to the bathhouse: ‘Can’t trust horses or wives!’ Source: MN 10, 10 March 1907.

Figure 6.20  ‘I swear it is not my fault! They told me he won’t live more than two years and I will inherit a fortune. So far, I have given birth to five children. God knows when he might die!’ Source: MN 36, 15 October 1911.

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Figure 6.21  ‘Lady of the house and the servant’. Source: MN 26, 15 July 1907.

Figure 6.22  An affair. Top: at the beginning it is like this. Bottom: then becomes like this. Source: MN 23, 25 June 1907.

brothers of the family (MN 44, 1 November 1909). Once they became aware of their power, boys might start abusing it. Even a little boy could learn how to use this power to blackmail his mother to get what he wanted (Figure 6.24). However, not all boys became enforcers of patriarchal norms. Some used their authority to help their sisters and aunts. A good example was Mirza Jalil himself, who enrolled his younger sister Sakineh and a few other girls in the school where he taught. Other men and boys might invite their sister to a public performance. However, circumventing a father’s dictates had serious repercussions not only for the sister, but also for the brother (MN 35, 8 October 1911) (Figure 6.25). Domestic violence was ubiquitous in marriage. Quluzadeh writes that women were expected to be absolutely obedient and loyal towards their husbands, regardless of the

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Figure 6.23  ‘You impertinent girl! Who gave you permission to go to the yard?’ Source: MN 37, 15 September 1908.

man’s conduct, even if he took other wives. After moving into her husband’s house, the wife had to serve multiple masters, among them her mother-inlaw, father-in-law, older sisters-in-law or brothers-in-law. She was expected to be obedient and rely on her husband and her in-laws for all of her life’s decisions. ‘Any deviation from this norm was reproached by the women as well as the men in her family. Indeed, sometimes there was more reprimand by other women’ (Quluzadə 2006: 248). A common aphorism, which compared a girl’s treatment in her father’s house to what she received at her husband’s house was, ‘A father’s house is an open space, a husband’s house is a jail’ (ata evi – meydan evi, ar evi – zindan evi) (Quluzadə 2006: 248). Often, a young bride was brought to her new husband’s home with much pomp and ceremony, but a month later she might be fleeing from his beatings (Figure 6.26). Even a pregnant woman was not immune from violence. In a humorous article titled ‘Advice to Pregnant Women’, women were counselled to keep calm throughout their pregnancy, not become anxious or angry, and not climb a ladder to yell at their neighbours! There was also similar satirical advice for the husbands. Men were asked to be gentle towards their pregnant wives. They should not beat a pregnant woman on the stomach or the waist. However, ‘beating her on the back of her shoulders, her chin, or her legs was all right.

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Figure 6.24  ‘Mother, I swear if you don’t give me money to buy candy, I will tell father when he comes home that you were looking out the window!’ Source: MN 38, 30 October 1911.

Occasionally, she could even be smacked on the head.’ The reason for this ‘gentleness’ was not the physical safety of the wife, but to avoid harm to the foetus. Thus, if the wife forgot to add salt to the stew, her husband, ‘should not push her out of the house and not throw a shoe at her … because she might twist her ankle, fall on the ground, and lose her baby.’ If this happened, the writer continued sarcastically, ‘The hell with the wife, but it would be a pity if the child was lost because maybe it was a boy!’ (MN 29, 5 August 1907: 6). Women did fight back and even beat up their husbands, though this was a rarity. In response to a query by the periodical, ‘Is There a Muslim Woman Whose Husband Has Not Beaten Her?’ one fellow responded that he had never been able to beat his wife because she was a strong and cunning woman, much like the folk character Nasreddin’s wife. Throughout their marrriage, she had routinely ‘locked him out of the house’ and nearly mutilated him with a butcher knife. He tried to beat her once, but she kicked him so viciously he ran out to save his life (MN 15, 28 April 1911). It was the unlikely nature of his tale that made it so humorous. It reminded the reader of the wife of the trickster Nasreddin, the only woman who knew how to get even with her man and get away with it.

Public sexual harassment Public harassment of respectable women is a relatively modern phenomenon in the Middle East and North Africa. In looking closely at the Iranian newspapers of the twentieth century, one sees that reports of harassment grew in direct proportion to women’s reclaiming of the public sphere. As more women began to unveil, work outside the home and take public transportation, rates of harassment steadily increased.5 Around 1900, a man who publicly harassed a woman in Tehran or Tabriz, let alone Tiflis and Baku, could be arrested by the police because such incidents were rare (Javanshir 2016: 110). Respectable women were considered the property of their men. The public harassment of such a woman would have been considered a direct affront to the men of her family and therefore severely punished. Streets were segregated based on hours of the day and women were allowed out during certain hours. The police enforced these rules of segregation and as a result, rates of harassment were very low. For example, if a man dared touch a respectable woman’s veil, he could be publicly flogged. In Iran, it was only after Reza Shah Pahlavi ordered the public unveiling of Iranian women in 1936 that both veiled and unveiled women became open

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Figure 6.25  Right: ‘Aunt, they are showing the play Leili and Majnoon at the theatre. Put on your veil so we go see it.’ Left: ‘You wretch! Now you go to the theatre!’ Source: MN 35, 8 October 1911.

targets of public harassment. The police approached veiled women on the streets, who had not complied with the unveiling edicts, and pulled off their veils. However, unveiled women, who were complying with the new rules, were also harassed. Men regarded the more exposed bodies of these women as an invitation to sexual harassment and molestation. The women would be stalked, fondled and groped in public. If they complained, the women themselves would be blamed for supposedly bringing on such harassment. As a result, in the 1930s, newspapers started lecturing women to dress more modestly and not to use cosmetics or look attractive if they wished to avoid harassment. In South Caucasus, many urban Muslim women had unveiled by the turn of the twentieth century, while others donned a lax version of the veil in cosmopolitan cities such as Tiflis. As a result, public harassment of women started in South Caucasus decades before it did in neighbouring Iran. In order to show the extent of public sexual harassment, Mollå Nasreddin published a series of supposed exchanges between the editor and the fictional character Jahraji Khåleh. In May 1907, Mollå Nasreddin quoted verses from the Quran to prove that veiling was not religiously mandated. The next week, Jahraji

252 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN Khåleh ‘wrote’ back. She was pretty sure that Mollå Nasreddin had ‘invented’ these Quranic verses, since she had never heard of them before. She then went on to explain that, in any case, the problem was not the Quran, but Muslim men, starting with the clerics. The mollås recited hadiths to the effect that any woman who appeared unveiled before an unrelated man would burn in hell. And yet the mollås excluded themselves from this category of unrelated men. They were permitted to see any unrelated women unveiled and could become intimate with them by simply uttering a short prayer. The same cleric who declared an unveiled woman sinful and the touch of a medical doctor unlawful could touch and Figure 6.26  Top: ‘Respect for the new bride.’ fondle a married or unmarried Bottom: ‘Respect for the bride after a month.’ woman in the sanctity of her Source: MN 5, 3 February 1908. home, or in his cubicle in the mosque, in the name of providing physical or psychological treatment and comfort (Figure 6.27). Jahraji Khåleh continued her criticism of men. Even if our religion permitted us to walk about without a hijab, ‘our men would not permit us’. We have to observe the hijab whenever we go out on the street and in the bazaar, or the men ‘would eat us up with their eyes’. When a woman went to a store to buy fabric, a man pretending to be another customer would follow her into the store so he could catch a glimpse of her unveiled face when she talked with the shopkeeper. When a woman boarded a train, she would likewise be harassed by fellow male travellers who inched closer to her and started a conversation. On the long trip from Tiflis to Baku, she could not stand up to open the train’s window, as this would call attention to her, and the men on the train would buzz around her, especially if she was young. This problem was compounded by the fact that husbands, fully aware of their own fellow men’s conduct, did not permit their wives to leave the house without a veil, even if the wife went out to borrow a cup of sugar from a next-door neighbour. Jahraji Khåleh had decided to wear a Russian-style hat when she was out of her house to pass for a Russian and be safe from harassment of menfolk in her community. She closed her letter with an appeal to Mollå Nasreddin and asked the editor to please tell his fellow men to leave women alone and stop this constant public harassment (MN 21, 26 May 1907).

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Figure 6.27  Right: ‘Doctor: Open up your face so I can check your throat.’ Woman: ‘No, no, I won’t do it even if I die.’ Left: ‘That is okay. Let the mollå write a prayer on my navel. It is alright.’ Source: MN 14, 11 April 1910.

Formal polygamy The practice of polygamy in the Middle East and South Caucasus dates back to the pre-Islamic era. It was common among elite families but rare among impoverished rural and urban ones (Råvandi 1984: 6:257). According to the sharia, a man is permitted four ‘aqdi (formal) wives. The Quran calls for equal treatment of all wives, which has been interpreted as equal food, clothing and a comparable dwelling, as well as a system of overnight rotations where the husband spends equal amounts of time with each wife (Quran 4: 3; Keddie and Barron 1991: 8). In formal polygamy, which is different from temporary marriage, a second wife and her children are entitled to the same rights as the first wife and her children. In practice, throughout the Middle East and South Caucasus, monogamy has been the norm for most, and polygamy the rare exception to the rule among the well-to-do (See Polak [1865] 1976: 1:209). At the turn of the twentieth century, formal polygamy remained a mark of social prestige and wealth (Figure 6.28). When a man’s economic and political status improved substantially, he might take a second formal wife, thereby proving that he had the means to do so. He often paid for an elaborate wedding and provided a separate dwelling for the second wife (Quran 4: 127) (Figure 6.29).

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Figure 6.28  ‘Taking as many wives as one can afford’. Source: MN 26, 28 June 1909.

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Figure 6.29  Using recently collected charity funds to get a second, younger wife. Source: MN 16, 21 April 1907.

The second wife was often from a higher social class. In this way, the man solidified his ties with the upper echelons of his community. When a husband took a second formal wife, the first wife and her children became resentful and even distraught. This is because all of the children of polygamous unions inherit equally from their father (with daughters receiving half as much as sons in the Shii tradition). This meant that the inheritance of the children from the first wife decreased substantially when a man fathered more children from his second or even third wife. Jealousy among the co-wives led to violence and even murder. One of the primary reasons women turned to conjuring was to plot against a co-wife, either to reduce her sexual attractiveness or to induce a miscarriage, thereby decreasing the number of children who would inherit from the husband. As a result, polygamous households were often a web of power struggles and intrigues. Mollå Nasreddin mocked the practice in multiple cartoons and articles. An illustration in December 1906 compared a man who took four wives to one playing with dolls. When a new one arrived, he turned to her and disregarded the other three (Figure 6.30). A few men tried to exceed the limit of four formal wives by paying off clerics for special permission. When a man in the small town of Aghjabådi took the audacious step of marrying a fifth wife, relatives and community

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Figure 6.30  ‘Four is enough.’ Source: MN 35, 1 December 1906.

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members were outraged and told him that the sharia permitted only four formal wives. He responded, ‘If you become friends with a mollå and a qåzi (qadi) you can marry not just five, you can marry fifteen!’ At any rate, relatives pressed him to go visit the qåzi and sort out the issue. And so, he ‘put 50 manåts in his pocket and proceeded to see the qåzi’, suggesting that a hefty bribe might get him the requisite permission (MN 9, 28 February 1910: 6). Other frequent cartoons in the journal were about the acrimonious nature of polygamous households (MN 31, 20 August 1907). Women fought over the time a husband spent with them, or the clothing and gifts one woman and her children might receive (Figure 6.31). They accused each other of back-stabbing, poisoning each other’s children, or currying favour with the husband or their in-laws. Occasionally, co-wives got into heated arguments and beat each other up. A smart husband knew how to handle these conflicts by pretending that he liked them equally, or at least by leaving the house and staying out of the quarrel when all else failed (Figure 6.32). However, when a man made the mistake of taking a third wife, the other two might form an alliance against him, and make his life a virtual hell.

Figure 6.31  ‘Sometimes it happens like this!’ Source: MN 34, 10 September 1907.

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258 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN Temporary marriage Temporary marriage, called sigheh in Persian and mut‘a in Arabic, is a Shii institution. It was outlawed by Caliph ‘Umar (584–644, r. 634–44) as a form of fornication and remained unacceptable among Sunnis. However, the practice, which was akin to concubinage in European and Chinese societies, was highly popular in the Shii communities of Iran and South Caucasus. Temporary marriage was an arrangement whereby a woman entered into a contract for sex with a man for a finite period and a stipulated sum. Such a union could last for a few hours, days or much longer. Once the stipulated time arrived, the union ended. The couple could renew the arrangements for additional terms if they wished to do so. A wife in a temporary marriage (known as a sigheh wife) did not have the right to inherit from her husband. If she bore children from their union, the father might or might not acknowledge paternity (Haeri 1989). A man did not need much income to take a temporary wife. A small Figure 6.32  Fighting of co-wives. shopkeeper or even peddler could take a Source: MN 3, 19 January 1907. temporary wife for a few hours or a few days, usually unbeknownst to his formal wife at home. When travelling, men rarely took their formal wives and instead preferred to arrange a sigheh union with a temporary wife wherever they lingered for a while. Some wealthy men brought their sigheh home, where she became a maid to his formal wife. The business of contracting temporary marriages was a highly lucrative one for the clerics, who also engaged in it themselves. The temporary wives who were clients of these brokers were usually divorced or widowed women, often with small children and no other source of income. The sharia required a temporary wife to maintain ‘idda, a period of sexual abstinence for two months at the termination of the relationship, to assure the paternity of any children born from the union. But the onus of maintaining the ‘idda was placed on the woman and not the man. Most women were too desperate to adhere to the obligation of ‘idda and quickly went through a series of temporary marriages. Many ended up as prostitutes on the streets. If they were extremely lucky, they became nannies or maids in the home of a particularly well-to-do man (Haeri 1989). Shrines, such as the Shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad (Khorasan, Iran), were popular sites for contracting short-term temporary marriages between male pilgrims and the destitute women of the city (Southgate 1840: 38). The practice provided a crucial source of income for the mollås, who contracted

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Figure 6.33  ‘Temporary Marriage in Khorasan (Iran).’ Engaging with a different man each hour. Source: MN 19, 12 May 1907.

the short-term unions for pilgrims, and also for landlords who rented spaces for such affairs (Figure 6.33). In December 1909, a seven-part cartoon series illustrated the life of a woman who went through a series of temporary marriages. She started at the age of eleven, when she became the sigheh of the ‘Red Beard Mir Qåsem’. Then at the age of fourteen, she became the sigheh of an old man named Hajji Karim and had a child with him. Later, she became the sigheh of an Iranian mollå who fathered her second child. A few years later, she entered into a sigheh union with a man whose first wife had not conceived, and she had another child with him. In this arrangement, she lived with the other wife and the two fought all the time. One day, her first husband showed up and reclaimed her. But then he was exiled to Siberia, perhaps because he had raped an underage girl, and now the woman was starving with four children (Figure 6.34). Because contracting a sigheh union was so simple and involved none of the financial and legal obligations of a formal marriage, it was subject to widespread abuse. For example, when a working-class husband got a job in another city, leaving his wife alone for several years, she became a source of temptation to the men in her community. If she did not have a male guardian

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Figure 6.34  ‘The Tale of One Woman’. Source: MN 51, 20 December 1909.

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to protect her, such as a father-in-law or an older brother, then a man from the community might decide to claim her as a temporary wife (Figure 6.35). The man would approach a cleric, who would then claim to represent the woman legally in the absence of her husband. Next, the cleric would declare the woman’s absent husband as dead or lost. Finally, he would use his forged power of attorney to arrange a sigheh union between her and the man who sought her. In return, the cleric was handsomely compensated. All of this would take place without the woman’s knowledge or consent, and even through force or intimidation (MN 36, 24 September 1907) (Figure 6.36). A cleric could also annul the marriage of a couple, claiming that the husband was an apostate, which was often a fabricated accusation. The fictional character Aunt Dabåni Chatdåkh, whose husband was away, complained that she lived in fear of being turned into the sigheh of another man. A few years earlier, a cleric named Hajji Seyyed Fåqer Åqå, a large, tall man with a red beard, had burst into her house with a dagger. He sized her up and down and announced that he was taking her as his sigheh wife. When Aunt Dabåni Chatdåkh protested and said she was already married, the Hajji responded, ‘Your stupid husband has become a Babi [apostate] and so his ­marriage to you is null and

Figure 6.35  Right: ‘If you don’t come willingly, I will take you by force.’ Left: ‘The Åkhund: Well girl, it seems you agree to this match as you are silent. In God’s name, I will marry you to this man.’ Source: MN 10, 8 March 1909.

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Figure 6.36  Top: abducting a mother of four children. Bottom: ‘Boy: Mother, who is this new guest? Mother: Damn your father!’ Source: MN 36, 24 September 1907.

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void.’6 She managed to escape from his clutches by appealing to the neighbours, but now she feared another cleric, Mollå Abdol Abvåb, who had similar designs on her. She told Mollå Nasreddin that there were many married women in her situation, women who feared being snatched away as sigheh wives in the absence of their husbands (MN 34, 25 August 1908: 3). Clerics justified such actions by citing a hadith that backed their claims. Since neither the Prophet nor the imams ever wrote a book, such hadiths were often fabricated. In a column titled ‘Fake Hadiths’, Mollå Nasreddin accused the clerics of concocting hadiths to fit their needs. ‘We have said several times that ninety-nine per cent of the hadiths which our orators pronounce in the mosque are fake. Yet after hearing such statements, many said Mollå Nasreddin was misguided.’ The editor went on to say that he had an uncle in the Qåpåzli village who had three formal wives. Each month, when the young Mollå Nasreddin went to visit him, he saw his uncle had taken a new temporary wife. When he marvelled about his uncle’s virility, the uncle claimed religious justification for his actions. Based on a hadith he had heard, ritual ablution after sex had great merit (savåb). Thus, the more sex a man had, and the more he performed the rituals of cleansing his genitalia after sex (qusl-e janåbat), the greater were his chances of going to heaven after death (MN 16, 4 May 1907). There was also a provision in Shiism where a man who was interested in marrying a woman could take one good look at her unveiled face and body before entering the marriage. This was meant to protect the woman, so that after marriage her husband could not claim he did not like her appearance and divorce her. In some cases, a sigheh union would be arranged for this purpose known as sigheh for seeing (sigheh nazari). But many clerics abused this provision when women approached them for help or advice. Once a cleric pronounced the sigheh, he could easily move on to further advances (Figure 6.37). Divorce According to the sharia, a formal marriage can be terminated in several ways, but the most common type of divorce is known as talaq, or repudiation. Here, a husband pronounces the divorce formula before witnesses and then notarises it. The woman has no say in the dissolution of her marriage. After pronouncing talaq, there is a hundred-day trial separation (‘idda) to establish the paternity of any children that may have been conceived before the divorce. During ‘idda, the husband has the unilateral right to resume the marriage. Once the divorce is finalised, the husband is required to pay his wife her mehr (Haeri 1989: 44–5). At the turn of the twentieth century, in the vast majority of cases, the husband did not want to pay the mehr. Instead, he made his wife’s life so miserable that she initiated the divorce and renounced her mehr. This type of divorce was known as khal‘. Because there was no alimony at the termination of khal‘, and no community property, women were quite reluctant to give up their mehr, the sole asset to which they were entitled at the termination of their marriage.

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Figure 6.37  ‘Don’t be embarrassed! Don’t be embarrassed! There is no sin. I have already recited the verse that permits me to look at you (sigheh nazari).’ Source: MN 37, 22 October 1911.

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There were only a few instances where a wife could petition for divorce, such as a husband’s inability to have sex, or his having contracted a major disfiguring disease such as leprosy. A wife could not petition for divorce on the grounds of abuse in the marriage or her husband taking of a second wife. As Mollå Nasreddin showed in its columns and cartoons, a husband could refuse to divorce his wife and leave her in limbo for years (Figure 6.38). While a man could easily divorce his wife, he could do so only twice. The Quran mandated that upon a third invocation of talaq, the husband could not remarry his ex-wife ‘until she has been wedded to another man, and been divorced by him; in which case it shall be no offence for either of them to return to the other’ (Quran 2: 230). In the small Muslim community of early Islam, this verse was meant to prevent a husband from continually divorcing and remarrying the same wife. But in early twentieth-century South Caucasus and Iran, divorce of a woman with children had serious social and economic repercussions Figure 6.38  Wife: ‘Man, have some decency! It for her. No matter the erratic behaviour of has been years since you took a second wife. Divorce me, so I become free!’ Husband: ‘I won’t her husband, the wife often preferred to divorce you! I won’t divorce you! Not until your return to her house and be with her chil- last breath. I won’t go against the sharia. It is dren. However, the law was clear that she my right. If I want to, I divorce you, if I don’t had to marry someone else first and get a want to, I won’t and you will stay my wife until divorce before she could reunite with her the end of your life.’ first husband. To solve this problem, reli- Source: MN 19, 16 May 1910. gious law provided a solution for divorced couples who wished to reconcile through a mohallel, that is ‘temporary husband’. Low-level clerics and impoverished men agreed to marry the divorced woman, consummate the marriage, and then immediately divorce her for a sum paid by the first husband. It was a humiliating arrangement for the husband and for the wife. Occasionally, the ‘temporary husband’ refused to divorce the wife, either because he liked her, or more likely, because he wanted more money. Mollå Nasreddin made fun of husbands who found themselves in such a predicament. Among them was a man in the province of Nukhå (now Shaki) who, in the heat of a passionate dispute with his wife, had pronounced her ‘triple divorced’. Now, he regretted his action and wanted his wife back but could not have her back until she married someone else. Thereupon, the husband found an impoverished blind man who agreed to act as mohallel.

266 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN But after three days, the mohallel had not divorced her, and now the former husband had to beg him to ‘please for God’s sake return my wife to me’ (MN 23, 25 June 1907: 7). In continuing this discussion, Mollå Nasreddin informed its readers that a supposed European tourist had come to the offices of the newspaper to ask if this practice of contracting a mohallel was true. The editors were mortified and ultimately decided to ‘lie’, saying no such law existed in Islam. Borrowing a page from the folk trickster, the journal asked its readers to do the same and join in this national cover up. ‘If a foreigner asks you such a question, say “no” [it does not exist] and keep this tradition [of hiring a mohallel] secret. Because foreigners are stupid and cannot understand such matters’ (MN 20, 19 May 1907: 2). Educated Muslim men and non-Muslim women The subject of non-Muslim women was another controversial topic of the day. Clerics and more traditional sectors of society viewed non-Muslim women as immoral and unethical because they did not veil and because they openly interacted with unrelated men. However, educated Muslim men ignored these views. As these men became further Russified and more well travelled, many married non-Muslim women. As a result, upper-class Muslim women felt threatened by Christian and Jewish women, who had become their rivals in marriage. There was much anxiety within the Muslim community of South Caucasus with regard to the marriageability of their daughters, as well as the difficulties that interreligious and interethnic unions posed to the whole extended family. In early 1900, at a gathering of the Muslim scholars and notables of the Muslim community, Taghiyev tapped into this fear to garner support for his new school for girls. He argued that intermarriages, and the concomitant loss of the Muslim religion in such mixed unions, were primary reasons for his construction of a school for Muslim girls:  Oh, my fellow tribesmen, our daughters need to learn; their eyes will open, they will behave with dignity in the family … Our sons study in England, Germany, France. They bring their wives from there because they are not interested in our girls. Children born in such unions unwittingly become apostates. But they are our heirs. If this goes on, the father’s home will remain without the Quran, without prayer, without sharia. [With the establishment of modern schools for girls] we will train our girls in the basics of religious law, economics, housekeeping, cooking, sewing, speaking and reading and writing of the Russian language. We will teach them arithmetic, geography, proper ways of raising their children, and ways of being exemplary mothers and wives. What is wrong with that?’ (quoted in Фapaдж oглy 1990: 101–2) Mollå Nasreddin addressed such discourses that were common in the community in several different ways. It took issue with clerics and traditionalists

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who called all non-Muslim women, including professional European and Japanese women, unethical and rejected the claim that all unveiled women were immoral. A May 1909 cartoon showed the offices of a well-known Japanese newspaper, Hochi Shimbun, with its female employees, including several writers and editors. The illustration included a quote from a conservative mollå, Abdolrashid Ibrahimov: ‘If Japanese women had not become used to working unveiled and in the same office with men, they could progress as Muslims had’ (Figure 6.39). The journal also published laudatory accounts of European women who had fought in nationalist struggles. Among them were stories about the wives of Decembrist army officers who had been exiled to Siberia. These Russian women had joined their husbands in Siberia and died there. There were also accounts of Bulgarian women who joined the nationalist movement against the Ottomans in 1885, and Serbian women who in 1908 had volunteered to fight a potential Austro-Hungarian invasion (MN 13, 29 March 1909). These stories showed non-Muslim women could be heroic and great defenders of their nation. But Mollå Nasreddin was also sympathetic towards middle- and upper-class Muslim families who were concerned with the marital prospects of their daughters. The periodical devoted several columns and ‘Letters to the Editor’ to the controversial subject of intermarriage. The fictional Aunt Dabåni Chatdåkh complained that Muslim men were smitten by Russian circus performers and had lost interest in their own womenfolk: Oh! Mollå Uncle! I don’t know why our sons and husbands fall in love with circus girls. Don’t know if these women are witches or devils. Our men can’t stand us anymore. For example, when they are in proximity to the Circus Club, they become so jubilant you think it is Nowruz (New Year). All of them, grocers, apothecaries, furriers, the hajjis, the karbalåis, the mashhadis,7 the white beard, the black beard, the red beard, the young and the old. What can be done about this matter, she asked? (MN 11, 12 March 1908). In another ‘Letter to the Editor’, we read that ‘recently, we cannot find suitors for our daughters. The girls wait several years and eventually marry whomever shows up. But most never find a proper spouse and end up staying alone’ (Figure 6.40). According to Mollå Nasreddin, this situation was a blessing for rich old Muslim men who had their pick of desperate women as sigheh wives. The reason for this dearth of young, eligible Muslim men was that they were increasingly going to Europe to continue their education. While there, they became accustomed to the European culture and, after finishing school, married a Russian or European woman. Some men waited until they returned home, hoping to find an educated Muslim woman, but as there were so few of them in South Caucasus, even these men ended up marrying local Christian and Jewish women. A few took a chance and married an uneducated Muslim woman, but then faced all sorts of incompatibilities in their marriage. The young bride would

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Figure 6.39  City of Tokyo’s office of Hochi Shimbun newspaper. On the woman’s shirt says: ‘Madam Issamore, Editor of International News’. Source: MN 18, 3 May 1909. Figure 6.40  ‘My darling, such a pretty girl, why isn’t she married yet?’ ‘Damn these times. They no longer care for beauty. The first thing they ask is, if she is literate.’ Source: MN 37, 20 November 1910.

go to a fortune teller to interpret her dreams, she would leave the house dressed inappropriately and not according to the standards of her husband, or she resented the time her husband spent reading newspapers and writing instead of taking her out. How could this problem be solved (Figure 6.41)? According to this fictional writer, there could only be two solutions. Either young men should be prevented from going to Europe, so they remained content with marrying a local girl, or, young Muslim women should receive an education in European sciences and culture to become more compatible with these men (MN 6, 10 February 1908: 2–3). Another fictional character of the journal, Qizdirmåli, complained that she could not find an appropriate wife for her twenty-seven-year-old son who had studied in St Petersburg. Her son wanted an educated Muslim wife, not someone with a rudimentary understanding of Russian. When the mother suggested a fifteen-year-old girl, her son objected and said his future wife should be at least twenty years old. The mother was flabbergasted. As most girls married around twelve, she thought her son had gone mad. ‘I thought he was going to say [a fifteen-year-old] girl is too old for him. This idiot says,

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Figure 6.41  Wife to husband: ‘For heaven’s sake, stop reading this rubbish. I am bored!’ (Husband is reading the journal Taraghi (Progress)). Source: MN 4, 25 January 1909.

Figure 6.42  Top: Muslim man to Russian woman: ‘Will you marry me?’ Woman: ‘On two conditions. First, you should take off your ethnic clothes and wear Russian clothes. Second, you may not speak in your Muslim language.’ Bottom: Muslim man to Muslim Azerbaijani woman: ‘If you don’t have time [to weave] during the day, the hell with you, then weave at night!’ Source: MN 23, 8 September 1906.

“She is a child”.’ Qizdirmåli was at the end of her rope. Her solution was that since the Muslim South Caucasian community could not possibly allow its daughters to delay marriage and study until the age of twenty or twenty-two, young men should ‘not be sent away’ for advanced education, so they remain content with marrying local girls (MN 39, 20 October 1907: 3). Cartoons accompanying these articles reflected Muslim women’s resentment towards these rival Russian women and echoed their sentiments. One cartoon showed the difference between a Muslim man marrying a Russian woman, and the same man marrying a Muslim woman. Married to the Russian woman, he became far too solicitous and subservient. He dressed to please her and no longer spoke the Azerbaijani language. However, with the Muslim woman, he became domineering. He made her work hard and demanded that she take care of the family during the day and spend the evenings weaving rugs to bring more income into the family (Figure 6.42). Other cartoons reflected negative stereotypes about Russian women as loose and immoral. Russian women could not be trusted because they flirted with

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Figure 6.43  Man: ‘My dear lady, I beg you, please tell me which one of us you prefer?’ Woman: ‘Both of you.’ Source: MN 11, 16 June 1906.

Figure 6.44  Top: ‘When the lady of the house is Muslim, this is what goes on with the maid.’ Bottom: ‘When the same guy marries a Russian woman, this is what goes on with the servant.’ Source: MN 39, 8 December 1910.

several men without committing to any one of them (Figure 6.43). Russian women were also unfaithful. While a married Muslim man cheated on his wife with the maid, a married Russian woman cheated on her husband with the servant (Figure 6.44). In these portraits of Russian wives as uninhibited and domineering, Mollå Nasreddin was marking the boundary of what it perceived to be acceptable and unacceptable gender behaviour for women in general. The journal wanted Muslim women to become more educated and modern but it did not want them to become too modern and domineering as Russian women had supposedly become. Since the journal had a diverse readership, including some Muslim men who had married Russian women, then articles and cartoons of Mollå Nasreddin showed sympathy for such women on rare occasions, provided they were members of the nobility. For example, Baroness Rosen (presumably related to Baron Roman Romanovich Rosen, the distinguished diplomat in Tsarist Russia from 1847 to 1921) wished to convert to Islam and marry a Muslim man. However, she did not want to wear the veil at the age of thirty and give up her social and economic activities. How could she solve this problem

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Figure 6.45  Baroness Rosen agreeing to convert to Islam to marry but not willing to wear a veil. Source: MN 31, 8 September 1910.

(Figure 6.45)? She wrote a letter to the journal Tarjomån (edited by Ismail Gasprinski) and asked his opinion. She inquired: Mr Editor, I am a thirty-year-old woman, well educated and wealthy. I wish to marry a Muslim man and convert to Islam. However, one thing stands in the way. If, after I become a Muslim, I cover my face with a headscarf, I must also give up the world and turn over the management of my property to my father and my husband. This is a great injustice to me, because throwing a veil over a person’s head, someone who has lived openly and freely for thirty years, is like killing her. (MN 31, 8 August 1910) Instead of giving a direct answer, Gasprinski fudged and suggested that she consult a mojtahed (religious leader). Mollå Nasreddin blasted Gasprinski for this evasive answer. How was it possible that someone who had published Tarjomån for thirty years, continued to publish the journal Ålam-e Nesvån (World of Women), and whose own daughter had been an advocate of unveiling and women’s entry into the public sphere, feigned ignorance about such a matter and asked the Baroness to turn to a mojtahed?! Finally, some cartoons tried to see the issue from both sides. Mothers of Muslim men were tormented because their sons married Russian women, and the bride’s culture was alien to the in-laws. But mothers of Russian women

272 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN were also anguished because their daughters married educated Muslim men but, after marriage, were expected to observe the hijab (Figure 6.46). Veiling with bare legs Veiling marked a woman’s physical segregation from men while outside the home and announced to an unrelated man that he should avert his gaze and keep his distance. A consistent theme in the pages of the periodical was its opposition to the practice of veiling, the all-enveloping outer cloak worn by women outside the home, common in more conservative households. In most regions, while the body was covered in a veil, the face remained uncovered. Women used their hands to hold the veil tightly over their lips and nose while in public. In other South Caucasian areas closer to the southern border with Iran, such as Ordubåd, Jolfå, and Nakhchivan, women wore an additional mesh face-covering (ru bandeh).

Figure 6.46  ‘Mothers of Muslim sons are tormented by their sons marrying Russian women. Mothers of Russian daughters are tormented by their daughters marrying educated Muslim men and having to observe the veil after marriage’. Source: MN 31, 4 August 1908.

Figure 6.47  Female teacher and her student. Source: MN 12, 27 March 1907.

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However, not all women covered their bodies in veils. Women of Qarabagh, Ganja, Zagatala and Yerevan did not wear a veil but, depending on the region, wore a decorated silk scarf, known as kyalagai, which covered much of their hair. In the more Russified segments of society, where women had become teachers and held other professions, they wore modest European-style clothing, composed of a buttoned-up shirt with long sleeves, an ankle-length skirt and uncovered hair (Figure 6.47). But even in families where women observed the hijab, if the couple had the means to travel to St Petersburg or other European cities, it was common for the wife to discard the veil while in Europe and revert to wearing it when they returned home. This suggested that community pressure was a more significant factor in maintaining the practice of veiling than the religiosity of the husband or wife (Figure 6.48). To prove that veiling and segregation were neither mandated by the Quran, nor universal practices among all Muslims, Mollå Nasreddin turned to the mountainous region of Dagestan in North Caucasus, a region which Hamideh Khånum had visited on business. In one issue, which might have reflected her experience of the trip, the character Jahraji Khåleh reported on her visit to Dagestan while on business. She ‘wrote’ with amazement about the less

Figure 6.48  Right: Muslim gentleman and his wife in Paris. Left: back in their own village in the Caucasus. Source: MN 4, 25 January 1909.

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274 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN restrained lives of Dagestani women. They walked about without a veil or face covering, were talkative and entertaining, and no one told them to shut up. Families delayed the marriage of their daughters until they were seventeen or eighteen years old. Women worked alongside men and took on many of their traditional responsibilities. Some women were recognised as heads of their households:  The women of this land are strange creatures. Their clothing, food, sitting and getting up, their whole character, has no resemblance to ours. Their language is also different. The most entertaining part is that they walk with open faces and bare heads. Even their customs and culture have no resemblance to ours. For example, among us as soon as a girl starts talking, we engage her in marriage to someone. But over there, they have no idea what the word ‘husband’ means until they are seventeen or eighteen years old. In contrast, we learn the word ‘husband’, and Figure 6.49  (Molla Nasreddin) ‘This is one of the need to get ready to serve a husband, the legacies Iran has left us!’ from childhood. Is it even conceivable, Source: MN 14, 7 July 1906. I ask, for a woman to get married at sev enteen or eighteen and become lady of her house? One of the awful traditions of women of this land is that they work a lot. Well, of course work is good and one cannot eat honey without making some effort in life. But do they have to create so much work for themselves as to gather the harvest with the men or carry heavy weights on their backs? The idiots do not understand that such work makes their husbands lazy and ruins a woman’s respect. (MN 12, 20 August 1907) Occasionally, and especially in the first few years of publication, the journal’s desire for Muslim women to dress more like Russian and European women went to extremes. Mollå Nasreddin criticised veiling. But ironically, it also criticised veils that were not long enough, exposing a woman’s shins and ankles, in contrast to European women who wore full-length dresses (Figure 6.49). The traditional styles of clothing in the region were viewed as ‘Iranian relics’ that saddled the progress of South Caucasian women. Mollå Nasreddin also ridiculed the perfectly comfortable and even attractive attire of local women. The basic dress of Caucasus Azerbaijani women consisted of a long-sleeved shirt (komlak) and loose pants of varying lengths. Over the shirt, women wore a vest usually made of velvet or other glittering fabric. Over their pants, they wore a skirt (tuman) or layers of skirts. The shirt, vest and skirt could be tightly secured around the waist with a belt, usually with

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an attractive buckle. Peasant and impoverished urban women covered their hair with a scarf, while khånum wives of beys wore a bejewelled cap and scarf combination. For everyday use in spring and summer, women’s skirts were shorter, usually up to their knees, and their legs were exposed. Longer skirts were worn for more special occasions, along with an open front gown (lebbade) (Figure 6.50). The whole outfit was accented with various pieces of jewellery, bracelets, necklaces and long earrings. In warm weather, women wore shoes or slippers, and in winter, they wore anklehigh boots. Otherwise, their shins were Figure 6.50  Clothing of Caucasus Azerbaijani bare (Valiyev 2010). It was this practice of wearing short women at the turn of the twentieth century. skirts without stockings underneath that Source: Azerbaijani Carpet Museum. truly upset the journal, primarily because it was a source of amusement among their male Russian acquaintances. A fictional reader ‘asked’ Mollå Nasreddin not to print such illustrations of Muslim women, ‘so foreigners did not see them’. The journal responded that such images were readily available in foreignpublished books. Karl Simon, a European traveller who had traversed Iran and South Caucasus, had printed images of Muslim Yerevani and Iranian women in short skirts, ‘four fingers above the knee’, in a book published in 1897. Mollå Nasreddin complained, ‘When I got to a library, I see that a Russian man is looking at this book, soon five or six other guys gather around him and laughingly ask one another, “Why are these women naked?”’ Apparently, these images were a source of humiliation to the editor, because ‘one looks like our mother, another like our sister, and yet another like our aunt. One is like our other aunt, and the other is like our neighbour.’ In this vein, Mollå Nasreddin purposely bullied and shamed women by including cartoons of them with ‘inappropriate’ clothing (Figure 6.51). The journal expressed the hope that when an honour- Figure 6.51  Right: women’s clothing. Left: men’s able Muslim woman showed up on the clothing. streets without stockings, others would Source: MN 22, 2 June 1908.

276 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN warn her, ‘Woman, run, run, or Mollå Nasreddin will draw your image in its newspaper.’ Interestingly enough, a journal that routinely blamed men for controlling their wives now argued that the men were not controlling enough. The real blame was laid at the feet of ‘the Muslim men who let their wives come to the alleys and streets looking like monsters’ (MN 1, 6 January 1907). As we will see in the next chapter, various treatises of the time on physiognomy pressed the preposterous argument that ‘civilised’ people were both ethical and beautiful, while ‘uncivilised’ people were ugly and unethical. In the first few years of its publication, Mollå Nasreddin continued to view European expressions of femininity through such a Eurocentric lens. It portrayed European clothing in the same positive light that it portrayed science and education, considering it a necessary component of modernity. Muslim women, when shown in pursuit of modern education and occupying modern professions, were drawn with beautiful features and clothes, which were in fact much closer to the reality of their lives and their way of dress. However, more traditional Muslim women, whether veiled or unveiled, were satirised. They were shown with rough features and clothes that were considered immodest. In one such cartoon, with the caption, ‘The Clothing of Immodest European Women’, a European woman is shown dressed in a long fitted outdoor dress, which covers her from neck to ankle. She holds an umbrella and wears a feathered hat with a lace over her face. She is contrasted to two Iranian women, under the caption, ‘The Clothing of Modest Muslim Women’. The two Iranian women are dressed in the working-class outfits of the provinces of Tehran, Azerbaijan and Gilan. One woman is wearing a knee-high skirt, a shirt and vest, and a short veil down to her knees. The other woman is wearing a short shirt, with long pants under it, and a tunic. She covers her hair with a scarf. The Iranian women are sensibly dressed and, overall, carry their bodies in a more relaxed manner than the Russian woman, in her highly rigid and corseted outfit (Figure 6.52). However, the Iranian women are portrayed as crude and vulgar because they do not fit Mollå Nasreddin’s Eurocentric image of a beautiful feminine body, and because one of them is not wearing stockings or long pants under her skirt. This particular illustration was based on the late nineteenth-century novel, Travelogues of Ibrahim Beg. The fictional Ibrahim Beg had come across such women during his travels in northern Iran. He considered them indecent because they had left home without wearing long trousers and exposed their legs (Maraghe’i 2006). Occasionally, the journal also made fun of the way men dressed (Figure 6.53). But men were not ridiculed for their more traditional clothing or for supposed indecency. Rather, the common criticism of men was that they were becoming too modern and eclectic in their style choices. A cartoon with the caption ‘A Masquerade Ball for Muslims (National Costume)’ made fun of the elegant men of the day, who combined a felt hat with a Parisian vest, an American tie, an Italian jacket, an Iranian cloak and a British suit, and still claimed that ‘Muslims have fallen behind’ other societies.

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Figure 6.52  Comparing ‘immodest’ European women’s clothing with ‘modest’ Muslim women’s clothing (examples from Tehran, Azerbaijan, and Gilån). Source: MN 36, 8 December 1906.

In later years, the journal changed course and toned down its harsh criticism of women’s clothing. It portrayed younger women more attractively, including those it disagreed with. Since the artists remained the same, this change suggests a major editorial decision on the part of Mirza Jalil and Ömar Fåeq, one that reflected the board’s new way of thinking about the subject, perhaps as a result of numerous complaints by local women, a topic we discussed earlier. A cartoon with the caption, ‘Even When Their Husbands Are Gone, They Walk Like This’, criticised the way three young women were conducting themselves on a busy street in the absence of their husbands (Figure 6.54). Instead of walking meekly, they strode confidently. One mirrored the bold mannerisms of a Russian woman with her hand on her hip. This image showed the

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Figure 6.53  A masquerade ball for Muslims. Source: MN 11, 15 March 1909.

limited nature of the journal’s definition of appropriate gender behaviour. If even Mollå Nasreddin believed that veiled women should not draw attention to themselves when walking in public spaces, it seemed women’s struggles to reclaim the public sphere faced a very long battle in South Caucasus. Women were gradually entering modern schools, reclaiming the public sphere, and in some cases advancing in modern professions, but as elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa, South Caucasians were expected to do so while holding on to traditional norms of modesty and chastity, and without following the more uninhibited mannerisms of Russian and European women. Still, times were changing. In 1907, after the death of the old sheikh al-Islam, who had not publicly supported modern education for girls, a new religious leader was installed by the state. In 1910, the new sheikh al-Islam registered his daughters at a modern secondary school for girls, the same school where Hamideh Khånum had sent her daughter, thereby angering the conservative members of his community who protested, ‘Our house is destroyed! Our religion is lost!’ Change was happening but in incremental steps.

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Figure 6.54  Three young Azerbaijani women enjoying a walk without an elder or a man accompanying them, with heads held high! ‘Even when their husbands are gone, they walk like this!’ ‘Thank God! Our husbands Left!’ Source: MN 7, 23 February 1912.

Figure 6.55  ‘God help us! Even the sheikh al-Islam sends his daughters to take the entrance exam at St Nino’s School. Our house is ruined! Religion is lost!’ Source: MN 34, 8 September 1910.

280 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN Notes 1. See Mollå Nasreddin (1906–31): Vol. 1: 1906–1907 (1988); Vol. 2: 1908–1909 (2002); Vol. 3: 1909–1910 (2005). 2. The situation was almost identical in Iranian families; see, for example, Friedl 2021. 3. Thanks to Nigar Gozalova for information on kidnapping/elopements of this period. Personal Communication with author, email exchange, 13 May 2020. 4. See, for example, the story of strong-willed Masoumeh in Yazd, Iran, around 1958 who beat up her husband on the wedding night, then refused to marry anyone else unless the community agreed to her marrying the man she loved (Papoliyazdi 2018: 183–95). 5. See J. Afary and Friedland (2021 in Afary and Faust 2021). This essay on temporary and ‘urfi marriages is based on two Facebook surveys conducted in 2013 and 2018. 6. Babis were supporters of the 1844 Babi movement, which broke with Shiism and gained many adherents in Iran and South Caucasus (MacEoin 1988). 7. Respectively one who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca (hajji), to Karbala (karbalåi), or to Mashhad (mashhadi).

PART III

The Influence of European Graphic Arts

CHAPTER 7

A Dialogue with Goya and Daumier

We discussed in Chapter 3 the artistic milieu of Tbilisi and the pioneering contribution of Schmerling and Rotter to Georgian Critical Realism. In this chapter and the next we look at several other artistic influences on Schmerling and Rotter including the graphic arts of Spain or the satirical periodicals of France, Britain, Germany, and Russia. The illustrations of Mollå Nasreddin belong to a tradition of satirical graphic art that stretches back to early nineteenth-century lithographic work. The artists of the periodical were influenced by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya (1746–1828), whose art responded to the republican ideals of the French Revolution and to the French military’s atrocities committed in Spain in the Peninsular War of 1808. By the early twentieth century, Goya had come to influence a generation of artists on the European continent as well as in Russia.1 The artists of Mollå Nasreddin also drew upon new forms of caricature from European periodicals, such as the French Le Charivari, whose principal artist was Honoré Daumier (1808–79). The key to the success of this cultural mélange was Mollå Nasreddin’s creative use of the trickster figure as a medium of social criticism. The folk humour of the trickster succeeded because of its ‘grotesque realism’. Powerful targets of folk humour were ridiculed and debased. The ground was levelled so that something newer and better could emerge. Goya’s Los Caprichos and The Disasters of War The prints of Mollå Nasreddin can be traced to the tradition of satirical graphic arts that began with the woodcuts and etchings of the British artist William Hogarth (1697–1764) as well as Goya, works that expressed the diverse social and political concerns of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, new technological developments in lithography and a general rise in literacy resulted in the creation of popular illustrated periodicals and journals. Political satire and the art of caricature developed along two distinct French and British styles. In Paris, Le Caricature and Le Charivari printed the illustrations of Daumier and welded Enlightenment traditions onto the burgeoning socialist ideas that came to the fore in the revolutions of 1830, 1848 and 1871 in France.2 In contrast, the enormously popular British periodical Punch, or The London Charivari (1841–1992), did not reflect the dominant left-wing politics of the Continent,

284 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN adopting the condescending tone of the British upper classes. Punch became a mouthpiece for Britain’s colonial politics and a vitriolic critic of British suffragists and the labour movement. The artists of Mollå Nasreddin were influenced by Punch’s journalistic style, format and graphic representations, but they remained deeply committed to the more left-wing political ideals of Goya, Daumier and the Russian artists of the 1905 Russian Revolution. These influences may have been a direct result of Schmerling and Rotter’s training at the St Petersburg Academy of the Arts and the Munich Academy of the Arts, but they were also influenced by the artistic milieu of the Russian Empire, where they worked. In 1905, as Marcus Levitt and Oleg Minin have pointed out: The Russian journals built on the experience of well-known European satirical magazines such as the German Simplicissimus, England’s Punch, and France’s Assiette au beurre, and were part of the international upswing of political satire that also reached the Mideast and the Ottoman Empire, as well as many non-Russian speaking peoples of the Russian Empire.3 Goya’s influence can indeed be found in the socially committed illustrations that appeared in Simplicissimus and the many Russian journals that were published after 1905. Simplicissimus, whose editors were briefly arrested for their attacks on Kaiser Wilhelm and the clergy, may have had a more direct influence on Rotter and Schmerling’s artistic style. Mollå Nasreddin was also heavily engaged with classical works of Russian and European literature. Leah Feldman has shown that Mirza Jalil was influenced by both the novels of Honoré de Balzac and Nikolai Gogol. However, when he ‘translates’ their work, he does not reproduce the text or even the plot of Gogol’s story, but transcribes the rhetorical-political violence that animates his work. The reception of Gogolian parody in the Caucasus represents an important epistemic shift of ‘translation’ of a Russian identity, through its encounter with an emerging discourse of Muslim Turkic identity. (Feldman 2016: 260) When Mollå Nasreddin adapted or ‘translated’ the tradition of European Graphic Arts for the Muslim Caucasus, it went even further. Punch, for example, unabashedly defended Britain’s foreign policy in the East. In contrast, and for the first time in an illustrated periodical, the artists of Mollå Nasreddin produced a visual counter-discourse that represented the Muslim East’s perspectives on issues of colonialism and imperialism. Through this hybrid rendition, the caricatures of Mollå Nasreddin remained progressive in their criticism of imperialism, while the sharp palettes of the artists also turned inward, towards issues closer to home. As we saw in previous chapters, Mollå Nasreddin criticised conservative cultural practices that had come into conflict with modernity. Through its deeply penetrating sketches, the periodical also magnified many intimate gender and social concerns that had never been so publicly discussed before, ranging from sexual violence to paedophilia. The consternations of Mollå Nasreddin were manifold, and the ideologies of the artists were a pastiche of various positions on the left. Sometimes,

a dialogue with goya and daumier

when glorifying the martyrs of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, Mollå Nasreddin adopted the expository and propagandistic tone of the artists of the French Revolution, who portrayed their leaders as strong and heroic figures. At other times, the paper adopted a moralistic tone, aimed at the Shii clergy, similar to the British satirist Hogarth and his student Thomas Rowlandson, who condemned gambling, drinking and prostitution in harsh pedantic images, and who mocked the hypocrisy of the aristocracy and the religious leaders. After 1909, Mollå Nasreddin followed the tradition of Daumier in its criticism of the monarchy, here pointing its sharpest arrows at the deposed monarch of Iran, Muhammad Ali Shah. Sometimes, the paper appropriated the concept of the devil from Simplicissimus and other Russian satirical journals, which were preoccupied with notions of demons and devils. Mollå Nasreddin utilised the devil trope but attributed to it a moralistic tone, which had been absent from the Modernist artistic tradition, in order to point to the vices of Shii clerics and colonial powers in Iran and the Ottoman Empire.4 Often, the artists of Mollå Nasreddin tried to combine their adherence to European ideals of the Enlightenment, modernity and social democracy with their criticism of imperialist nations – pointing to the violence, greed and hypocrisy of Europe and the United States in the Middle East, North Africa, India, Latin America, the Philippines and Japan. The European Enlightenment had espoused a vast variety of worldviews, ranging from greater rights for women, abolition of slavery, pacifism and other similar progressive ideals, to much narrower views that legitimised class, gender and other hierarchies. The cross-fertilisation we witness in the pages of Mollå Nasreddin involves an appropriation of many progressive Enlightenment ideas. Indeed, on certain issues, Mollå Nasreddin transcended the myopia of the European Enlightenment. At the same time, while addressing the new political and social concerns of South Caucasia, Central Asia, Iran and the Ottoman Empire, Mollå Nasreddin occasionally reproduced racialised Enlightenment tropes. These included references to African cannibalism, a common motif of the time.5 Goya’s life and ideals In spirit, and to some extent in style, many cartoons of Rotter and Schmerling resembled the dark satire of Francisco José de Goya whose influence had become part of the extensive discursive tradition of protest art in Europe and Russia by the early twentieth century.6 A brief sketch of Goya’s life might help explain his predominant influence in the field of graphic arts and on the artists of Mollå Nasreddin in particular. The French Revolution, like the Reformation before it, had an enormous impact on the arts. Printmakers responded to this major political event and its aftermath with grotesque and visual commentaries that ‘literally taught the public about its newfound power and constantly undermined the governing class’ (Hults 1996: 392). Goya, who lived the comfortable life of a court painter under King Charles IV of Spain (r. 1788–1808), was influenced by these political and artistic transformations. At the turn of the nineteenth century, Spain bore some similarities

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286 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN to Iran and South Caucasia at the turn of the twentieth century. With great clarity and artistic achievement, Goya addressed the public’s concerns during the monarchy of Charles IV, including the powerful authority of the Catholic Church, rampant superstition, and immense social and economic inequalities. As with other progressive artists of his era, Goya cherished the ideals of the Enlightenment and the belief that humanity could be improved through science and education. He believed that reason could eradicate superstition and religious dogma and that despotic governments could be replaced by democratic ones. Goya, who knew members of the Inquisition and was familiar with their morbid accusations of witchcraft as well as their communion with supernatural powers, poured out his condemnation in a series of satirical etchings known as Los Caprichos (1799). These etchings depicted various members of society in hilariously funny or grotesquely nightmarish renditions. They also dealt with social taboos such as rape, arranged marriages, prostitution, maltreatment of children, superstition and religious abuse of power (Goya [1799] 1969; Hults 1996: 397–8). As we have seen, these were often the same social issues that the artists of Mollå Nasreddin addressed, particularly in their criticism of Shii clerics. Indeed, sometimes there were striking thematic similarities between the prints of Mollå Nasreddin and those of Goya. Goya also produced Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War) (1863), a series of private etchings drawn between 1810 and 1820, depicting Spain’s War of Independence against Napoleon’s armies (1808–14). The Disasters of War has been called ‘the cornerstone of our modern civilisation’ since it was exclusively concerned with the violence and brutality of war. The Disasters of War was a testament to Goya’s sophisticated vision of humanity and his ability to portray great evil as well as abstract ideals. Together with Goya’s Pinturas negras (Black Paintings) (1819–23), which showed his utterly bleak vision of humanity, these works have since inspired generations of artists who have dealt with the subject of war, most notably Pablo Picasso’s Guernica. In The Disasters of War, Goya drew horrific images that condemned the Peninsular War with Napoleonic France with striking originality. Spanish liberals such as Goya, who had initially supported the entrance of the French Army into their country as their only hope against the Inquisition and the old order, were severely demoralised when the war turned into a French massacre of Spanish resisters (Goya [1863] 1967). As Fred Licht argued, ‘The French troops regarded the Spanish people with ideas and feelings that were later to inspire colonial armies in Africa and Asia’ (Licht 1979: 105). Goya’s series of works probably inspired Rotter as he turned to the subjects of colonialism, imperialism and the dismemberment of the Middle East and North Africa. Goya and the pseudoscience of physiognomy Goya recognised the double-edged nature of modernity with remarkable acumen, but his prints could not escape the flaws of some forms of scientific modernity. Like many artists of his generation, Goya was an aficionado of

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physiognomy, which sought scientific proof that one’s appearance determined one’s character. People with physical deformities were seen as morally corrupt, while those endowed with beauty (mostly according to Western European standards) were viewed as inherently ethical and moral (Hults 1996: 391). This eighteenth-century desire to use science to understand everything, including human nature, was at the root of physiognomy. The face and various parts of the body were charted, classified and catalogued, and an argument was made that an individual’s character could be predicted based on various resemblances with animals.7 The most celebrated work of this genre, Essays on Physiognomy by the Swiss author Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801), became widely popular in Europe.8 His four-volume commentary included meticulously drawn graphics that compared the physical and behavioural traits of humans and animals. The ‘slavish subjection’ of the dog, the ‘wicked and obstinate’ crocodile, the ‘crafty and malignant’ serpent and the ‘noble’ swan, all became irrefutable facts of science. Likewise, the man with the flat forehead was claimed to be devoid of intelligence and reflection, one with a ‘turned-down’ nose was never good and noble, and a person with larger upper lips was stupid and rude. These caricatures obviously embodied anti-Semitic as well as anti-Black racism (Lavater 1880: 217–24). Lavater’s book would appear alongside the Bible in many homes and was printed in numerous editions in German, French, and later English. It became ‘a basic resource in a gentleman’s home, to be consulted when hiring staff, making friends, and establishing business relations’ (Wechsler 1982: 23–4). Goya and his contemporaries were too indebted to the universalist and empirically discerning trends of Enlightenment thought to accept the pseudoscientific claims of physiognomy. Nevertheless, because of its influence, or perhaps because it offered the artist an irresistible tool for the art of political and social caricature, Goya and generations of caricaturists – from Daumier to the artists of Punch, and even many artists of our time – have continued to incorporate elements of physiognomy into their art. The art of political caricature, therefore, was constructed on two distinct tendencies within the Enlightenment: (1) the progressive and universalistic values that called for greater tolerance and reacted against the religious intolerance of the ancien régime; and (2) the pseudoscience of physiognomy – a curious blending of the arts, anatomical sciences, human and animal psychology, and a belief in racial hierarchy. The owl, the donkey and the bull: re-enactments of Goya There were many stylistic similarities between the works of Rotter and Schmerling, and those of Goya. Among them were the striking use of darkened background and contrasting shades (in Rotter’s work); the exaggeration of traits such as arrogance, gluttony and debauchery; the allegorical use of animals and symbolic imagery, such as devils and demons; and, of course, the artist’s use of the pseudoscience of physiognomy. The contemporaneous satirical journals of the 1905 Revolution likewise show an obsessive interest

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288 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN in ghosts, supernatural creatures and medieval Christian images of demons and the devil – a testament to the artists’ ‘doubts about the health of the Russian political organism and the viability of the political process’ (Levitt and Minin 2013b: 23). A century before Freud wrote his scientific treatise on dreams as a channel to the unconscious and to suppressed desires, Goya portrayed dreams as a symbolic stage on which ‘human errors, vices, follies and blindness common in every society’ may be enacted. In Goya’s work, night, darkness and sleep were associated with evil and the prerational stage of humanity. Dreams were the domain of witches and goblins, who represented ignorance and the absence of reason.9 Daylight, sunshine and awakening signified the presence of reason and scientific knowledge. The double themes of ‘sleep of ignorance’ and ‘awakening of reason’ were core concepts in Goya’s art. The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, one of the most well-known of the Caprichos, depicted a sleeping man who was surrounded by frightening creatures of the night: a bat, a black cat and various ghost-like figures, all of which represented superstition and ignorance (Goya [1799] 1969: plate 43).

Figure 7.1  ‘Caucasian Muslim Theological Seminary’. Source: MN 3, 21 April 1906.

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The Caprichos end with the piece, Be Quiet! They are Waking Up! in which creatures of the night prepared to leave the scene in anticipation of daylight. Their departure signalled the arrival of a brighter and more enlightened time for humanity. The ideas of sleep of ignorance and awakening from it were enormously popular themes in the pages of Mollå Nasreddin, and many editorials and commentaries of this period were devoted to the subject. Several variations of these themes appeared throughout the paper’s existence. Schmerling used the concept in the first issue of Mollå Nasreddin, wherein a group of ordinary people was portrayed as being fast asleep, with a few just waking up (see Figure 2.25). Other variations on the theme showed a traditional school, which Mollå Nasreddin sarcastically called a ‘Caucasian Muslim Theological Seminary’, as a dilapidated barn, where the instructor and some of the students were asleep while others were eating, playing, beating each other up, and only a few studied (Figure 7.1). Other common devices used by Goya were masks and mirrors. Masks represented the hypocrisies and prejudices that surrounded human beings’ deceptive conduct in society, while mirrors revealed attributes that were hidden from the common view. In Mollå Nasreddin, the symbolic device of a mask was a common one, hiding the hypocrisy of men of religion who revealed themselves to be vile beings beneath their benign masks.

Figure 7.2  Behind the Mask. ‘Once upon a time [the folk] Mollå Nasreddin showed up at the forests of North Caucasus. To be continued …’ Source: MN 11, 14 March 1910.

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Figure 7.3  Praying for a beautiful wife. Source: MN 36, 8 September 1908.

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Walls, curtains and doorways were also a common trope. Often, Nasreddin stood next to a partly drawn curtain or behind a wall and peaked into people’s private lives and public performances, revealing aspects of their lives that were hidden from general view. In one print, Nasreddin stands behind a wall and observes an old man who is performing his daily prayers. The reader becomes a voyeur alongside Nasreddin and eavesdrops as the old man makes supplications to God, not for spiritual and ethical aspirations in life, but for ‘a wife who is as beautiful as angels in the sky’. In yet another scene, we watch a traditional puppet show from behind the scenes. The puppets represent the deputies of the Iranian Majles (parliament). The puppeteers are bearded and turbaned deputies who chuckle with one another as they control the Majles and make a mockery of that body (Figure 7.4). Goya portrayed the anti-constitutionalist forces of Spain, including the Catholic Church, as hybrid and grotesque creatures with monstrous features.10 He was very critical of the monastic orders, particularly their excessive wealth and landholdings. But he also aimed his sharp satire at the more erudite clergy and professional classes. In Que Pico de Oró! (What a Golden Beak!) he mocks a gathering of academics, clerics or perhaps doctors who have devoted their mesmerising attention to the repetitive squawking of a lecturing parrot (Figure 7.5). After 1905, the Orthodox Church, wealthy landowning nobility and autocrats were also popular targets of Russian satirical journals. On only a few rare occasions, Mollå Nasreddin portrayed Muslim clerics in a sympathetic light, as in the case of the senior Shii Iranian cleric, Seyyed Muhammad Tabataba’i, who had supported the Constitutional Revolution in Iran. He was drawn with respect and deference in one graphic, where he was administering resuscitative medication to a sick Iranian patient (Figure 7.6). This was a notable exception. The artists of Mollå Nasreddin were generally quite harsh in their portrayal of clerics. In most prints, they were drawn as deceptive, repulsive and corpulent, suggesting that they lived a lavish and parasitic life. In one illustration by Schmerling, a cleric starts his career as a famished and emaciated young man, suggesting his humble origins. As he grows older and becomes more senior in his position, his waist expands in diameter, his beard becomes longer and his turban bulges larger (Figure 7.7). If the clerics of Goya looked more like witches and goblins, the mollås and åkhunds of Mollå Nasreddin cavorted with the shaitån (the devil), who had a lively presence in the graphics of Mollå Nasreddin. Sometimes he was portrayed as a butler serving food to Muslim dignitaries, who enjoyed themselves and remained oblivious to other infightings among Muslims (Figure 7.8). The shaitån lectured clerics, much like the parrot who lectured the monastic order in Goya’s illustrations. A row of clerics stood before the shaitån, deferentially, as he warned them that the newly educated Muslims hoped to abandon some of the heathen rituals that Muslims continued to practice and should be stopped. By ‘heathen ritual’, the paper was referring to Muharram rituals of self-flagellation which had pre-Islamic origins and were routinely

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Figure 7.4  The Majles as a puppet show. Source: MN 7, 12 February 1911.

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condemned as outmoded and barbaric by South Caucasian intellectuals (Figure 7.9). The shaitån was also a cause of mischief between Muslims and Armenians. The ‘stupid Armenian’ and the ‘stupid Muslim’ were constantly fighting each other because the shaitån instigated the fight. Occasionally, the two kissed and reconciled, leaving the shaitån deflated as his plans for mischief were thwarted (Figure 7.10). Some of these illustrations were remarkable in their boldness, especially as they appeared alongside scathing articles in the periodical. They enraged the conservative clerics of South Caucasia and Iran, who on numerous occasions tried to prevent the paper’s distribution inside the country. In Shii parlance, the most senior clerical leader is called ‘a source of emulation’ (marja‘), while his followers are known as ‘imitators’ (moqalled), as their obligation is to scrupulously follow the directions given by the leader. Mollå Nasreddin was highly critical of the slavish devotion of the Shii community to its ranking clerics and the extremes to which they went to express their utter devotion. As Figure 7.5  Que Pico de Oro, by Francisco in Figure 7.11, a hoard of devotees expressed its Goya. devotion by not only kissing the hands of their Source: Goya [1799] 1969, plate 53. religious leader, but also throwing themselves at his feet and kissing the tips of his shoes. Such sentiments were not unique to Mollå Nasreddin. The Tehran weekly Sur-e Esråfil (1907–8), was equally negative about the Shii clergy, though it lacked the biting satirical cartoons of Mollå Nasreddin. Taking its cue from Mollå Nasreddin, Sur-e Esråfil published short essays about anti-­ constitutionalist clerics who communicated with shaitån as they plotted against Iran’s nascent democracy (Afary 1996: 121–31). Another trope that was utilised by both Goya and Mollå Nasreddin was the donkey. Goya was critical of the Spanish aristocracy, as well as professionals such as doctors and teachers, who (mis)led society. In a series of six drawings in The Caprichos, Goya used a common device, the donkey, to portray the supposedly learned men as arrogant idiots who rode on the backs of the peasants and other common people (Figure 7.12).11 Mollå Nasreddin used similar imagery on several occasions. As we saw earlier, the donkey was a common motif in the folk tales of Nasreddin. The artists of the periodical Mollå Nasreddin used the donkey motif both in its Middle Eastern folkloric meaning of a stupid creature and subject of many pranks (see Figure 4.13), and in the sense that Goya had used it. In one drawing, the donkey appeared as the leader of a caravan of men, riding on the

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Figure 7.6  The pro-constitutionalist Seyyed Muhammad Tabataba’i revives the ailing Iranian nation. Source: MN 33, 20 August 1907.

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Figure 7.7  Top: 14-year-old and 24-year-old. Bottom: 44-year-old and 64-year-old. Source: MN 4, 28 April 1906.

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Figure 7.8  To right: Members of the Third Gathering of Muslims of Baku: ‘Why should we care about the Muslims killing each other? Let them finish each other off.” To left: Man banging on the wall is Ahmad bey Åghayev (later Ahmet bey Ågåoglu) who played an important role in quelling ethnic clashes between Armenians and Azerbaijanis. He is protesting the callous disregard of the Gathering with an outstretched fist. Source: MN 28, 13 October 1906.

backs of camels on their way to the holy pilgrimage of hajj in Mecca, making one wonder who was the bigger fool, the donkey who was leading the caravan or the people who followed him (Figure 7.13).12 In another cartoon, intellectuals rode on the backs of ordinary people, much in the same way that Goya’s professional class did in his sketches (Figure 7.14). In Goya’s art, the owl was not a symbol of wisdom. Rather, it was associated with the night – representing witches, goblins and all things evil. The owl also stood for old-fashioned ideas, outmoded customs and religious dogmas (Sayre 1974: 110). In one of Goya’s drawings, a giant and menacing owl hovers over a husband and wife, who are unhappily bound together at the waist and for life by the ban on divorce in Catholicism, all the while pleading ‘Can’t anyone untie us?’ (Figure 7.15).13 Both Schmerling and Rotter dealt with an array of restrictions on women’s lives, including child marriage. In one of Mollå Nasreddin’s prints, an owl – drawn with dark shades reminiscent of Goya’s, representing patriarchal attitudes in the Muslim community, takes centre stage. The owl is identified as ‘a mollå who defends veiling’. On the right of the picture, we see a boy and a girl, both fourteen years old. The owl is stopping the girl from going to school and directing her towards a nuptial chamber, where the boy is waiting for

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Figure 7.9  Shaitån to the clerics: ‘Listen, the newly educated want to abandon the old pagan rites. Brothers! Do not allow this!’ Source: MN 23, 25 June 1907.

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Figure 7.10  The foolish Armenian, the foolish Muslim, and the shaitån. Source: MN 13, 31 March 1907.

Figure 7.11  ‘In Nakhchivan, Shamåkhi, and elsewhere’. Source: MN 6, 10 February 1907.

300 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN her at the threshold. On the left of the picture, we see another pair of fourteen-year-olds, an Armenian girl and boy. These two are guided towards school by a teacher from their community. The illustration regards rules of gender segregation, including veiling, as impediments to education in the Muslim community and a major cause of child marriage (Figure 7.16). As noted earlier, Rotter was influenced by Goya’s portrayal of war and its atrocities. In Que hai que hacer más? (What More Can One Do?) Goya drew a horrifying scene in which a helpless naked man was about to be mutilated by soldiers. Three of these soldiers, wearing pale and sadistic smiles, grabbed him by the legs and dangled him upside down, while a fourth man moved his sharp sabre toward the victim’s groin (Figure 7.17). In Rotter’s re-enactment of this scene, the victim becomes a clothed Moroccan man who is about to be dismembered by a variety of European colonial powers (Germany, AustriaHungary, France and Britain), all identified by their hats and clothing. These powers are portrayed as aggressive murderers, while the peoples of the East are depicted as helpless Figure 7.12  Tu que no puedes, by Francisco victims or ignorant bystanders.14 As the terriGoya. fied victim watches soldiers hack at his body, Source: Goya [1799] 1969, plate 42. we observe the reactions of various representatives of the East. From afar, the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid casually observes the Arab man’s dismemberment. Meanwhile, a group of Iranians dance and entertain themselves with their backs to the scene while a cluster of Indians sleeps peacefully (Figure 7.18). The editors of Mollå Nasreddin were not just concerned with colonialist and imperialist wars. They were also worried about continuing ethnic and tribal civil wars. In another war illustration, Rotter depicts a tribal war between Kurds and Shåhsevans in the Iranian province of Azerbaijan. Here, men with drawn swords and sabres mutilate one another and collect war booty, much like the senseless killings depicted in Goya’s Disasters of War (Figure 7.19). Goya is also remembered for a series of bullfighting prints (Hults 1996: 410). Rotter adopted one of Goya’s bullfighting scenes, which may at first seem incongruent with South Caucasia or the Middle East. In Rotter’s graphic, European diplomacy, which appears as the shaitån, is a masterful bullfighter. With his red matador’s cape, the shaitån attempts to entice yet another nation of the East – represented by a remarkably muscular bull – towards a valley of death. The bull stands precariously at the precipice of this valley while the

Figure 7.13  The hajj pilgrimage. Source: MN 45, 8 November 1909.

Figure 7.14  Things we see every day. Source: MN 10, 10 March 1907.

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people of the East push the animal over the edge. Meanwhile, in the valley below, smiling colonial powers with their machetes drawn await the bull’s imminent fall in order to carve it up (Figure 7.20). Another cartoon by Rotter in Mollå Nasreddin exhibited the influence of Goya’s Black Paintings. In Atropos (Fates), Goya imagined the mythological goddesses of destiny, the Moirai, as they were recounted in classic Greek myths. Headed by Atropos, the goddess of death, they travel mid-air. They will be deciding the fate of Prometheus who is eternally punished for stealing fire from Mount Olympus and giving it to humanity (Figure 7.21). In the pages of Mollå Nasreddin, a figure resembling Atropos appears in mid-air in the midst of the brewing conflict over North Africa between Italy and the Ottoman Empire. Here, Fate takes the shape of a man. He hovers over the coast of North Africa, deciding its destiny, much in the same way that Goya’s Fates flew over a city (Figure 7.22). Figure 7.15  No hay quien nos desate? by In the European arts, as far back as Ancient Francisco Goya. Rome, the abstract notion of justice was rep- Source: Goya [1799] 1969, plate 75. resented by a woman. Spanish and French artists adopted the figure of a young, beautiful and strong woman to represent justice. Sometimes, as in the figure of Lady Justice, she held scales and was blindfolded. Other times, as with the Statue of Liberty, a gift from the French government to the United States, she held a torch in one hand that sent forth beams of light. Lady Liberty was portrayed as an icon of freedom, celebrating the abolition of slavery and welcoming immigrants. Goya adopted a similar concept to represent Truth and Justice in his Disasters of War (Figure 7.23),15 while Mollå Nasreddin adopted the same symbol, though in a more modest pose. A young woman held a torch, a flag or a placard, and stood for the ideals of the new order, such as justice, freedom and constitutionalism (Figure 7.24). A well-known topic that often appeared in Goya’s work was the maltreatment of children. In his Si quebró el cántaro (If He Broke the Pot), Goya showed, with brutal candour, a mother who bent over her young child, pulled down his pants, held his shirt to her teeth and beat him. In juxtaposing these images with the brutalities of the Inquisition, Goya suggested that the violence of our adult society was rooted in the cruelty that was ‘experienced, accepted, and finally learned by children’ (Hults 1996: 401) (Figure 7.25). In dealing with the same topic, Mollå Nasreddin went a step further. If Goya blamed the mother as the agent of the patriarchal order, one whose

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Figure 7.16  ‘The result of the hijab’. Source: MN 4, 25 January 1911.

job was to normalise the child’s behaviour, Mollå Nasreddin placed the blame squarely on men, both fathers and male teachers, who were responsible for the education of boys. The periodical castigated men for the public nature of physical punishment and the accompanying guilt and shame inflicted on children. Children were exposed to such violent conduct at home and in school. But teachers also asked students to participate in the disciplining of their classmates, instilling in them a taste for violence and cruelty (Figure 7.26). An artist for revolutions: the influence of Daumier By the turn of the nineteenth century, new technological developments had given birth to the art of lithography. A wide range of popular illustrated journals appeared in Europe, so that by the 1830s, political caricatures reached a mass audience. Honoré Daumier, who produced over 4,000 lithographs in the course of his life, became the most prominent social and political satirist of the years 1830 to 1870 (Delteil 1906–30: vols 20–9). A radical art student in the 1830 French Revolution, he soon became one of the most astute commentators on French culture and politics (Hults 1996: 45).

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Figure 7.17  Que hai que hacer más? By Francisco Goya. Source: Goya [1863] 1967, plate 33.

Daumier joined the editorial board of the weekly, Le Caricature (1830–5), and the daily, Le Charivari (1832–1937), headed by Charles Philipon (d. 1861). He remained a left-wing champion of republicanism, radical democracy and freedom of the press throughout his life. His satire was aimed at the corrupt monarchy, the inept and ineffectual deputies of the parliament, and censorship of the press. As Judith Wechsler (1982: 14–15) has shown, Daumier broke new ground in the field of graphic arts, and elevated the art of caricature to new heights in three areas: individual caricatures, symbolic types, and allegorical representations. As we shall see, to various degrees, such techniques were also adopted by the principal artists of Mollå Nasreddin. Daumier was a master of individual caricatures. His subjects were usually political figures whose physical features were exaggerated to represent certain behaviours and characteristics. As a left-wing republican, Daumier targeted wealthy members of the bourgeoisie, such as bankers, deputies of the parliament, lawyers and doctors. But his favourite topic was King Louis Philippe (1830–48). Daumier’s famous caricatures of the king lampooned his corpulent face and large derrière, alluding to the corruption of the monarchy and likening him to a plump pear (which could also mean dim-witted in French slang). Many had hoped that the 1830 Revolution against the repressive government

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Figure 7.18  The dismemberment of Fez (Morocco). The men who are hacking Fez are wearing German, French and British uniforms. Source: MN 37, 15 December 1906.

Figure 7.19  (Kurds and Shåhsevens of Iran) ‘Dear neighbours! No need to trouble yourselves. We have the necessary forces for the destruction of Iran.’ Source: MN 20, 19 May 1908.

Figure 7.20  ‘European Diplomacy: Regarding the Carnage’. Source: MN 24, 16 June 1908.

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Figure 7.21  Atropos, by Francisco Goya. Source: Goya, Museo del Prado, Madrid.

of Charles X (1824–30) would usher a new age of constitutional monarchy, if not a republican form of government. But Louis Philippe, who had fought against the monarchy during the 1789 French Revolution and was praised as the ‘citizen-king’ by the Chamber of Deputies, proved to be a great disappointment. He re-established press censorship and refused to abide by the rule of law or to allow the constitutional monarchy he was supposed to represent (Figure 7.27). Muhammad Ali Shah (1907–9), who came to power after the 1906 Iranian Revolution, had likewise thwarted the hopes of liberals for a constitutional monarchy. Mollå Nasreddin’s drawings of the shah, between 1906 and spring 1908, were mild and subdued when compared to those of Daumier mocking Louis Philippe. The shah was often portrayed as a silent bystander, or a timid leader who turned to foreign legations for support. As the enmity of the shah towards the new constitutional order became more obvious, Mollå Nasreddin’s depictions of the monarch and his entourage became more scathing. In one remarkable illustration, in the autumn of 1907, Mollå Nasreddin warned  about an impending coup in Iran, one that brought to mind Daumier’s caricatures of Bonapartism. Here the shah is looking out from a window, observing the bandit Rahim Khan and the anti-constitutionalist ranking cleric, Sheikh Fazlullah Nuri, who are leading an armed militia towards Baharestan Square, where the Iranian parliament was located (Figure 7.28). After 1909, the shah of Iran was deposed and exiled to Russia, where he continued to plot to regain his throne. Now the artists of Mollå Nasreddin taunted him mercilessly. He was portrayed as a dim-witted pupil, with a corpulent face and a large derrière, who could not find his own country on a map of the world (MN 37, 20 October 1910). In fall 1911, the deposed Muhammad

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Figure 7.22  Austria and Germany to Ottomans: ‘Don’t worry we have your back!’ Italy to Ottomans: ‘Since you haven’t bought your wife a pair of shorts, I am occupying Tripoli.’ Source: MN 34, 1 October 1911.

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Figure 7.23  Esto es lo verdadero, by Francisco Goya. Source: Goya [1863] 1967, plate 82.

Figure 7.24  Female symbol of justice. Source: MN 1, 4 January 1909.

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312 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN Ali tried to reclaim his throne, and re-enter the country by crossing the northern border. At this time, the constitutional government of Iran raised an army to defeat him and also placed a bounty on his head. Now Mollå Nasreddin mocked the preposterous bounty placed on the head of such an idiotic person, not unlike the way Daumier had ridiculed a dim-witted Louis Philippe in Le Charivari (Figure 7.29). Daumier transitioned from satirising individual politicians and specific political events, to a new form of caricature that focused on social tropes. Without succumbing to the strict moralism of his predecessor Hogarth, or getting trapped in a limited style or point of view, Daumier invented a variety of symbolic types that represented different sectors of society, such as the ‘charlatan bureaucrat’, or the ‘greedy capitalist’. Daumier’s last, and highly successful, symbolic character was the Jester who wore a fool’s cap and moved from place to place in the city. Standing outside Figure 7.25  Si quebró el cántaro, by Francisco society, he observed, recorded and commented Goya. on the major issues of the day, such as the Source: Goya [1799] 1969, plate 25. conduct of French politicians and dignitaries, the clerics’ opposition to secular education, and the diplomats’ contemptible conduct in international politics (Wechsler 1982: 170–1) (Figure 7.30). Symbolic types pervaded the pages of Mollå Nasreddin as well. The most obvious example was the folk character Mollå Nasreddin himself, who much like Daumier’s jester, was an observer and a fool dressed in a humorous outfit. Mollå peeked through half-opened curtains, windows and doors, and commented on daily social and political events. But a number of other symbolic types were also common in the pages of Mollå Nasreddin, such as ‘the greedy hajji’, ‘the progressive intellectual’, ‘the ignorant mollå’, ‘the nationalist’ or ‘the domineering patriarch’ (Figure 7.31). Finally, Daumier has been lauded for his allegorical representations of public events, nations, and abstract concepts such as war and peace. The year 1866 marked a new stage in European politics, when Prussia invaded the German Confederation and annexed parts of it. In Figure 7.26  ‘Bastinado’. the same period, the island of Crete, backed by Greece, Source: MN 8, 24 February 1907. revolted against Ottoman control. After years of paying

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Figure 7.27  A Naples – Le meilleur des rois (1851), by Honoré Daumier. Source: Daumier, plate 47, from Vincent 1968, 147.

Figure 7.28  Anticipating an attack on the Iranian parliament. Source: MN 35, 17 September 1907.

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Figure 7.29  ‘For this head, one hundred thousand tumans? Astonishing!’ Source: MN 30, 1 September 1911.

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meticulous attention to political details, Daumier’s illustrations now achieved an abstract simplicity that transcended national and linguistic barriers and could be comprehended by all. His harshest criticisms were aimed at Prussia, whose growing power was a threat to the French. European equilibrium was in serious jeopardy ­ and the so-called ‘Oriental Question’ loomed large. Daumier alternately portrayed European diplomacy as an aristocratic hag, who deceived an Ottoman merchant, or a mesmerising young woman, whom the merchant found charming. It showed how the scales of world politics were constantly tipped in favour of the stronger European powers. This was also a favourite device used in the pages of Mollå Nasreddin. In one cartoon, in 1908, we see the balance of power in global politics shifting. Britain sides with France and Russia in controlling Iran, tilting the balance of power Figure 7.30  Actualités, by Honoré Daumier. against Austria-Hungary, Germany and Source: Daumier 1982, 173. Italy, who are busy carving up Turkey (Figure 7.32). In 1911, a series of new alliances in the region emerged, which became the subject of illustrations in Mollå Nasreddin. In one graphic, Britain, France and Russia extend their control over Iran and Morocco, while Germany, Austria and Italy expand their authority over territories held by the Ottoman Empire. The two parties seal their deal with a handshake (Figure 7.33). Following the defeat of France in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, and the tragic demise of the short-lived Paris Commune in 1871, Daumier’s lifelong hope for a radical democracy in France seemed doomed. Now, a lone woman in a black veil represented the mourning of so many women whose husbands and sons had been murdered (Figure 7.34). We see a similar image in Mollå Nasreddin in late 1911. As Russian forces occupied the city of Tabriz in December 1911 and executed many constitutionalists, Mollå Nasreddin once again turned to Daumier for inspiration. Rotter’s image of a lone woman in a black veil grieving over the tomb of a dead Iranian nationalist reminds us of Daumier’s illustration after the tragic end of the Paris Commune. In Mollå Nasreddin, the woman sits at the grave of her beloved son or husband. While all the other headstones indicate that the person died in local skirmishes, the tombstone on which the woman is grieving says that he was killed by a firing squad, indicating that he was

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Figure 7.31  Seven ideologies. Source: MN 22, 6 June 1910.

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a constitutionalist who was executed by the occupying Russian forces (Figure 7.35). The principal artists of Mollå Nasreddin continued the tradition of Goya and Daumier, by freely drawing upon allegorical representations of nations and abstract concepts such as truth and justice. Many of Daumier’s preferred topics, such as liberty and freedom of the press, as well as some of his favourite tropes such as the scales of diplomacy, the train of economic development, or the rough sea of European politics, were widely popular and adopted by both the British and the radical Russian periodicals of 1905. But we also find them in the pages of Mollå Nasreddin, its contemporary Zenbur (Baku), and in a few satirical periodicals Figure 7.32  Balance of powers. inside Iran such as Kashkul. On a few occasions, Rotter adopted the style and Source: MN 9, 2 March 1908. content of Daumier’s pieces, including

Figure 7.33  Balance of power and competition among Europeans and the resulting profit for Muslims. Source: MN 3, 18 January 1911.

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Figure 7.34  1871: Dismayed with Her Heritage, by Honoré Daumier. Source: Daumier in Powell, and Childs 1990.

Figure 7.35  Muslim village cemetery. Source: MN 45, 18 December 1911.

Figure 7.36  The Legislative Belly, by Honoré Daumier. Source: Daumier 1982, 38.

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Figure 7.37  Speech by Hajji Nasrollah in the Iranian parliament. Source: MN 38, 30 November 1910.

one of his most well-known works, The Legislative Belly (Daumier 1982: 26 (Del. 131)). In this satirical illustration of the French parliament, Daumier depicts thirty-five deputies of the centre-right party, sitting in neat rows in the assembly. These dull, sleepy, rotund figures resemble the intestines of a gigantic entity that has gorged on the wealth of the nation (Hults 1996: 449) (Figure 7.36). A similar rendition of the Iranian parliament appeared several times in Mollå Nasreddin, even though its seating arrangements were quite different. One cartoon showed Seyyed Nasrollah, a conservative Majles deputy, giving a speech. At the time, Iranian Azerbaijan was occupied by Russian forces. The liberal Democrat Party demanded Russian withdrawal, while the conservative Moderate Party opposed it. In this cartoon, Seyyed Nasrollah presents his party’s objection to the withdrawal (Figure 7.37).16 Parting company with Goya and Daumier on gender Goya and Daumier had a mixed record on women’s rights. Goya’s treatment of women has been characterised as both progressive and misogynistic. Goya was a fierce critic of arranged marriages. His piece, Qué sacrificio! (What a

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Figure 7.38  Qué sacrificio! by Francisco Goya. Source: Goya [1799] 1969, plate 14.

Figure 7.39  Linda maestra! by Francisco Goya. Source: Goya [1799] 1969, plate 68.

Sacrifice), portrays a beautiful young girl who is given away by her family to a lecherous and evil-looking hunchback (Figure 7.38). Images of women as witches were also pervasive in the works of Goya and resembled the accusations that were made against women by the Inquisition. These overly sexualised hags, as in the image Linda maestra! (Pretty Teacher!) were capable of superhuman deeds such as flying, as well as beastly ones such as cannibalism (Hults 1996: 403) (Figure 7.39). Like many socialist men of his generation, Daumier was sympathetic towards the economic and political concerns of working-class women. However, his treatment of prostitutes and witches was mixed. Sometimes, he portrayed prostitutes as victims of the law and of greedy and powerful men, who, like carnivores, fed on the flesh of poverty-stricken women. At other times, he dwelled on the proliferation of venereal disease, blaming prostitutes for infecting their male customers without any remorse. What is clear is that Daumier was a staunch opponent of feminism. Elizabeth Childs has pointed out, ‘Daumier’s message is clear: proper wives should be content with their assigned place in marriage’ (Childs 1990: 26).

Figure 7.40  Sympathy for impoverished women and families. Source: MN 16, 21 April 1907.

322 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN The Napoleonic Code had defined a woman’s role as one of dedication to her husband and children. They were to be ‘legally under age all their lives, submissive to their husband’s authority, and confined to the house’ (Czyba 1990: 90). Daumier ridiculed accomplished professional women, especially those with literary and artistic aspirations. In his Blue Stockings and Socialist Women series, Daumier mocked feminists for having little time for housekeeping and childcare and also for expecting their husbands to take on more responsibility with the children and household matters (Hults 1996: 453). In Daumier’s prints, the witch and the hag stood for villainy, hypocrisy and duplicity. Daumier’s standard treatment of European diplomacy was an old hag who tricked the weaker nations and impeded the chariot of progress. Following the editorial guidelines of Mirza Jalil and Ömar Fåeq, Rotter, Schmerling and Azim Azimzådeh freely adopted the image of a young woman as their symbol of truth and justice. But they did not adopt the negative image of the hag and the witch. Older women were almost always portrayed with great sympathy and as victims of society. Unlike Daumier, Mollå Nasreddin supported both impoverished women and educated and professional ones. However, as we saw earlier, the Tiflis journal clearly drew a boundary between acceptable and unacceptable norms and behaviours for women. Its illustrations reflected the growing anxiety of the Muslim South Caucasian community about greater gender equity, what it might mean for the future, and how it might come in conflict with societal expectations of married women.

Notes 1. In our discussion of Goya, we have drawn on Lopez-Rey 1953; Schickel 1968; Gassier et al. 1981; Licht 1979; and Sayre 1974. The prints of Goya that are reproduced here were taken from the online collection of the Metropolitan Museum of the Art in New York and are in the public domain. 2. For a discussion of Daumier and his influence, see Vincent 1968; Rey 1964; and Larkin 1966. 3. See Levitt and Minin 2013b: 19. Ilya Repin (1844–1930) and the gifted Georgian artist Niko Pirosmåni (1862–1918) also influenced the artists of Mollå Nasreddin. Pirosmåni was discussed in Chapter 3. For examples of Russian revolutionary art in 1905–6, we have relied on Valkenier 1977 and 1990; Bowlt 1982; and Kuznetsov and Bagratishvili 1983. 4. For the Russian artists’ fascination with devils, skeletons and vampires, see Levitt and Minin 2013b: 22. 5. Similar cartoons were common in European and US publications of the period. 6. Goya did not invent this tradition. Rather, a long tradition of protest art in Europe preceded his work, to which Goya introduced many new elements. For contemporaries of Mollå Nasreddin who produced popular images that were also reminiscent of Goya’s work, see the work of the Mexican artist, José Guadalupe Posada (1852–1913), in his 1972 Posada’s Popular Mexican Prints. 7. One of the most egregious examples of this approach can be found in the purportedly ‘scientific’ medical pronouncements by the French naturalist and zoologist Georges Léopold Cuvier (d. 1832). Cuvier believed there were three distinct

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races – white, yellow and black – which had physical and mental differences. Among others, these theories contributed to Cuvier’s classification of a Khoikhoi woman from southern Africa, named Sara Baartman (d. 1815) – known as the ‘Hottentot Venus’ – who had been put on public display in England and France as a supposed link between animals and human beings. After her death, Curvier dissected her body, displayed her remains, and created anatomical studies and illustrations in an attempt to prove his theories. 8. See Lavater 1880. He drew on a wide range of sources from Aristotle and the Bible to Descartes, Leonardo da Vinci and Hogarth. He systematised this type of thinking and elevated it to the level of a science. 9. Lopez-Rey 1953: 2:84. The themes of dreams and demons also occurred in Renaissance art. However, the notion that demons abound when reason sleeps  was definitely Goya’s own touch and reflected Enlightenment faith in rationality. 10. As Philip Hofer points out, ‘The scarecrow to whom the ignorant peasant woman is praying wears a monk’s cowl and gown.’ See Goya [1799] 1969, plate 52. See also plate 53 in the same collection and Hults 1996: 414. 11. See Goya [1799] 1969, plate 42. The caption on this print reads ‘Thou who canst not’. Also translated as ‘You who cannot [carry me on your shoulder]’ and ­according to Hults refers to the Spanish proverb that says, ‘Oppress the feeble who cannot resist’. See also Hults 1996: 407. 12. This print is also a reference to the Turkish proverb that ‘The camel does not want to be led by the donkey’. 13. See Goya [1799] 1969, plate 75. Lopez suggests that ‘the two are bound together at their waists in such a fashion as to bring to mind the image of Eve born from Adam’s rib’. See Lopez-Rey 1953: 161. 14. In the Turkish language, Morocco is known as Fas, derived from its ancient capital Fez. 15. Goya [1863] 1967, plate 82. ‘This is the Truth’. 16. Seyyed Nasrollah says, as Muslims, we should know that ‘sooner or later or perhaps near the end of Muharram, a man riding on a blue horse, and holding a green flag will appear and uproot the atheists from Iran’. A ‘man with a green flag’ is of course the Mahdi who will appear at the end of time and deliver humanity. But the reference to ‘atheists’ probably referred to the rival Democrat Party whose members were routinely denounced as ‘atheists’ by the conservatives.

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CHAPTER 8

A Conversation with Punch, Simplicissimus and the World of Art In addition to Francisco Goya and Honoré Daumier, the artists of Mollå Nasreddin drew upon new forms of caricature seen in contemporary periodicals such as the British Punch, or The London Charivari (1841–1992), the German Simplicissimus (1896–1944) and the Russian revolutionary periodicals of the turn of the twentieth century, such as Leshii (Wood Goblin), Adskaia Pochta (Hellish Post), Plamia (Flame), Signaly (Signal) and Zritel (Spectator). Many of these publications were themselves influenced by Goya and Daumier as well as by the Critical Realist style of art, which emerged in the late nineteenth century.1 Punch: a mouthpiece for British colonialism The weekly Punch, or The London Charivari, which was modelled after its French counterpart, coined the term ‘cartoon’, meaning ‘humour or satire on a political subject’, for its full-page woodcut illustrations. The journal, which began under the editorship of Mark Lemon, was a big success, selling 6,000 copies of its first issue in 1841 (Price 1957: 43; Williams 1955). Punch became the most influential periodical of its kind in Britain, eventually reaching a circulation of 150,000, dominating Britain’s political satire for 150 years. The illustrated periodical, which was read in Europe, the United States and elsewhere, owed its existence to an extensive collaboration among its writers, illustrators, poets and printers, as well as its financial managers. In its first forty years alone, there were 150 illustrators contributing to the weekly magazine.2 Punch began as a liberal publication and was initially critical of the Church of England and the monarchy. The magazine’s left-of-centre politics meant it upheld the concerns of the impoverished and of the working classes and supported the working-class Chartist movement of 1836–48 and its demands for parliamentary reform and universal male suffrage. However, it did not back republicanism. As the magazine’s circulation increased, so did its appeal to the upper classes of society. Fashion, the arts, social manners of the elite and family quarrels soon occupied many pages of Punch. On political issues, the weekly moved away from the Continent’s tradition of left-wing political satire and gradually came to represent the elite ‘British view on events’. Some even suspected the journal of controlling the ‘laws of England’ (Price 1957: 31–48).

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There is no question that Punch was an enormously influential magazine which not only reported on British affairs but also helped shape Victorian mores on political and social issues. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, Punch was feared at home, as well as banned in France and Germany. ‘The British government trembled at what Punch might say and the Prime Minister tried to curry favor with Punch cartoonists with the hope of a more favorable presentation of themselves’ (Williams 1955: xiii). By this time, Punch had moved to the right of the political spectrum. It scorned liberal concerns at home and resolutely supported Britain’s colonial foreign policies. By the 1880s and 1890s, Punch rejected the extension of voting rights to the rural population of England, opposed trade unionism and disparaged all expressions of socialism. It also adopted an overwhelmingly condescending attitude towards the lower classes and condemned the Liberal Party’s Home Rule Bills in Ireland (Punch, 17 June 1893). It should come as no surprise that Punch was also critical of the women’s suffrage movement, as the French Le Charivari had been. The British feminist, who read too many books and clamoured for her political rights, was mocked as a modern-day ‘Donna Quixote’, who fought with imaginary enemies (Punch, 28 April 1894). In its reports on European politics, Punch was as anti-French and anti-German as it was antiRussian, and it supported the South and the institution of slavery during the American Civil War of 1861–5. The periodical’s position on issues of the Third World and non-Western societies was an illustrative example of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’. Punch feigned sympathy towards small countries that struggled against other European colonial powers or the United States, such as Cuba and the Philippines, but castigated similar stirrings in Ireland, India, and Egypt, regions that were under British control. Punch was particularly keen on the socalled Eastern Question and printed many cartoons that dealt with Russian, German or French designs on the Middle East and North Africa. Iran, its rulers and the Constitutional Revolution of 1906–11 were treated kindly in the pages of the journal. Mozaffar al-Din Shah’s trip to Europe in 1898, where he visited London, was turned into a huge public event that attracted thousands of people on the streets and was widely covered by the press, including in Punch. This interest in Iran arose because Iran served as a strategic buffer zone between Russia and India and was crucial to the Great Game and Britain’s colonial interests. In 1906, Punch and the British Figure 8.1  The Shah’s Holiday. government supported Iran’s new Source: Punch, 22 June 1889.

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Figure 8.2  Helping the Young Idea. Shah: ‘I was thinking of getting one of those things for my people.’ Czar: ‘My dear fellow, take this one. (Aside) I’m getting another sort, that only goes backward.’ (It is announced that the Shah threatens to give Persia a constitution.) Source: Punch, 22 August 1906.

parliament, just as they had applauded the formation of the Russian state Duma in 1905 and condemned the tsar’s cancellation of the Duma elections soon after its formation. Iran’s shape on a map looks like a cat, and cartoons of this period often show a cat who is either embraced or pummelled by a Russian bear or a British lion. The Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907 ended the long dispute between the two powers over Iran. It designated spheres of influence  for  the two countries  within Iran. Britain promised to stay out of  the  northern Iranian  territory, including the capital Tehran, while Russia recognised the southern part of Iran as part of the British sphere of influence. While Daumier and the French Charivari were slightly to the left of Mollå Nasreddin, Punch was far to the right of the periodical. However, the difference in political orientation did not dissuade the artists of Mollå Nasreddin from paying close attention to Punch and, in all probability, it was one of the principal models for the journal.

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Figure 8.3  The Harmless Necessary Cat. British Lion (to Russian Bear): ‘Look here! You can play with his head, and I can play with his tail, and we can both stroke the small of his back.’ Persian Cat: ‘I don’t remember having been consulted about this!’ Source: Punch, 2 October 1907.

A bridge between folklore and classical literature At the turn of the twentieth century, no talented artist who was interested in political satire and the art of caricature could have avoided the overwhelming influence of Punch, which reached numerous readers inside and outside Britain. The writers and artists of Punch scavenged the daily press for national and international news, expanding on events in imaginary columns, conversations and poems, accompanied by well-crafted cartoons. There were regular satirical columns on literature and the current debates in parliament, as well as fabricated ‘Letters to the Editor’ and responses. The rest of the pages of the periodical were full of mother-in-law jokes, jokes about silly upper-class men and women of leisure, commentary on the routines of daily life, as well as racist columns on ‘Baboo English’, the English dialect spoken in India. The influence of Punch on Mollå Nasreddin would have been palpable to those contemporary readers who were familiar with both journals. Some of the caricatures of Mollå Nasreddin were stylistically inspired by illustrations in Punch, though their content drastically differed. In one print from 1888, Punch mocked the country’s prime minister William E. Gladstone. He appeared as a giant rooster, who gathered hens (the Women’s Liberal Federation) around him (Figure 8.6). Mollå Nasreddin adopted a similar image, which carried the biting and dark overtones of Goya’s work, in order to address the subject of polygamy in Iran. A ranking cleric in Qazvin (Iran) was depicted as a giant rooster. He was surrounded by veiled hens as he boasted about his countless polygamous relations and temporary wives (Figure 8.7). Other partial adaptations from Punch could be found frequently in the pages of Mollå Nasreddin. Among them were hunting scenes, stinging bees and glass jars where insect-sized enemies were kept trapped. All were standard tropes in the caricatures of Punch (Figures 8.8, 8.9).

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Figure 8.4  Whitborough. Low Tide. Arrival of the Scarby Steamer. Source: Punch, 2 September 1882.

Figure 8.5  ‘Passengers disembarking in Astara’. Source: MN 7, 17 February 1908.

Figure 8.6  ‘Monopoly may do in screws, but not in fowl-runs, if I must talk shoppily’. Source: Punch, 10 November 1888.

Figure 8.7  Cleric of Qazvin as a giant rooster. Source: MN 40, 14 November 1911.

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Figure 8.8  Shooting scene (Britain). Source: Punch, 5 July 1890.

Figure 8.9  Shooting scene (Iran). Source: MN 40, 5 October 1908.

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Figure 8.10  ‘John Bull brings pressure to bear on the irrepressible Mullah’. Source: Punch, 9 December 1903.

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Figure 8.11  ‘Catching Flies’. Source: MN 25, 8 July 1907.

In one scene from Punch in 1903, John Bull, the symbol of British imperialism, trapped a black insect named ‘Mullah’ in a glass jar, firmly pressing on the lid to prevent the insect from escaping. This was a reference to Britain’s suppression of the Mahdist Revolt in Sudan. Mollå Nasreddin had two different takes on this trope. In one scene called Hunting Flies: Europe’s Eastern Politics, we observe Britain, France and Germany sitting in a café. Each has a glass-covered dinner plate before him with an insect-size meal under the glass lid. Britain smokes his pipe gleefully and looks at the helplessly trapped India on his dinner plate. France is an officer who calmly smokes his cigar and ponders Algeria, represented by a small insect-sized Arab man who is caught under the glass lid, trying to push it open. Germany is an absent-minded officer sipping a cup of coffee as two insect-sized creatures, an African and an Arab on the island of Zanzibar, desperately try to free themselves from his plate (Figure 8.11). In another Mollå Nasreddin cartoon, an Iranian democrat keeps ‘Freedom’ (Horriyat) covered under a glass lid. He is wielding a stick to ward off an obstinate bee who is reaching for the sweet smell of ‘Freedom’. On close examination, the bee turns out to be no other than the conservative Sheikh Fazlullah Nuri ­(1843–1909), Figure 8.12  ‘Let me quickly cover who is trying to snatch ‘Freedom’ away, all the while FREEDOM so the fly does not cast observed by the trickster Mollå Nasreddin from atop a a shadow on it.’ Source: MN 18, 5 May 1908. wall (Figure 8.12).

332 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN Punch’s influence on Mollå Nasreddin went beyond stylistic appropriations. Mollå Nasreddin tapped into traditional forms of Persian and Turkish literature to recreate the experience of Punch for its indigenous Muslim, Azerbaijani, Persian and Turkish readers. In the process, the periodical developed a whole cast of characters who challenged the Eurocentric, hegemonic and racist imagery of Punch and helped foster a sense of dignity and awareness of international politics among the people of South Caucasus and the Middle East. Below, we will look at some of the ways in which Mollå Nasreddin recreated and adapted the experience of Punch for its readers. Resurrecting folk characters Punch was named after the marionette in the British puppet show ‘Punch and Judy’. A feisty short puppet with a hooked nose, Punch was the abbreviated name for the seventeenth-century Italian and French clown known as Punchinello. He often appeared stupid and boastful, but from time to time was capable of making shrewd and intelligent comments. Punchinello was a companion of kings and royalty, said to have ‘cheated the Inquisition and the hangman’ through his clever wit. For the French, he was a convenient medium of political satire who may have made his appearance into English satire at the time of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which overthrew James II, the last Catholic monarch of Britain and Ireland. In the periodical Punch, the marionette appeared as a short man with a hanging belly who often rode on a polka-dot horse. He was not so much an observer of events, as the jester in Daumier’s cartoons had been, but an active participant who praised generals, admonished politicians and recited lines from well-known British plays. As previously discussed, the trickster Nasreddin was also a folk persona whose roots as a jester dated back at least to the fifteenth-century court of Tamerlane. His appearance in the pages of Mollå Nasreddin was just as ridiculous for the average South Caucasian, Turkish or Iranian reader as Punch’s character was for the modern British reader. Nasreddin, with his religious title of ‘Mollå’ and his long white beard, was supposed to be a village elder, sometimes a cleric and sometimes a qadi (judge). But in the pages of Mollå Nasreddin, he did not dress in a dignified Figure 8.13  ‘An Easter Review’. and modest manner, one that would have Source: Punch, 24 March 1883. been appropriate for his station in life.

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Instead, he sported a bright polka-dot turban of red, orange, pink and white on his head; wore striped red and white pants under his large overcoat; and walked around in old-fashioned shoes (na’layn) with exaggerated pointed tips turned upward. By tapping into English folk satire, Punch had been able to ‘cash in on a lot of good will’ that was associated with the character Punchinello in the minds of ordinary people (Price 1957: 22). The same can be said for Mollå Nasreddin, since the very mention of the trickster’s name brought a smile to millions of people in the Middle East, South Caucasus and Central Asia. Ordinary men and women, rural and urban alike, adored the folk wisdom of Nasreddin, and were just as amused by his stupid remarks as they were impressed by his shrewd and insightful comments. The journal’s name reminded the readers of the folk wisdom of the trickster and prepared them to accept what they read with a grain of salt. The trickster who refused to abide by conventional norms was known for his bawdy sarcasm and for debasing and humiliating the elite. For Figure 8.14  Prayers for the young Ahmad these reasons, and the nostalgia invoked by the Shah. name Mollå Nasreddin, the outrageous columns, Source: MN 33, 24 September 1911. poems and graphics of the journal did not seem as disgraceful to readers as they otherwise would have been. Satirical commentaries about financial corruption, excesses at Muharram rituals, child marriages and even caricatures about bazaar merchants fondling young boys were read and observed with a chuckle because they fitted the reader’s perception of what the trickster Nasreddin might have said or done had he lived in their time. Tapping into high literature From popular ballads and simple burlesques, Punch gradually moved into classical forms of poetry and prose. The periodical made a sustained effort to render the classical meters of the English light verse (humorous poetry) relevant to the contemporary British readers of the nineteenth century (Price 1957: 137). Scenes from Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Macbeth, As You Like it and other plays of Shakespeare were continually (re)presented and (re) told with a contemporary cast of characters. The deputies of the British parliament and other politicians were often the butt of skits and satirised mercilessly. In this way, Punch was able to bridge the divide between high and low culture, making Shakespeare both real and relevant for the n ­ ineteenth century.

334 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN Mollå Nasreddin’s principal poet, Ali-Akbar Såber, was equally successful in recasting classical forms of Persian literature for a contemporary audience. Såber’s Azerbaijani-language poems even attracted Persian-speaking audiences since Iranian poets such as Ashraf Qazvini translated and versified his poems into fluent Persian verses (sometimes without attribution), and further popularised Såber’s ideas among Persian speakers. Raised on a steady diet of classical Persian literature such as the Shåhnåmeh of Ferdowsi (940–1020), the Golestån of Sadi (1210–91) and the Divån of Håfez (1315–90), the Iranian readers understood the gist and direction of Såber’s poems and the manner in which he introduced new political and social concerns through familiar forms of poetry. Saber’s poetry was delightfully amusing and, unlike the poems by many other left-wing intellectuals of his time, never dull or didactic. Såber wrote poems in the style of the great masters of Persian poetry but always tried to address contemporary issues. His most popular work was a parody of Shåhnåmeh. In June 1908, when Muhammad Ali Shah Qajar’s forces bombarded the Iranian parliament, Tabriz emerged as the new centre of resistance for the constitutional movement. One national hero of the resistance was the Azerbaijani fighter Sattår Khån, a horse dealer, and a rank-and-file member of the Organisation of Social Democrats (mujahidin), who rose to the occasion and led the Tabriz resistance for nearly ten months. Såber’s poems praised the bravery of the Tabriz revolutionaries and compared Sattår Khån to Rostam, hero of the Shåhnåmeh. His poems became a great source of inspiration for the besieged people of Tabriz. Spoofs of classical Persian poems were also common in the pages of Mollå Nasreddin. A favourite was the Golestån, by Musleh al-Din Sadi. Sadi lived during the Mongol invasions and travelled widely for thirty years. One of the greatest Persian poets, he is commonly referred to as the ‘Master of Speech’. Golestån means flower garden, and the book is comprised of a series of satirical vignettes, aphorisms and poems, all covering different aspects of public and private life, and imparting Sufi wisdom to its readers. Sadi’s polished style, the wit and poignancy of his sentiments, and his wonderful sense of humour turned the book into the most often-quoted Persian masterpiece. His comments often took the form of practical wisdom, giving us the impression that he knew the ways of the heart and of life thoroughly. It was this versatility of the Golestån that appealed to Mollå Nasreddin. The journal published aphorisms or poems in the style of Golestån that discussed contemporary social and political issues and, in the process, interpreted well-known verses in new and comical ways. One example was a column titled ‘Lesson on Golestån’, which berated the low level of education in the traditional maktab schools. The column was about a maktab teacher who lectured on the Golestån to his class. The introduction to the Golestån begins with an expression of thanks to God for all the blessings he has bestowed on human beings. In a well-known phrase that some have seen as a spoof on orthodoxy, Sadi tells his readers that they should be grateful to God for the minute blessings of life, even the simple act of breathing. He writes:

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Every inhalation of the breath prolongs life and Every expiration of it gladdens our nature; So, every breath confers two benefits And for every benefit a gratitude is due Whose hands and tongue are capable To fulfil the obligation of such thanks to Him? (Saadi Shirazi 2016: 14–15, slightly modified) In the column, ‘Lesson on Golestån’, we learn of Åkhund Mollå Mohammad Båqer Åqå, a qåzi (judge) in Yerevan. He was also a teacher at a local Russian school where he taught sharia law, Arabic and Persian to Muslim students in the afternoons. He interpreted the introduction to Golestån in this way for his students: instead of thanking God, he praised the tsar and the Russian state for the good salary he received and blessed the continuation of the government. Then, he explained that the statement ‘for every benefit a gratitude is due’ meant students should bring gifts of gratitude to him, such as cash, food or clothing. Indeed, a good ‘gratitude’, such as a pair of hand-made socks, could earn a student good grades for his sharia lessons (MN 9, 3 March 1907: 3–6). Other satirical pieces in the style of Golestån dealt with political issues. A poem titled ‘Spoof on One of the Stories of Golestån of Sadi of Shiraz’, appeared after Muhammad Ali Shah Qajar and Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II were both removed from power in 1908–9. In Såber’s poem, the shah and the sultan commiserated, lamenting their mutual downfall on the part of their respective peoples (MN 32, 9 August 1909: 6). Poems such as these brought comic relief and enhanced the reader’s regional pride, celebrating how two neighbouring Muslim brethren had brought down two powerful kings in two revolutions. Politics of the animal kingdom As we saw earlier, the principles of physiognomy have influenced the world of caricature since its inception. Both Goya and Daumier used animal forms in their allegorical representations of the church and the British monarchy, as well as in their renditions of abstract concepts such as truth or hope. Punch took this process further and created an entire jungle, in which various animals stood for different nations and political figures. To achieve a sense of familiarity and immediate recognisability, Punch drew on a range of existing national and geographic symbols, and invented many new ones. The powerful ruler of this imaginary kingdom was the British lion, whose authority was challenged by the Russian bear and others from time to time. The Chinese dragon, the German fox and the Indian tiger lived alongside the Persian cat, the Tibetan llama, the Egyptian crocodile and the Irish devil-fish. It was as if an evolutionary hierarchy regulated the animal kingdom of Punch, putting every creature in its proper place. British members of parliament and other politicians were satirised in the pages of Punch as insects, reptiles and mammals. However, these allegorical

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Figure 8.15  The British Lion and the Russian Bear bickering over Afghanistan: ‘No, you don’t.’ Source: Punch, 14 March 1885.

figures did not follow a specifically designated pattern and might change from issue to issue depending on the subject matter. In contrast, the caricatures of various nations were generally based on their political relationship to Britain. The Irish, whose struggle for independence was despised by Punch, was continuously portrayed as a devil-fish (octopus), the ugliest animal of the kingdom, whose tentacles reached out to strangle people. But caricatures of Egypt changed depending on the political climate. When Britain occupied Cairo in 1882 to quell the nationalist ‘Uråbi Revolt (1879–82), Egypt was portrayed as a dangerous crocodile straddled by the mighty John Bull, that is, England (Figure 8.17). A year later, Egypt was portrayed as a helpless baby, tightly swaddled like a mummy and embraced by her nanny, Lord Gladstone, when, in reality, it was Prime Minister Gladstone who had crushed the ‘Uråbi Revolt the previous year (Figure 8.18). Anthropomorphic caricatures of Punch followed the same pattern and included many old and new stereotypes of the Oriental, the African and the Ottoman. Despite bitter rivalry and enmity between Russia and Britain over imperialist interests in the Middle East and Asia, Russia was part of the European family and therefore portrayed as a mighty bear, a capable adversary to the British lion. But the more consistent villain of Punch, Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II, was routinely Figure 8.16  The Irish Devil-Fish. portrayed as a conniving and duplicitous backstabber Source: Punch, 18 June 1881. targeting Europeans and smaller Christian provinces of

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Figure 8.17  ‘Hold on!’ Source: Punch, 10 June 1882.

Figure 8.18  Nurse Gladstone: ‘Oh the little ducky-wucky! Never will it’s Nana leave it till it can run quite alone; never!!’ Source: Punch, 25 August 1883.

the Ottoman Empire. The autocratic sultan was not popular at home for having abrogated the 1876 constitution, but the caricatures of the sultan in Punch were aimed at the supposed overall character of the Turkish people. The short forehead, beady eyes, droopy nose and protruding jaw of the sultan played on anti-Semitic principles of physiognomy that identified such a person as racially inferior and unworthy of trust. He also appeared to be hallucinating under the influence of opium (Figure 8.19). Additionally, the sultan was shown to be a bully and stood in stark contrast to the much more amiable Greek character. The long straight hair, large forehead and big eyes of the Greek nationalist, who was slim and handsome, suggested a much closer kinship between Greeks and Europeans, setting the Christian Greeks racially apart from the Muslim Ottomans (Figure 8.20). Through the periodical, readers across the continent followed major international events such as the late nineteenth-century massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, the Chinese Boxer Rebellion of 1899, the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906. These and other events were graphically, if not objectively, illustrated through cartoons at a time when journalism and photography were at their infancy in the Middle East and South Caucasus. The pioneering caricatures and illustrations of Mollå Nasreddin on global politics were a response to Punch. These illustrations helped many Azerbaijanis, Iranians, Ottomans and other Muslims reclaim their sense of dignity, and provided a venue through which the dominant European discourse on global affairs was contested. However, Mollå Nasreddin’s illustrations were not just a response to Punch. There was a long tradition of artistic

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Figure 8.19  ‘No hurry!’ The Sultan. ‘Dear, dear! How they do dawdle! Such a time in coming to a decision!’ Source: Punch, 31 July 1897.

Figure 8.20  ‘My friends – the enemy!’ Greece (acknowledging defeat): ‘My mistake sir.’ Jubilant Sultan: ‘Not at all! Extremely indebted to you! You’ve quite set me on my legs again!’ Source: Punch, 22 May 1897.

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allegorical works in Persian literature and miniature art featuring anthropomorphic animals. In classical tales and miniature paintings, the animal kingdom represented the human world of intrigue. An early example was Kalila va Dimna, an Indian book of fables that was translated into Persian in the eighth century ce. Kalila va Dimna revolved around a set of cunning trickster jackals in a large forest who protected the more vulnerable creatures of the animal kingdom by playing on the vanity of the fearsome animals, such as the lions and bears. A large number of medieval illustrated manuscripts are devoted to these stories and exist in the various languages of the Middle East. Mollå Nasreddin’s vision of an animal kingdom connected its readers to this well-beloved trope and turned Figure 8.21  A scene from Kelileh va Demneh. contemporary political equations of Source: User Zereshk on en.wikipedia, Public Punch upside down in at least two ways. domain, via Wikimedia Commons. First, in the pages of Mollå Nasreddin, powerful European nations were portrayed as savage predators or as human poachers, thieves and criminals. For example, in one cartoon, a mighty lion representing the Ottoman Empire stands on the Balkan Peninsula facing a pack of wild jackals, who represent the European powers (Figure 8.22). In another, the fate of Bulgaria after its independence is pondered. Bulgaria, which had won its independence thanks to Russia, distanced itself from the tsarist empire and began cooperating with other European countries, as well as with Turkey, making Russia angry at their new alliances (Figure 8.23). In a third and related cartoon, an Austrian wolf ravages Bosnia, while Germany, Russia and smaller Balkan entities watch, hoping to get a piece of the meat (Figure 8.24). Finally, in a cartoon on North Africa, Germany sprinkles seeds to entice Morocco (and Iran) to come its way while France and Britain watch angrily (Figure 8.25). The second way in which Mollå Nasreddin’s cartoons challenged the contemporary political formulas of Punch was by presenting their own narratives of the major political events of the Middle East and North Africa. The dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire was a recurring theme in the pages of the periodical. Several graphics chronicled the Arab Conquest of Spain in 717, the defeat of the Ottomans in the Battle of Vienna in 1683 and the loss of Ottoman territory after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–8 (Figure 8.26).3 In one illustration, the British navy is anchored on the shores of the Ottoman Empire. France, Austria and Germany climb up the ancient Ottoman tree and cut off its branches while a placid Sultan Abdul Hamid II swings carefree in

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Figure 8.22  ‘In the Austrian newspapers we read that the Balkan nations have drawn weapons against Ottoman officials, over Crete. If these stories are true, it reminds us of the “Story of the Lion and the Jackal”’ (Kelileh va Demneh). Source: MN 32, 9 August 1909.

his garden. Some branches of the tree have already been cut, while others such as Bosnia/Herzegovina, Serbia and Bulgaria are about to break. The internal enemies of the empire, including the sheikh al-Islam (Grand Mufti), are portrayed as worms. They are working from within, helping to finish off the rotten tree as it is being hacked away by the European colonial powers (Figure 8.27). In Mollå Nasreddin’s hierarchical animal kingdom, Iran and Turkey were portrayed as stalwart beasts of the jungle. In one illustration, a group of poachers representing Russia, Britain and Turkey, as well as reactionary forces inside Iran, have roped an Iranian lion who is resisting mightily (Figure 8.28). In the counter-discourse of Mollå Nasreddin, Eurocentric hierarchies are subverted. The predator European nations, the wolves and the vultures, set up cock fights for their amusement and entertainment. Meanwhile, the small nations of the Middle East and Africa, represented by the chickens, helplessly watch the two mighty birds fight. Standing to the side are the crows and the lizards, hoping to dine on the leftovers (Figure 8.29).

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Figure 8.23  ‘The Balkan Question’. Source: MN 5, 1 February 1909.

Figure 8.24  ‘The Balkan Issue’. Source: MN 11, 15 March 1909.

In another cartoon, we witness a border dispute between Iran and Turkey. The two countries are portrayed as a majestic lion and a ferocious tiger howling at each other. Meanwhile, in the background, a defenceless Morocco, presented as a sheep, is caught between European wolves and a Spanish bull, who are ready to attack it. The implication is that the larger nations of the Middle East (Iran and Turkey) have abandoned the sheep instead of bringing them under their protection (Figure 8.30). We can contrast this scene in Mollå Nasreddin to another in Punch, published after the 1882 British suppression of the ‘Uråbi Revolt in Egypt. In the animal kingdom of Mollå Nasreddin, the lion (Iran) and the tiger (Turkey) are expected to help the smaller nations and are blamed for ignoring them. However, the animal kingdom of Punch has a different hierarchy. The mighty British lion is portrayed as having received his ‘just share’ of the spoils of war. The lion keeps his paws on a murdered Egyptian crocodile and asserts his right as the other animals of the kingdom watch or growl timidly (Figure 8.31). This cartoon was a reference to a recent agreement by six European powers (Italy, France, Russia, Spain, Germany and Austria) that forced Britain to declare Egypt a protectorate and promise to leave it soon. The Ottoman Empire, which is shown as a cringing fox, had been excluded from this meeting despite its historic ties to Egypt. Britain went on to ignore this agreement and stayed in Egypt for another seventy years.

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Figure 8.25  Enticing Morocco and Iran. Source: MN 24, 1 July 1907.

The erotic and the devilish in French and German modernism In the late nineteenth century, avant-garde artists explored the bohemian lifestyles of Paris and Munich. In France, the new art of the belle époque was centred on the networks of cafés, music halls and nightclubs of Montmartre, which catered to the rich and middle classes who came in search of leisure and fun (Cate and Shaw 1996). One of the most gifted artists of the era, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901), captured the city’s prevalent sense of mindless gaiety, frivolity and unabashed sexuality in his individual caricatures and his colourful lithographic posters of the famous Moulin Rouge and Folies Bergère dance halls.4 An interest in cabaret lifestyle was characteristic of this time, as seen in the works of the great impressionist Edgar Degas, who was ToulouseLautrec’s master, as well as in the novels of Guy de Maupassant (Fermigier 1969; Gallo 1972). But Toulouse-Lautrec moved beyond the early optimism of the impressionists and captured the sombre sense of alienation that pervaded Paris. The protagonists of Toulouse-Lautrec’s works were dancers and prostitutes, women who were outcasts not only because of their dishonourable professions, but also because of their presumed personal vice, gluttony, drunkenness and homosexuality. Toulouse-Lautrec portrayed them with a mixture

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Figure 8.26  Top: ‘Arab attacks on Europe in the past’. Bottom: ‘European attacks on Arabs today’. Source: MN 31, 27 August 1911.

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Figure 8.27  ‘Islamic Caliphate: The Monarchy of Sultan Abdul Hamid’. Source: MN 11, 17 March 1907.

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Figure 8.28  Ensnaring the mighty Iranian lion. Source: MN 42, 11 November 1907.

of tenderness and melancholy without losing sight of the erotic dimensions of their lives. He wished to portray his subjects in their daily routines without succumbing to vulgarity or obscenity. Still, his drawings of Montmartre were shocking for the Parisian artistic sensibilities of the time (Stokstad 1995: 1027–8; Fermigier 1969: 146–71). It was his colourful lithographic posters of the Moulin Rouge that immortalised him. Dressed in ruffled lace skirts and with pronounced décolletage, the chorus girls kicked their stocking-laced legs up in the air in unison with great energy and vivacity. This was the belle époque of fin-de-siècle Paris, depicted through dancing girls who performed before detached and dispassionate audiences (Feinblatt and Davis 1985; Gallo 1972: 106–8). On a few occasions, Rotter used the imagery of can-can dancers in his caricatures for Mollå Nasreddin, but for an entirely different effect. In one

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Figure 8.29  ‘From the world of politics’. Source: MN 49, 30 December 1907.

Figure 8.30  Fight between the Iranian lion and the Ottoman tiger. Source: MN 33, 2 September 1907.

Figure 8.31  The Lion’s Just Share. Source: Punch, 30 September 1882.

348 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN scene, a large group of plump prostitutes kick up their legs in a vulgar display of song and dance as they enter the Muslim quarters of Tiflis. Like ToulouseLautrec’s chorus girls, these women were dressed in black stockings and flowing skirts, exposing much of their undergarments as they danced. Half drunk, with bottles of wine in hand, they weave their way into town as the entire male community lines up on both sides of the street, bowing their heads in d ­ eference. One man carries a bouquet of flowers to welcome them. Another plays the drums, accompanying the dancers. The caption reads: Two years ago due to the skirmishes that took place in 1905 and 1906, the brothels of Tiflis were closed down and the prostitutes left the area. However, they were not permitted to open shop in any other community. So, the Muslim community of Tiflis petitioned the governor to reopen the brothels in their community and they returned. Thus, Mollå Nasreddin stylistically appropriated an image of ToulouseLautrec, but augmented the sketch with a heavy moralistic tone entirely absent from Toulouse-Lautrec’s work. A similar stylistic appropriation took place with another avant-garde artist, Thomas Theodor Heine (1867–1948), the German-Jewish illustrator for Simplicissimus. Given the German background of both Schmerling and Rotter, as well as their experience at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, both artists would have been thoroughly familiar with this celebrated ­publication.  Simplicissimus stood for a fool, a simple man and a victim of injustice. The character was based on a seventeenth-century novel of the same name by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen ­(1621–76). Much like a king’s jester, Simplicissimus pointed an a­ ccusatory finger at others and held up a ‘mirror to his time’ (Hiles 1996: 64). The weekly magazine began publication in Munich on April Fool’s Day. As the first German journal to combine politics, caricature and literature for a mass audience, Simplicissimus soon became a sensation, and its circulation reached 480,000 (Arnold 1983: 10). Heine was influenced by realism, impressionism, symbolism and Japanese prints. He had a great gift for satire and parody and combined serious social commentary on child labour and workingclass conditions with humorous anecdotes (Hiles 1996: 34).5 His prints for Simplicissimus often drew on imaginative creatures such as peacocks, bulldogs, Pegasus and the devil. Lucifer played a major role in many artworks of Heine and represented the unfettered, free-spirited and malevolent nature of modern journalism.6 As we saw earlier, the devilish shaitån was also a favourite literary and artistic device in the pages of Mollå Nasreddin. Rotter stylistically appropriated Heine’s Lucifer, without adopting the complex layers of meaning associated with the image in German literature. Unlike the rebellious Satan of Simplicissimus, who stood as an artistic and political challenge to the intolerance of Protestant Reformation, the shaitåns of Mollå Nasreddin were mentors and guides to the conservative Muslim clerics and the reactionary shah. In autumn 1907, in a large two-page illustration, the editors of

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Mollå Nasreddin anticipate a political coup in Tehran led by the shaitån and his accomplices. Rotter’s illustration shows the shaitån carrying Sheikh Fazlullah Nuri, the arch enemy of the constitutional order, on his shoulders, as he moves towards the Iranian parliament to shut it down (Figure 8.34). Several months later, on 23 June 1908, Colonel Vladimir Liakhov ­(1869–1919), who was in the service of the shah as the head of the Russian Cossack Brigade in Tehran, carried out a similar coup against the parliament. Mollå Nasreddin now portrayed Liakhov as a monster with devilish features, stealing Iran’s parliament (Figure 8.35). There were other significant differences between Simplicissimus and Mollå Nasreddin with regard to their use of the devil trope. In the German satirical publication, Satan represented artistic genius, a challenge to religious dogmatism and a taste for forbidden erotic love. However, in the pages of Mollå Nasreddin, the shaitån stood for the anti-democratic and anti-­constitutionalist machinations of the conservative clergy. For this very reason, the depiction of the shaitåns in Mollå Nasreddin were far more offensive to the public, especially to the Muslim clerics of Iran and South Caucasia. No one had ever dared suggest such a visual association between clerics and the shaitåns, a sacrilegious parallel in Muslim culture. To say that Nuri, one of the most important clerics of Iran, was aided by the devil himself, and that clerics regularly consulted with the shaitån to undermine

Figure 8.32  Prostitutes returning to the Muslim Quarter of Tiflis. Source: MN 6, 10 February 1908.

Figure 8.33  Poster from Simplicissimus, 1896. Source: Thomas Theodor Heine, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

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Figure 8.34  Anticipating the coup in Tehran. Source: MN 35, 17 September 1907.

Figure 8.35  ‘In front of dragons I am a bull, but to manage such assemblies (Majles) I’m a dragon!’ Source: MN 16, 21 April 1908.

the liberal supporters of the constitutional order, were blasphemous propositions, to say the least. This provocative interpretation of the shaitån as the diabolical guide of the anti-constitutionalist forces struck a chord with journalists inside Iran. From 1907 to 1908, Ali Akbar Dehkhodå published several columns for Sur-e Esråfil (Tehran), where he compared the anti-constitutionalist clerics to the shaitåns. In the far more conservative environment of Iran, where Islam was the state religion, these columns, which had no accompanying illustrations, had severe consequences. They led to a dramatic confrontation between anticonstitutionalist forces and the journal and eventually the execution of the managing editor of Sur-e Esråfil, Mirzå Jahångir Khån Shiråzi, in June 1908.7 Russian Realism and Russian revolutionary art In 1863, a group of artists affiliated with the Imperial Academy of Arts in St Petersburg broke with the conservative methods and subject offerings of their institution and turned their attention to social concerns, such as the plight of peasants, urban workers and impoverished women. By 1870, they had formed the Society for Travelling Art Exhibitions, called Peredvizhniki (travellers or itinerants), and became known as Critical Realists. They were influenced by

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the liberalism of the 1860s and by Populist thinkers such as Nikolai Chernyshevsky (1828–89) and Leo Tolstoy (1847–1910). They were also bold in their attacks on corrupt church officials and outspoken in their support for peasants’ and women’s rights. In their view, the purpose of art was to communicate emotionally with the viewer. Taking a page from Tolstoy, they believed that art was great if it was ‘accessible and comprehensible to everyone’ (Bowlt 1982: 18). Russian Critical Realists used the art canvas as a site to create narratives about village life. They focused on the complex realities of villages, the economic disparity between town and country, and the superstitions of hardworking peasants. They differed from the Populist narodniks, who had romanticised the Russian communal village institutions known as the mir. The Critical Realists regarded many social and cultural practices of village life as impediments to ‘the emancipation of the individual’ (Valkenier 1977: 87–8). Figure 8.36  ‘Listen, the newly educated The most celebrated artist of this period was want to abandon the old pagan rites. Ilya Repin (1844–1930), some of whose students Brothers, don’t allow this!’ sympathised with the Russian Revolution of Source: MN 23, 25 June 1907. 1905.8 These young artists began to publish illustrated satirical periodicals such as Leshii, Adskaia Pochta, Plamia and Signaly, among others.9 Repin’s series of paintings on religious processions (1880–3), such as Krestny khod (Procession), showed a multitude of characters and social types in a large crowd (Sternin 1985: 100). These paintings seem to have influenced some of the illustrations of Mollå Nasreddin, especially its depictions of Muslim religious processions in South Caucasus. The artists of Mollå Nasreddin generally shared the social criticisms of the Critical Realist school. Before joining the staff of Mollå Nasreddin, Schmerling and Rotter had produced a number of paintings in the Critical Realist style. They focused on similar themes in their cartoons, depicting tsarist or British colonial rulers, rich landowners and local clerics carting off the harvest of hard-working peasants. In one cartoon by Schmerling we see the landowner not only taking away the harvest, but also using the peasants as animals to haul away the crop. In another illustration by Rotter, various classes of men – landlords, clerics and presumably tax collectors – sit on the back of an impoverished peasant, enjoying their conversations as the poor peasant gasps for air. A cartoon titled Feast had a similar theme. It showed state authorities, landowners and clerics as wolves, each with their identifying headgear, such as a turban or a royal officer’s cap. They were barbecuing a group of impoverished

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Figure 8.37  Landlord and peasants. Source: MN 9, 3 March 1907.

peasants on charcoal and salivating as they waited for their meal to be prepared (Figure 8.39). Critical Realists often contrasted the comfortable lifestyle of the Muslim elite to that of starving peasants and their families. In one scene, two men and a woman enjoy a bottle of wine in a garden in Kåråbåkh. They are approached by an impoverished mother with two children, who asks them for help, but they rebuff her with a nasty show of force. Other illustrations exposed the drunken bouts of the elites and their sexual escapades. One Mollå Nasreddin cartoon included a Persian poem celebrating merriment and drinking with one’s beloved, ignoring the world no matter the cost. The image included multiple bottles and glasses of wine, a drunken man stepping on top of a table, and men and women in highly compromising amorous positions. This was a common theme in Russian journals of this period such as Satire. However, given the religious prohibition on drinking and the mixing of unrelated men and women in the Muslim culture, these images would

Figure 8.38  Exploiting the peasants. Source: MN 16, 21 April 1907.

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Figure 8.39  ‘Feast’. Source: MN 6, 10 February 1907.

have been far more explosive for Mollå Nasreddin’s readers than for their Russian counterparts. Russian Critical Realism and everyday life Russian periodicals of the 1905 Revolution were another important influence on Mollå Nasreddin. Between 1905 and 1907, some 380 newspapers of caricature and satire were published in Russia, to which many talented writers, poets, painters and graphic artists contributed. The writers and illustrators were from many nationalities. Around fifty of these publications were in Yiddish, and about twenty were published in Ukrainian (King and Porter 1983: 44). Soon, illustrated newspapers became the site for complex political and social discourse. Relentless criticism of the tsar, his ministers, the Russian Orthodox Patriarch, the police, and of the military officials who had been involved in the Bloody Sunday massacre in St Petersburg on 22 January 1905, ensued. The satirical newspapers of 1905 were quite diverse. Many were witty and vitriolic, some dull and vulgar, they were sold on street corners, seized by police from the hands of readers, torn up at the presses – and yet they only grew in number, deriving their energy and rage from the strikes that brought them forth. (King and Porter 1983: 36)

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354 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN Tiflis was part of this revolutionary effervescence, and Mollå Nasreddin’s artistic and social philosophy was intimately entwined with the Russian scene and its newspapers. Some of these newspapers were illustrated by artists from the World of Art movement, who worked anonymously. Led by Sergei Diaghilev (1872–1929) and Alexander Benois (1870–1960), these artists of the fin-de-siècle movement were influenced by Symbolism. At first, they had little interest in politics, though they were in close contact with European art circles, including the German artists of Simplicissimus (Bowlt 1982: 52). The revolutionary experience transformed some World of Art illustrators, who now turned to social and political issues. At the height of the revolution, many travelled to Munich to learn more about the art of political satire from the contributors of Simplicissimus.10 Although most were not radical socialists and did not belong to any political party, they sympathised with the demands of the revolution, commented on the degenerate status quo, and portrayed the vast gap between the impoverished and the rich in periodicals such as a Adskaia Pochta, Signaly and Leshii (King and Porter 1983: 45; Bowlt 1982: 251). Some of these publications also tried to replicate the experience of Punch or Simplicissimus for a Russian audience by naming themselves after a folk character or bringing folk elements into their publication. Leshii, for example,

Figure 8.40  ‘Poor (hungry people) of Qarabåkh and Zangezur and Generous Nobles’. Source: MN 30, 27 October 1906.

PUNCH, SIMPLICISSIMUS AND THE WORLD OF ART

Figure 8.41  ‘Drink and Be Merry, to Hell with Decency’. Source: MN 6, 12 May 1906.

Figure 8.42  Cover of Satire, 1906. Source: Satire 1, 1906.

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356 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN is a wood goblin, a folk trickster who lives in the forest. He is not an evil personage, but a gentle being who pays a great deal of attention to natural ecology and shows no mercy to the destroyers of earth. But he also likes to fool gullible people. These publications had the most immediate influence on Mollå Nasreddin. These periodicals often featured a large full-page graphic on the front page, with smaller illustrations inside the journal. They included a mix of poetry, news, ads, notices of theatrical events, fake or real ‘Letters to the Editor’ and mock interviews. Most adopted a strong anti-colonial and antiimperialist orientation. Many expressed sympathy for socialist ideals. They included a combination of high and low culture. The writers and artists tapped into classical Figure 8.43  Government bureaucrats putting on Russian and European literature to discuss contemporary issues. There were satirical the brakes and preventing FREEDOM from renditions of Nietzsche’s 1885 Thus Spoke moving towards LAW and JUSTICE. Zarathustra (Burelom 1, 1905), and a mock Source: Fonar 3, 29 December 1905. dialogue based on Goethe’s Faust. Russian publications of this era heavily promoted the new constitutional order as well as freedom of press and other civil liberties. In one illustration in Fonar’ (Flashlight), a woman representing ‘freedom’ rides in a Greek chariot. She is moving towards ‘law’ and ‘justice’ while government bureaucrats put the brakes on the chariot, trying to destroy its wheels, and collectively preventing her from moving in that direction (Figure 8.43). In another cartoon in K Svetu (Towards the Light), authorities decapitated journalists and intellectuals and fed them into a meat grinder. Yet, much to their horror, a mighty serpent emerged from the other end of the grinder (Figure 8.44). This image of the serpent also appeared in Mollå Nasreddin. While the giant serpent stood for voices of resistance in the pages of the Russian periodical, serpents representing anti-constitutionalist forces appeared in the pages of Mollå Nasreddin (Figure 8.45). The radical Russian press was hostile towards the Russian Orthodox Church and condemned anti-Semitism. It also sympathised with the demands of workers and peasants. In cartoons that were heavily influenced by Goya and Daumier, workers were portrayed sympathetically, carrying donkeys on their backs or positioned with capitalists standing over them (Figure 8.46). In a series of short-lived illustrated newspapers, such as Plamia, Pulemet (Machine Gun), Signaly, Zhupel (Bugbear) and Burya (Wave), Russian artists also flirted with the fantastic and the macabre to produce dramatic social commentaries (Valkenier 1977: 96). One illustration resembled Daumier’s iconic image of a lone grieving woman after the 1871 defeat of the Paris

PUNCH, SIMPLICISSIMUS AND THE WORLD OF ART

Figure 8.44  The meat grinder. Source: K SVETU (Towards the light) 2, March 1906, in King and Porter 1983, 44.

Figure 8.45  Constitutionalism and its enemies. Source: MN 43, 18 November 1907.

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358 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN

Figure 8.46  Cover of Signaly, 1906. Source: Signaly 4, 1906.

Commune (see Figure 7.34). Here, the angel of death stood with his sickle amid a sea of dead people, wondering aloud, ‘How will I deal with so many dead people?’ (Figure 8.47). The World of Art artists were fascinated with representations of death and the grotesque in ‘an almost expressionist concern with violence, pain, sickness, and death’ (Valkenier 1977). Looking at the graphics of this period one is indeed struck by the haunting images of death. There are numerous cartoons featuring blood-stained walls after massacres by the tsarist regime, skeletons rummaging through the streets, and scenes of hysterical slaughter. These images seem to have served as an outlet for artistic fantasy (Valkenier 1977: 252). In contrast, the artists of Mollå Nasreddin remained within the Enlightenment tradition of Goya and Daumier, even when they dealt with violence and rituals of death. Here again, as with the adaptations of the devil from Simplicissimus or the can-can dancers of Toulouse-Lautrec, this stance might appear as an artistic limitation. However, given the centrality of

Figure 8.47  ‘How will I deal with so many dead people?’ Source: Burya 4, 28 January 1906.

Figure 8.48  Fragment of a Muharram street battle. Source: MN 5, 1 February 1909.

PUNCH, SIMPLICISSIMUS AND THE WORLD OF ART

Shii rituals of mortification in Iranian and South Caucasian cultures, Mollå Nasreddin’s portrayal of the grotesque aspects of these rituals was a shocking breach of tradition (Figure 8.48). The artists, poets and writers were presenting a life-affirming view of social reality. Theirs was a counter-discourse to the death rituals of Shiism and its practices that inflicted pain on the body of believers, which had until then formed a core part of the identity of South Caucasian Muslims. The artists of Mollå Nasreddin adapted aspects of the Russian Critical Realism school for a diasporic Shii Muslim community and pioneered an art form that focused on the everyday lives of the poor – especially peasants, women and children. They produced a similar political narrative to illustrate key moments in the history of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906–11. As a result, they left us an unparalleled illustrated documentary of that revolution, a subject that will be discussed in a future volume.

Notes 1. Copies of these publications can be found at the Illinois University Library, of the University of Illinois Champagne-Urbana. A more comprehensive collection exists at the University of Melbourne, Australia. For our discussion of Simplicissimus (1896–1944, 1954–1967), we have drawn on copies of the paper as well Appelbaum 1975; Arnold 1983; and Hiles 1996. 2. For life of the artists, see Spielmann 1895; Prager 1979; and Williams 1955: i–xiii. 3. After the defeat of the Ottomans at the Battle of Vienna in 1683, the empire steadily lost territories in the centuries that followed. The memory of the devastating losses of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–8 was still fresh in the minds of the Muslims of South Caucasus. The Russian Empire’s goal was to reclaim territories that had been lost in the 1853 Crimean War and to re-establish its power in the Black Sea area. 4. Born to a conservative aristocratic family with monarchist sympathies and trained at the École des Beaux Arts, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec suffered from medical problems that stunted his growth. Soon, he cut his ties with most members of his unsympathetic elite milieu and made the cafés, nightclubs and brothels of Montmartre his home. 5. For a discussion of the other artists of Simplicissimus, see Appelbaum 1975: xv–xxx. 6. Between the years 1899 and 1909, Heine produced sixty highly critical cartoons about the Kaiser. When World War I started, like many other German social democrats, he turned nationalist, and the journal lost much of its critical appeal. In 1933, with the establishment of the Nazi regime, Heine, who was Jewish, was forced into exile and spent the remainder of his life outside Germany. 7. Ali Akbar Dehkhodå fled the country and was spared. For more on the writings of Dehkhodå, see J. Afary 1996, Chapter 5; and the introduction to Dehkhodå 2016. 8. Ilya Repin himself was ambivalent about the revolution. For details see Valkenier 1990: 167. Other key Social Realists were Isaac Brodsky (1883–1939), Alexander  Lyubimov (1897–1955), Pyotr Dobrynin (1877–1948) and Boris Kustodiev (1878–1927), who taught his own masterclass during the revolution. See King and Porter 1983: 38, 45, 127. A decade later, after the 1917 Revolution, some of these men would become prominent Soviet artists. 9. Repin’s work was known in Iran and South Caucasus, including by some of the Iranian artists who were intrigued by his classic series of drawings, The Barge

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360 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN Haulers on the Volga (1870–3). These paintings show a group of workers pulling a large boat along the shore by tying the boat to their bodies. The Iranian adaptation of this scene appeared in several newspapers of the Constitutional Revolution. However, these renditions differed in interpretation as well as in artistic form. Repin had illustrated the poverty and hard life of the individual workers, but the adaptations of Kashkul (1907) and Azerbaijan (1906) revolved around nationalist and anti-colonialist sentiments. 10. Some of the most important artists were Konstantin Somov (1869–1939), Ivan Bilibin (1876–1942), Mstislav Dobuzhinsky (1875–1957), Boris Anisfeld (1879–1937) and Evgenii Lanser (1875–1946). See King and Porter 1983: 38. For a discussion of the satirical press of this period, see Levitt and Minin (2013a).

Epilogue

The 1917 Russian Revolution brought the tsarist Russian Empire to a sudden end. Soon, in the area that today constitutes the republics of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic was declared. When that federation was also dissolved in May 1918, the leading Musåvåt Party declared the formation of the independent Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, adopting the name that until then had referred to the province of Azerbaijan inside Iran. The new state was the first modern parliamentary republic in the Muslim world, preceding the formation of a republic in neighbouring Turkey. Among its most important accomplishments was the extension of suffrage to women. Mirza Jalil and Hamideh Khånum kept their distance from the new government. They neither opposed nor embraced it, probably because despite the republic’s democratic rhetoric they mistrusted the leaders of the new republic who were all descendants of beys and khåns. Hasan bey Agayev, a wellknown political figure from Ganja, wished to nominate Hamideh Khånum as the representative of Kåråbåkh in the new parliament, but she refused.1 The Azerbaijan Democratic Republic lasted twenty-three workers, but it was attacked by the Red Army in spring 1920. The new Soviet Russia justified the invasion due to its desperate need for the oil of Baku in the midst of a civil war, and what they perceived as the conservative nature of the republic. The Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic was subsequently established on 28 April 1920. The devastation of the 1917 Revolution and the subsequent civil war had led to the migration of thousands of Azerbaijani people across the Aras River into Iran. But migration intensified after the fall of the republic. The refugees were encouraged by the fact that Sheikh Mohammad Khiåbani (1880–1920) had established the short-lived autonomous region of Åzådistan in the Iranian province of Azerbaijan. Among the refugees were Mirza Jalil and his family, who entered Tabriz in September 1920. Six days after their arrival, Khiåbani was killed. Then in early October, Mirza Jalil’s brother, Mirza Ali Akbar, was arrested due to his past revolutionary activities, and banished to the town of Marågheh. The twin blows of the death of Khiåbani and the arrest of Mirza Ali Akbar made life excessively difficult for Mirza Jalil and his family in their new homeland. But soon progressive members of the Tabriz community began trickling down to his

362 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN new place of residence and pleaded with him to republish his journal. Tabriz governor Mokhber al-Saltaneh agreed to licence the periodical and support its continuation, but asked that it appear in Persian, a request Mirza Jalil refused. Eventually they settled on a compromise. The occasional editorials would be in Persian, while the rest of the periodical would be published in Azerbaijani. Mirza Jalil had been told to refrain from criticising the ulema or religious traditions, a stipulation he also ignored (Javanshir 2016: 102; Sardåriniyå 1991b: 165; Habibbeyli 1999: 13). Eight new issues of the periodical were published in Tabriz, starting on 19 February 1921. The Tabriz Mollå Nasreddin focused on social and economic issues in the city and soon gained avid followers. Readers were delighted with the satirical columns on landlords who refused to pay taxes, unpaid salaries of teachers, corruption of officials, unhygienic bathhouses, rampant prostitution, vast unemployment and the need for more charitable activities in the city. In May 1921, Mirza Jalil staged his play The Dead, a performance which became a major cultural event in Tabriz. Still, daily life remained extremely difficult. Food was scarce and the family of ten sometimes had little to eat. Mirza Jalil and Hamideh Khånum sent their sons Anvar and Midhat, and their nephew Teymur, to the Presbyterian American mission school in Tabriz, where the children received both a free breakfast and an education in English. But the couple was dismayed to learn that the school required Muslim students to attend a daily religious service. Mirza Jalil complained about this issue in an article in Mollå Nasreddin and soon the school stopped mandating attendance for Muslim students in its religious services (Javanshir 2016: 112–13).2 Printing a periodical in Tabriz was extremely difficult. In addition to all the logistics of establishing a print shop, there was the attitude of the city officials, who were not used to being satirised and took great umbrage at cartoons portraying them and their bureaus (Javanshir 2016: 105). All these factors contributed to Mirza Jalil’s decision to leave Tabriz when he received a telegram from the soviet of the Azerbaijani People’s Commissariat on 2 May 1921 inviting him and his family to return to Baku and republish the periodical there. At the head of the new Soviet regime in Azerbaijan were some of Mirza Jalil’s old social democratic comrades, such as Narimån Narimånov, who had now become communist leaders. This gave Mirza Jalil great hope that their idealistic dreams for a more progressive Azerbaijani society might be realised. In addition, the state now allocated a budget for the publication of Mollå Nasreddin. After returning to South Caucasus, Hamideh Khånum found out that their Kahrizli estate had been expropriated. The Soviet government instead appointed her director of a weaving factory in Shusha while she began an arduous process of reclaiming their property. For the next ten years, until shortly before Mirza Jalil’s death, the couple divided their time between Baku, where the government had provided a small office for the periodical, and Shusha, where Hamideh Khånum worked. In addition to the long distance between them and the loss of their land and belongings, the couple endured additional hardship and suffered personal tragedies. Mirza Ali Akbar died from

epilogue

pneumonia in May 1922, while Mina, Hamideh Khånum’s daughter from her first marriage, committed suicide in May 1923, leaving three small children under the care of their grandmother (Javanshir 2016: 121). Mirza Jalil initially supported the new soviet regime, including its efforts to create peasant cooperatives and collectives. He did satirise some policies which he viewed as detrimental to the Azerbaijani people, such as the state’s designs on the region’s oil revenue, the expropriation of the land of kulaks (well-to-do peasants), the communist party’s plan to ‘cleanse’ society of undesirable elements, as well as the continued domination of the Russian language in Azerbaijani workplaces. He became active in the People’s Commissariat of Education, the local historical society, and from 1924 served on a committee that replaced the Arabic alphabet with the Latin one, a project he had advocated for decades (Òsaxanlı and Rüstəmova-Tohidi 2002). Azerbaijan officially changed its alphabet from Arabic to Latin on 20 October 1923. Throughout the 1920s, he continued to write short stories and produced a number of plays, including The School in Danabash Village, Damnation (1921), Jerks (1921), Dumb (1923), The Mob of Madmen Assembly (1926) and The Husband (1930), which were performed in Baku, Tiflis, Tashkent, Ashqabad, Kazan, Ufa, Nakhchivan, and Ganja to overwhelming success. In 1928, he was elected the representative of Azerbaijan to the Moscow Committee of Writers, Dramaturges and Composers. In addition, the city of Baku twice celebrated the anniversary of the publication of Mollå Nasreddin, in 1923 and 1931 (Habibbeyli 1999: 14). Yet, in the same period, pressure on Mirza Jalil and Hamideh Khånum to conform to the new Soviet ideology continually increased. They were labelled members of the landowning bourgeoisie and eventually lost all their property (Javanshir 2016: 160–1). As a life-long social democrat, Mirza Jalil had hoped that the new Soviet regime would end the censorship of the tsarist regime and create a more fertile ground for social critique. But starting in 1924, with Stalin’s ascendency, the periodical came under severe ideological control and scrutiny. Mirza Jalil was told to focus on issues of workers and peasants, and especially to combat religious superstition. These were issues that had occupied him his whole adult life. But the state had its own ideas about how these subjects were to be tackled, and Mirza Jalil was criticised for not following the dictates of the Soviet regime. Even more dramatic was the pressure on Mirza Jalil to openly support atheism in his publication. On 23 August 1924, the masthead of the editorial page was changed under pressure. Until then, Mirza Jalil had criticised Muslim religious rituals and orthodox clerics without appearing anti-religious. The old design of the masthead had shown an older man (a father or husband) beating an unveiled young woman (a daughter or sister) with a stick. Behind the man was a fully veiled woman (standing for old traditions) and behind the young woman stood a female jester, standing for Mollå Nasreddin (see Figure 6.2). The new masthead kept these elements but added an additional set of characters. It portrayed God as a master puppeteer controlling a whole slew of religious symbols including Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and a number of other supposedly discredited religious principles and rituals such as belief in God, prayer, ablution and even mourning rituals. All

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364 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN

Figure E.1  The new editorial masthead. Source: MN 2, 11 January 1925.

these rites and religious practices were portrayed as props in the hands of God the Master Puppeteer who beguiled his audiences (Javanshir 2016: 130). In 1926, Mirza Jalil faced another set of hurdles, this time emanating from Iran. The new monarch, Reza Shah Pahlavi (r. 1925–41), was upset by articles and cartoons about him and his government in Mollå Nasreddin and had sent an official letter of protest to the Soviet authorities in Azerbaijan. Moscow forwarded the complaint to the Presidium of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan with an admonition that the Soviet regime wished to maintain amicable relations with the shah. A deputy was sent to ask Mirza Jalil to soften his position towards the Iranian government, especially the person of the shah. Not everyone in the Communist Party of Azerbaijan agreed with this criticism. In December 1926, Ruhollah Akhundov, the secretary of the party, complained: Since its inception, and in the last twenty years, [Mollå Nasreddin] has fought against Iranian feudalists and Iranian monarchs. And yet now that we have a Soviet regime, when the periodical publishes an article against Iranian feudalists, Comrade [Georgi] Chicherin says that such an article would harm our friendship with Iran, and such behaviour is unacceptable. (Òsaxanlı & Rüstəmova-Tohidi 2002) In 1927, Mollå Nasreddin was published in the new Latin script. Few people could read the new alphabet, and this led to a dramatic loss of subscribers, not just in South Caucasus, but also in Iran, where the periodical had continued to have readers. This loss of subscribers and readers was further compounded by new directives from Soviet authorities to change the periodical’s religious orientation. On 9 April 1929, the plenum of the Central Committee of the Azerbaijan Communist Party decided that the periodical would now become the Organ of the League of Atheists (Allahsızlar Òttifaqının Orqanına). In February 1930, Mirza Jalil formally appealed to the Central

epilogue

Committee of the Azerbaijan Communist Party to continue publishing the journal under its original name. At this point, since Mohammad Said Ordubådi had become the de facto editor of the periodical, Mirza Jalil insisted that his name be removed and replaced with a generic ‘editorial board’. A few more issues appeared under the name Mollå Nasreddin. Then, on 18 November 1930, Mirza Jalil suffered a stroke and became partially paralysed. With this incident, the journal came to an end (Javanshir 2016: 141). Several issues under the name Allahsiz (Godless) appeared in 1931 and early 1932 before the periodical stopped publication soon after the death of Mirza Jalil at the age of sixty-six on 4 January 1932 (Òsaxanlı & Rüstəmova-Tohidi 2002). To the end, he remained steadfast to his principles of publishing a free and democratic periodical and keeping his distance from the clerical establishment. Shortly before his death, he asked his wife not to bring a cleric to his funeral (Javanshir 2016: 147). The brave journalist had been muzzled from numerous directions. Long before the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, he had been a champion of the rural and urban poor. But after 1924, the authoritarian Soviet regime, which claimed to stand for the rights of the dispossessed, dictated which aspects of the workers’ lives were deemed ‘ideologically correct’ and which were not. Mirza Jalil was told that since no one on the editorial board was from a working class or peasant family, the periodical was therefore ‘border-line deviant and not really in line with official ideology’ (Javanshir 2016: 163). For over twenty years, Mirza Jalil and his colleagues had followed the treacherous path of criticising Muslim clerics and religious rituals without coming across as atheists. This careful straddling of a perilous boundary had been a key reason for the tremendous popularity of the periodical since the audience of Mollå Nasreddin was torn between reconciling its deep religious values with the requirements of modernity. Now, by including an open and graphic attack on God and all monotheistic religions in the masthead, the periodical had turned off its loyal readers and was doomed in its project of reforming Islam. Additionally, Mollå Nasreddin had used its diasporic locale, that of a Shii Muslim and Turkic-speaking trickster living under tsarist domination with roots in Iran and the Ottoman Empire, to criticise political corruption in its ancestral homelands, but that venue was also shut down. After 1924, the Soviet regime, far more than the former tsarist regime, expected its intellectuals to toe the government line in both domestic and foreign policies. Finally, there was the change in alphabet, followed by the outrageous step of transforming the journal into the organ of the League of Atheists and, eventually the change in the name of the journal from Mollå Nasreddin to Allahsiz, which completely cut off the readers of the periodical, a loyal generation that had followed the various reincarnations of the periodical for twenty-five years. In the end it was all too much (Sardåriniyå 1991b: 45). Immediately after his death, the Soviet regime attempted to rewrite the legacy of this great intellectual. Only officials from the People’s Commissariat of Education were permitted to attend his funeral. An obituary published in the Workers of Baku on 5 January 1932, which referred to Mirza Jalil by his pen name ‘Mollå Nasreddin’, went on to say that he was a

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Figure E.2  The new name of the periodical, Allahsiz. Source: Allahsiz (formerly MN), 2–3 October 1931.

epilogue

typical representative of that part of the middle-class Turkic intellectuals who appeared to be closely associated with the working class after the 1905 Revolution … But that under the new Soviet reality, Molla Nasreddin recognized his backwardness and inability to match the speedy reconstruction of the new society. Hence the magazine edited by him lost its importance. Recently Mollå Nasreddin was reorganized and is now the organ of the Godless (Allahsiz) Society. (Habibbeyli 1999: 14, emphasis added) The next few years were bleak ones for the family. Hamideh Khånum endured incalculable personal tragedies after her husband’s death. Their youngest son Madhat died in 1932 from pneumonia. Her older son Anvar was drafted in World War II, where he was declared missing and presumed dead. Eventually it was revealed that Anvar had fled to Iran in the middle of the war, where he lived and raised his family, including his grandchildren, until his death in 1979. In the 1930s, Hamideh Khånum became the literary executor of her husband’s works and translated a number of his short stories, plays and novels into Russian. In 1934, at the invitation of Mir Jafar Båqerov (1932–53), Chairman of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan, Hamideh Khånum was invited to write a memoir of her life with Mirza Jalil. In his youth, Båqirov had been a great admirer of Mollå Nasreddin and now provided Hamideh Khånum with a stipend, a car and other privileges, so she could write her memoir. Four years later, she returned with a 1,200-page text. Båqirov now demanded that his name be added to the memoir, so he would be remembered for his non-existent contributions. When Hamideh Khånum refused to do so, Båqirov rescinded all her privileges and fired her son Mozaffar from his job. For decades, the memoir remained untouched in dusty shelves until Azerbaijani historian Abbas Zamanov published parts of it in 1967 (Javanshir 2016: xiv).3 Despite the efforts of the Soviet regime to claim the legacy of Mollå Nasreddin as its own, while camouflaging its democratic content, the people of the Azerbaijan Republic never forgot the immense contribution of Mirza Jalil. Busts of him were placed at prominent squares. Schools, libraries, streets and social institutions were named after him, and his work was widely translated, even when its democratic content was heavily buried under accolades inside the Soviet Union. There are over a thousand articles, books and dissertations written about Mirza Jalil and Mollå Nasreddin in the Azerbaijani language. Historians of the Republic of Azerbaijan have celebrated Mollå Nasreddin as a national treasure of the Azerbaijani people and its literature, and have compared Mirza Jalil to Cervantes and Molière. Today, Mirza Jalil is remembered for his pioneering role in establishing the Azerbaijani vernacular, instead of the ornate Ottoman vernacular, as the literary language of the Azerbaijani people. He is also recognised as a founder of the School of Critical Realism in Azerbaijani literature. Finally, he and other contributors to the periodical, especially Ali-Akbar Såber, are known as founders of a literary genre called ‘The Literary School of Followers of Mollå Nasreddin’ (Habibbeyli 1999: 3–4).

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368 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN In today’s discourse, we might consider Mollå Nasreddin a diasporic intersectional publication for multiple reasons: first, the paper exposed the colonial and imperialist policies of the Great Powers in the Middle East, North Africa, India, and even those of the United States and Japan in East Asia. Second, it called for greater dialogue and friendship between rival ethnic and religious communities. It advocated for new bonds of friendship between Armenians and Muslims in a social democratic alliance that worked to improve the living conditions of both communities, particularly for their workers and peasants. In this way, the periodical became a peace advocate shortly after the region had experienced a brutal inter-ethnic war in 1905 between Muslims and Armenians. Third, it defied the Shii-Muslim religious establishments in South Caucasus, Iran and Najaf, and argued for a more progressive interpretation of Islam, thereby challenging the authority of clerics to define what were ‘proper Muslim’ cultural, educational, legal, medical and religious practices. In addition, it worked towards greater cooperation between Shiis and Sunnis and attempted to construct a reformist religious discourse that brought the two dominant branches of Islam closer to one another. Fourth, the periodical chastised the beys and landowning elites of the region and thus became a mouthpiece for the impoverished rural and urban classes. Here, Mirza Jalil took on members of his own social class, since he and his wife were landowners, and oversaw the work of a large number of peasants and craftsmen in their agricultural estate and their textile workshops. Fifth, from the safety of diaspora, Mollå Nasreddin derided the political establishments of Iran and the Ottoman Empire, and occasionally those of other small nations of the region. The journal reported on the major upheavals and achievements of the 1906 Iranian Constitutional Revolution and the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, and in this way became a participant in the revolutionary discourses of the time from afar. In addition, Mirza Jalil’s brother and other staff members crossed the border to Iran to aid the resistance in that country during the Constitutional Revolution. They distributed the periodical in the trenches and had in-person reporters who covered the issues from the ground. Sixth, Molla Nasreddin encouraged the establishment of satirical journals and caricature among people of Iran. Mirza Jalil’s remarkable influence on the satirical press of Iran during the period 1906–11, and later his arrival in Tabriz and publication of the periodical there, further cemented this tradition, one that continued through the 1970s. Finally, and for the first time in the history of the region, Mirza Jalil and his colleagues initiated a radical discourse on gender reform and called attention to the plight of women and children. The periodical became a pioneering advocate of women’s rights in the Muslim world as it exposed the ramifications of gender segregation, polygamy, easy divorce for men and pedophilia involving both boys and girls. For all these accomplishments, Mollå Nasreddin will forever remain a true literary gem of the Azerbaijani-speaking people and the wider Muslim world.

epilogue

Notes 1. Email exchange with Solmaz Tohidi-Rostamova, 4 November 2021. 2. In her memoir, Hamideh Khånum identifies the school as Catholic, perhaps because of the similarity of some rites followed by Protestant Presbyterians and those of the Catholic Church (Javanshir 2016). 3. Hasan Javadi and Willem Floor produced their own English translation of these memoirs (Javanshir 2016), which were extensively relied upon in this work

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References

Archives The Art Museum of Georgia, Tbilisi (Shalva Amiranashvili Museum of Fine Arts) The Bavarian State Archives, Munich The Georgian National Museum, Tbilisi The Institute of Manuscripts of Azerbaijan, Baku The Imperial Academy of Arts, Saint Petersburg The National Parliamentary Library of the Republic of Georgia, Tbilisi Niko Pirosmani Museum, Tbilisi The Presidential Library of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Baku The State Historical and Ethnographic Museum of Georgia, Tbilisi

Molla¯ Nasreddin periodicals Mollå Nasreddin (1906–1931). Vol. 1: 1906–1907. 1988. Baku: Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences. Mollå Nasreddin (1906–1931). Vol. 2: 1908–1909. 2002. Baku: Azerbaijan Dovlet Nesriyyati. Mollå Nasreddin (1906–1931). Vol. 3: 1909–1910. 2005. Baku: Çinar-Çap Neshriyyati.

Other periodicals Burelom Burya Esteqlål Fonår Khåtåblåri Punch or The London Charivari Satire Signaly Simplicissimus Sur-e Esråfil

Secondary sources in Azerbaijani, English, Georgian, Persian, Russian Abdullaev, Z. Z. 1971. ‘Bourgeoisie and Working Class, 1900s’. Issawi: 42–52. ‘About History – The Photography of Dmitri Ermakov’. N.d. Georgia About, (last accessed 15 September 2019).

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383

Index

Note: n indicates a note; italic indicates figure Abdul Hamid II, Sultan, 195, 300, 335, 336, 339–40 Abovyån, Khåchåtur, 31 Abu Bakr, Caliph, 171 Adskaia Pochta (Russian journal), 16, 324, 351, 354 Afary, Janet, 199–200 Afary, Kamran, 8–9 Afghåni, Jamål al-Din, 62n19 Agayev, Hasan bey, 361 Åkhundov, Mirza Fath Ali see Åkhundzådeh, Mirza Fath-Ali Åkhundov, Ruhollah, 364 åkhunds, 41, 42–3, 51, 54, 56, 94, 196, 213, 291, 335 Åkhundzådeh, Mirza Fath-Ali (Axundov, Mirzə Fətəli), 13, 30–4 and Azerbaijani language, 31 background, 31 critique of al-Dowleh’s Yek Kalameh, 33–4 education, 31 and Iran, 33 languages, 31 and religious reform, 33–4 as a social reformer, 32 and theatre, 31–2, 36; Tamsilåt, The, 31–2 and tsarist regime, 33 Alexander I, Tsar, 22, 120 Alexander II, Tsar, 34 Alexander III, Tsar, 34, 35 Alexandra Feodorovna, Tsaritsa, 55 Ali (First Imam), 171 Ali Monsieur, 110n18 Ali-Allahi, 62n15 Ali Akbar, Mirza see Memedqolizådeh, Mirza Ali Akbar

Altstadt, Audrey L., 7, 39, 43 Amin, Muhammad (cleric), 72 Amu-Oghli, Haydar Khån, 110n18 Anderson, Kevin B., 199–200 Anglo-Russian Convention (1907), 322 animal sacrifice, 210–11 Anis al-Dowleh, 127, 127 anti-clericalism, 19, 32, 41, 65 anti-imperialism, 13, 30, 52, 158, 284, 285, 356 Åqa Muhammad Khån Qajar, 22 Aras River, 4, 21, 22, 73, 75, 361 Ardabil, 21 Arfa al-Dowleh, Arfa, 191 Armenia language, 89 literature, 31 political parties, 58, 59 Armenian–Tatar War (1905–7), 6, 58–9, 87, 116 Armenians Baku, 38 cultural identity, 30 and Iranian Constitution, 120 literacy, 47 as migrants, 22–3, 26, 58 nationalism, 59 prejudice against, 71 Tiflis, 2, 14, 29–30, 113, 114, 115 women, 99 art avant-garde, 129, 342 Critical Realist, 12, 16–17, 64, 124, 125, 131, 135, 144, 324, 343–52 Georgian Realist, 113, 128–33 graphic, 4, 11–12, 16–17, 87, 200; see also lithography and justice, 300

385

INDEX



and physiognomy, 287 of protest, 322n6 and racism, 16 Russian, 12, 129, 350–1; World of Art movement, 354 Society for Travelling Art Exhibitions, 124, 350–1 visual, 4; see also caricature; cartoons Arzhangi, Abbas Rassam see Rassåm, Abbas Ashcroft, Bill, 8 Assiette au beurre (French magazine), 284 Atabaki, Touraj, 158n3 Attår (Sufi poet), 166 Axundov, Mirzə Fətəli see Åkhundzådeh, Mirza Fath-Ali Åzådistan, 361 Azerbaijan administration (north and south of River Aras), 22 Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, 6 Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, 357 cultural renaissance, 4, 39–41 formation, 357 national identity, 7, 75 nationalism, 4, 7 see also Baku Azerbaijani language, 4, 6, 7, 13, 29, 32, 51, 66, 67–70, 102 alphabet, 363 literature in, 23, 31, 32, 33, 334 newspapers, 85 schools, 39 textbooks, 110n3 trickster tales and tropes in, 187–226 see also Türki language Azerbaijanis, 5, 23 Baku, 38 literacy, 47 national identity, 5, 23 ‘Azimzådeh, ‘Azim, 64–5, 106–9, 107, 322 Babi movement, 280n6 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 14, 165, 172 Baku Azerbaijanis, 23 Bolsheviks, 56 conflicts (1905), 116 culture, 13, 28 Duma, 35, 52

Ecclesiastical Board, 42 economic growth, 2, 21 Iranian consulate, 118 literacy, 67 migrants, 61 Mollå Nasreddin in, 66, 362 Muslim population, 37, 42, 60 oil industry, 2, 13, 21, 32, 36, 37–9, 37, 57 reform, 11 Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party (RSDWP), 61 schools: Baku School of Art, 109; boarding school for girls, 40, 41, 55; women’s gymnasium, 47 theatre, 39 Balkan Wars (1912–13), 78 Båqer, Muhammad, 212 Båqerov, Ali Asghar, 86 Båqerov, Mir Jafar, 109, 367 Baratov, Pertev Naili, 185n3 Bariatinsky, Prince, 130, 132 bastinado, 82, 83, 107, 128, 205, 206, 312 bazaaris, 37–8 Beeman, William O., 172–3 Behzad, Hussein Tåherzådeh, 119–20 Benois, Alexander, 354 beys, 22, 28, 39, 89, 93, 94–5 Bismarck, Otto von, 159n7 Bohlul the Fool (Bohlul the Wise), 167, 171 Bolsheviks, 56, 116 Boratav, Pertev, 184 boys abuse of see paedophilia birth of, 230 and domestic violence, 244, 248 marriage of, 234 see also children Britain Anglo-Russian Convention (1907), 322 colonialism, 24, 284, 325 British Empire, 136, 341 Brodsky, Isaac, 359n8 Browne, Edward G., 3 Buddhists and Buddhism, 24, 41 Bulgarian independence, 339 Burya (Russian journal), 356 caravanserais, 37, 213 caricature, 65, 87, 324 animal forms, 328–34 conventions, 12

386 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN caricature (cont.) Daumier and, 304 Georgian, 139 Iran, 367 and physiognomy, 287, 337 political, 158, 283, 284, 304, 333, 368 Punch and, 327 reactions to, 72, 89 Russian, 353 school for caricaturists, 135 Caricature, Le (French periodical), 283, 305 cartoons, 1, 4, 266–7, 351–2 animal forms in, 339, 340–1, 356 and clothing, 276 and death, 359 donkey trope in, 293 elites in, 352 entertainment in, 149 and gender behaviour, 276 grotesque, 359 Iranian events and figures, 125, 331, 337, 364 and physiognomy, 12–13 political, 145, 195, 304, 310, 325, 326, 334, 351–3 and polygamy, 255 publication of, 136 Punch’s definition of, 324 and religious subjects, 142 satirical, 125, 219 of women’s lives, 230, 242, 244, 255, 257, 259, 265, 267, 269–72, 275–8 Caspian–Black Sea Society for Commerce and Industries, 37 Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, 26, 34 Catholic Church: Goya’s portrayal of, 286, 291 Catholics, 24, 121 censorship, 51, 66, 78, 79, 86, 92, 356, 363 Daumier and, 305 France, 309 charities, 10, 11, 42, 56, 93, 117, 118, 188, 189, 193, 211, 362 Charivari, Le (French periodical), 283, 305, 312, 326 Chemenzeminli, Yusif Vazir (Kurban Said), 63n21 Chernyshevsky, Nikolai, 31, 351 children abuse of, 158, 304; see also paedophilia

and domestic violence, 244 enslavement of, 45 integration of, 60 and language, 69–70 and marriage, 220, 221, 234–42, 296 and polygamy, 253 see also boys; girls Childs, Elizabeth, 320 Christians and Christianity emancipation of, 77, 78 and humour, 179 and inequality, 11, 35–6 and marriage, 266, 267; of children, 235–6 and migration, 22 Muslim tolerance of, 169, 179, 184–5, 213, 215 Nestorian, 41 portrayal of, 363–4 and racial difference, 337 rituals, 199–200 and sex education, 237 and Sufism, 41 see also Catholic Church; Orthodox Church; churches churches, 41 allegorical representations of, 335 Apostolic Christian Church, 26 Church of England, 324 Evangelical Lutheran, 121 Metekhi Church, Tbilisi, 119 see also Orthodox Church civil services, 26, 28, 34, 35, 36, 52, 59 clerics (Muslim), 42–3, 49, 51, 170 clerical establishment, 176–9, 192–6, 365 Hamideh Khånum and, 93, 99 Jami and, 170–1 and Mollå Nasreddin, 71–2, 73, 78–9, 89, 286, 291 and money making, 192–4 and paedophilia, 221 and rituals, 198, 200, 201 as shaitåns, 291, 293, 348–9 and temporary marriage, 257, 258–9 and translation of the Quran, 41 and tricksters, 180 see also anti-clericalism; beys; mollås Clinton, Jerome, 173 Cock-a-Doodle-Do (Russian periodical), 86 colonialism, 8 British, 24, 145, 284

387

INDEX

European, 78, 286 French, 24 hypocrisy of, 16 and photography, 125 representations of, 283 Russian, 10–11, 13, 21, 23–9, 34, 123 conjurers, 215–16 conjure women, 215–19 Crews, Robert, 7, 10, 27 Crimea, 28, 39 Crimean Wars (1853–6), 34 Cuvier, Georges Léopold, 322n7 Dagestan, 21, 106, 273–4 Dahinden, Janine, 8–9, 10 Daumier, Honoré, 4, 16, 283, 304–22 and allegory, 305, 312 and animal forms, 335 as a caricaturist, 305 and satire, 305 and women’s rights, 315–16 works: A Naples – Le meilleur des rois, 311; Actualités, 315; Blue Stockings and Socialist Women series, 322; Dismayed with Her Heritage, 318; Legislative Belly, The, 319, 318 Davatdarov, Ibrahim bey, 93 Davatdarov, Mina, 93, 95, 363 Davatdarov, Mozaffar, 93 Davis, Dick, 173 Decembrists, 31, 267 Degas, Edgar, 342 Dehkhodå, Ali Akbar, 76–7, 102, 350 devils see shaitåns Diaghilev, Sergei, 354 diasporas, 5–6, 10, 119; see also migrants Diba, Layla, 158n5 divorce, 42, 81, 92, 102, 229, 230, 233, 263–6 Doniger, Wendy, 180 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 76 Douglas, Mary, 71, 173 Dowlatåbådi, Yahya, 120 Dumas, Alexandre, 114 education adults, 11 bilingual, 67, 68 girls, 11, 32, 41, 49, 54–5, 83, 93, 217, 228, 235, 266, 278 and language, 69–70 New Method (Usul-e Jadid), 51, 52, 53, 54, 90, 221

primary, 47, 54 public elementary, 34 religious, 21 scholarships, 41 secondary, 47, 54 sex, 236–7 women, 11, 54–6, 228 see also madrasas; maktabs; schools; universities Efendiyevå, Shafiqa, 55 Eid Qurban (Eid al-Adha), 198, 210, 211 Ekinchi (newspaper), 36 elites (Muslim) cultural, 28–9 education, 26 and marriage, 230 and Pan-Islamism, 51 and peasants, 146 and pederasty, 224–5 and photography, 159n8 and polygamy, 253–7 and women’s emancipation, 228 Enlightenment, 12, 16, 283, 285, 286, 287 Erivan see Yerevan Ermakov, Dmitri Ivanovich Caribaggio, 125–7 ethnic minorities alliance of, 13 depictions of, 157–8 integration of, 28 religious freedom and rights of, 212–15 rights of, 136, 146 Etkind, Alexander, 24, 29 Fåeq, Ömar see Nemånzådeh, Ömar Fåeq Faist, Thomas, 8–9 family law, 42, 228–9 Faråhåni, Muhammad Hasayn, 38 fasting, 177, 178, 198, 200, 204, 206, 208; see also Ramadan fatwas, 3, 41, 72, 94, 192–3 Fauser, Margit, 8–9 Fedayeen, 201 Feldman, Leah, 284 Ferdowsi, Abul-Qåsem, 102, 150, 154, 176, 334 Ferqeh-ye Mujahidin [Organisation of Social Democrats], 120 festivals, 21, 43, 81 martyrdom of Imam Hussein, 43, 45 Muharram, 4, 44, 45–7, 51, 118, 199–204 see also Eid Qurban; Ramadan

388 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN flagellants, 45–6, 45, 46, 81, 199, 201, 203–4, 291, 293 Floor, Willem, 8, 61n2 folk tales, 164–5, 169, 180, 181, 187; see also Nasreddin tales folklore, 1; see also Nasreddin tales Fonar’ (Russian periodical), 356 fools, wise, 166–72, 178 Foucault, Michel, 14, 165, 172 France: colonialism, 24; see also Paris French Revolution, 16, 283, 285 Gåbåshvili, Giorgi (Gigo), 131, 133, 134 Ganja culture, 28, 363 Defåi (political organisation), 59 Divån-e Hekmat (House of Wisdom), 31 Ecclesiastical Board, 42 schools, 54 veils, 273 Gasimova, Turkay, 32 Gasprinskiy, Ismail bey, 47, 54 New Method (Usul-e Jadid), 49, 51, 67 gender equality, 4, 319; see also girls: rights of; women: rights of gender norms, 2, 97 gender segregation, 95, 222, 236, 244, 250, 272, 273, 296, 300, 368 Georgia economy, 113 industry, 121 Mollå Nasreddin in, 4 resistance to Qajars, 22 as a Russian province, 22 see also Tiflis Georgians, 23, 26, 30, 47, 71 Tiflis, 112, 113, 114, 115–16 Germany, 121, 300, 312, 315, 325, 331, 339, 341; see also Munich Academy of the Arts; Nazis Gheyrat Press, 85, 86–7, 150, 192–3 girls birth of, 230, 233 education of, 11, 32, 41, 49, 54–5, 83, 93, 217, 228, 235, 266, 278 kidnapping of, 241–2 marriage of, 234–8, 241–2 rights of, 15–16 segregation of, 236 and sex education, 236–7 sexual harassment of, 235 see also children

Gladstone, William E., 327, 336 gochus, 39 Gogol, Nikolai, 76, 284 Goha (Arab satirist), 185n5 Golitsyn, Prince Grigory Sergeyevich, 58–9 Gorky, Maxime, 76 Goslavski, Joseph, 55 Goya, Francisco José de, 4, 16, 281, 282, 283 use of animal forms, 335 and the Catholic Church, 286, 291 and the demonic world, 313 and dreams, 288 life and ideals, 285–6 use of masks, 289 use of mirrors, 287 and owl symbolism, 296 and physiognomy, 286–7 and women’s rights, 319–20 works: Atropos (Fates), 303, 309; Caprichos, Los, 286, 288–9, 293; Desastres de la Guerra, Los (The Disasters of War), 286, 300, 303; Esto es lo verdadero (This is the Truth), 311; Linda maestra! (Pretty Teacher!), 320, 320; No hay quien nos desate? 303; Pinturas negras (Black Paintings), 286; Que hai que hacer más? (What More Can One Do?), 300, 305; Que Pico de Oro! (What a Golden Beak!), 291, 293; Qué sacrificio! (What a Sacrifice), 319–20, 320; Si quebró el cántaro (If He Broke the Pot), 303, 312; Tu que no puedes (You Who Can’t), 300 Griffiths, Gareth, 8 Grigoriev, Ivan, 110n3 Gudiashvili, Lado, 131, 135 Gvelesiani, Romanoz, 134 Habibbeyli, Isa, 7, 100, 111n27 Hajibekov, Aziz, 8 hajj pilgrimage, 34, 178, 179, 198, 208–11 hajjis, 70, 89, 178, 209, 210 hajjiyehs, 209 Halimeh Khåtoun, 84 Hall, Stuart, 8 Hamideh Khånum (Hamideh Khånum Javånshir), 1, 92–100, 93 and Azerbaijani government, 361 and charity, 56 and conjure women, 216

389

INDEX

early life, 93 and education, 54, 55, 100 and Jalil, Mirza, 9, 54, 84, 93–5, 97–9 and medicine, 99–100 memoir, 98, 100, 367 and Mollå Nasreddin, 64, 100, 227n8 and refugees, 99 and sisterhood vows, 227n9 and Soviet regime, 362 Haqverdiyev, Abdol Rahim bey, 64–5, 76, 104–6, 105 Hashem, Seyyed, 192 Hayåt (newspaper), 76, 85, 91 Heine, Thomas Theodor, 348 heterosexuality, 183, 221, 226 Himmat (Endeavour) Party, 4, 53, 60, 61, 108, 109, 120, 215 Hochi Shimbun (Japanese newspaper), 267 Hogarth, William, 16, 283, 285 homosexuality, 183, 184, 185, 219, 220, 225–6, 342; see also LGBTQ rights ‘Hottentot Venus’, 318n7 Hryniewski, Henryk, 144 Hümmat Party see Himmat (Endeavour) Party humour, folk, 165, 219–20, 283 Hussein, Imam, 43, 45, 201 Hyde, Lewis, 14, 102, 165 imperialism, 14, 27, 29, 65, 66, 67, 77–8, 145, 146, 195, 336–7, 368 anti-imperialism, 13, 30, 52, 158, 284, 285, 356 see also colonialism Iran child marriage, 235–6 Constitutional Revolution (1906–11), 6, 14, 61, 75–6, 103, 120, 285, 309 democracy, 118 lion and sun emblem, 130, 131 Majles (parliament), 291 Mollå Nasreddin and, 2, 73–7, 78, 245 Muharram Festival, 201 nationalism, 33 paedophilia, 221 political coup (1907), 245 social reform, 120 and South Caucasus, 60–1 temporary marriage, 258–63 women’s schools, 228 women’s sexual harassment, 250 see also Persia; Rasht; Tabriz; Tehran

Iranian Organisation of Social Democrats, 53, 61, 111n18, 120 Iranians, 38, 39, 60, 62n13, 117–20, 172–3, 187–8, 203 Irshåd (newspaper), 76, 85, 91, 228 Islam Pan-Islamism, 21, 51–2, 53, 59 progressive, 368 spread of, 33, 41 see also hajj; Muslims; Ramadan; Shi‘i Muslims; Sunni Muslims Islamic law, 26–7, 28, 42, 49, 67–8, 179, 234; see also sharia law Ismail Shah, 21 Italian–Turkish War (1911–12), 78 Jadidism, 47, 67; see also Usul-e Jadid Jalil, Mirza, 1, 5, 79–90, 80, 86 and Azerbaijani government, 357 and Azerbaijani language, 68–9, 363 death, 7, 66, 365 death threats against, 72, 94 as a diasporic transnational, 9, 10 early life, 79, 81 education, 82–3 employment, 84 and French literature, 284 and Gheyrat Press, 86–7 and Hamideh Khånum, 93, 94–5, 98 and Iran, 73, 75, 76 on Islamic rituals, 71–2 as a landowner, 368 marriages, 84–5, 92, 93, 94–5, 98–9, 100 and Mollå Nasreddin, 64, 65, 87, 89–90 and New Method education, 67 and patriarchal norms, 248 plays, 363, 367 and Russian literature, 76, 284 and Schmerling, Oscar, 139–41 as a schoolteacher, 83 and Sharq-e Rus, 85–6 short stories, 83, 85 and Soviet regime, 362 and theatre, 83 and Tiflis People’s University, 90 and women’s rights, 92, 97, 99 working and living habits, 98 Jåmi (Sufi poet), 170 Javadi, Hasan, 8, 102, 176 Javånshir, Ahmad bey, 93 Javånshir, Hamideh Khånum see Hamideh Khånum

390 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN Jews, 26 and equality, 11, 24 and humour, 179 persecution of, 35 and religious tolerance, 212, 213–15 see also synagogues Joha (Arab trickster), 163, 167, 171, 172, 180, 183, 184, 220 Jolfa, 73, 75, 272 Jung, Carl, 14, 164–5, 172 K Svetu (Russian periodical), 356 Kalila va Dimna (Indian book of fables), 339 Karabas, Seyfi, 183 Karbala, 45, 210 karbalåis, 210 Kaspiy (Russian language newspaper), 52, 55, 228 Kavkaz (Russian language newspaper), 29 Kazem, Musa, 212 Kengerli, Memedqoli bey, 84 Khalid, Adeeb, 51 khanates, 22, 23, 42 khans, 22, 35, 42 Khåtåbålå (satirical publication), 136, 144, 145–6, 158 Khiåbani, Mohammad, Sheikh, 361 Khorasan, 76 Shrine of Imam Reza, 258 Khoråsåni, Abu Muslim, 185n5 Kurds, 23, 26, 125, 146, 300 Kuznetsov, Erast, 150 LGBTQ rights, 226 language: and culture, 67, 68–70; see also Armenian language; Azerbaijani language; Persian language; Russian language; Türki language; Turkish language Lassy, Ivar, 45–7 Lavater, Johann Kaspar, 287 law see family law; Islamic law; sharia law Leshii (periodical), 16, 324, 351, 354, 356 Levitt, Marcus, 284 Liakhov, Colonel Vladimir, 349 Licht, Fred, 286 literacy, 47, 49, 67 literary assemblies, 28–9, 31, 54, 100 literature: Realist and Critical Realist schools of, 125 lithography, 1, 4, 125, 283, 304, 342, 345

Louis Philippe, King of France, 305, 309, 312 madrasas, 21, 41, 49 Mahmoud, Sultan, 184 Majlesi, Muhammad Båqer, 196–7 Hilyat al-Mutaqqin, 197 maktabs, 31, 42, 49, 51, 52, 82, 221, 334 Malik, Rahim Rezazadeh, 8 marriage of children, 220, 221, 230, 233, 234–42, 296 Dagestan, 273–4 gay, 226 intermarriage, 266 temporary, 258–63; mohallels (temporary husbands), 265–6 women and, 81–2, 221 see also divorce; polygamy Marzolph, Ulrich, 163 Mayer, Mariam, 123 Memedqolizådeh, Anvar, 95, 362 Memedqolizådeh, Jalil see Jalil, Mirza Memedqolizådeh, Midhat, 95, 362 Memedqolizådeh, Mirza Ali Akbar, 9, 61, 83, 89, 109, 357, 368 Memedqolizådeh, Monavvar, 84, 100 Memedqolizådeh, Sakineh, 83, 85, 89, 92, 97, 248 Mensheviks, 56, 116 migrants, 8–10, 22–3 German, 120–1, 123–4 Iranian, 60–1, 62n13, 118–21, 187–8, 203 see also diasporas Mikhail Nikolayevich, Viceroy of the Caucasus, 34 Minin, Oleg, 284 Mir Hussein, 119 Mirzaev, Mirza Sharif, 92 modernity, 8, 16, 75, 125, 158, 276, 284, 285, 286, 365 Mokhber al-Saltaneh, 362 Mollå Nasreddin “advertisements”, 15, 189 devil trope in, 194–6, 285, 291, 348–9 as a diasporic inter­sectional publication, 368 end of publication, 365 use of folk tales, 15 influences, 283, 303, 305, 317, 324, 350–1 legacy, 2

391

INDEX

‘Letters to the Editor’, 15, 187, 195–6, 197–8, 216, 222–3, 267, 327 ‘Literary School of Followers of Mollå Nasreddin, The’, 367 major concerns of, 66–7 management of, 99 mastheads, 229–30, 229, 356–7 Molla Nasreddin stories in, 188–9, 192 name changes, 357–8, 364 Nemånzådeh on, 1 opposition to, 3, 72, 78–9, 89, 357 print shop, 112 and propaganda, 16 publication of, 2, 57, 65–6, 87–90, 140–1, 362, 364–5 readership, 3 realism of, 1–2 revolution and war correspondents, 109–10 as satire, 2 staff, 64–5, 66 support for, 3 and transnational diaspora, 5–6 and wall trope, 291 Molla Nasdreddin (folk character) and anti-colonial discourse, 1 editions of stories, 164 and gender norms, 2 guile of, 14–15, 172–3 humanity of, 177 and injustice, 2 and law of retribution, 179 and non-Muslims, 178–9 and paedophilia, 219–20 popularity of, 164 and religiosity, 178 and religious tolerance, 212–13 and rituals, 206 sexual transgressions in, 181–2 sources, 163 subversive nature of, 172, 173–6 and theft, 177 mollås Åkhundov’s portrayal of, 32 definitions of, 163 and harassment of women, 252 and New Method education, 67 and superstition, 196 and tax collection, 192 Moscow, 28, 56 mosques, 27, 28, 41, 42, 70 Mostashari, Firouzeh, 7, 10, 28 Mozaffar al-Din Shah, 325

muftis, 42 Muhammad Ali Shah Qajar, 120, 150, 223, 224, 285, 309, 334, 335 mujahidin, 61, 109, 120 mullahs, 28 Munich Academy of the Arts, 12, 121, 122, 123, 131, 133, 134, 142 Musavat Party, 92, 357 music, 28, 114, 121, 173 Muslim–Armenian War see Armenian– Tatar War Muslims, 23 and education, 11, 41, 54 integration of, 34 and language, 68 and literacy, 67 migrants, 22 persecuted, 5 and religious pluralism, 41 Russian, 11 and Russification, 24, 26, 35 and social status, 24 and theatre, 29–30 see also Ali-Allahi; Islam; Shii Muslims; Sufis and Sufism; Sunni Muslims myths, 1 Nader Shah, 22 Naficy, Hamid, 8 Najafov, Aliguli Alekper Oglu (Ghamgusår), 109–10 Nakhchivan, 23, 42, 73, 81–2, 83, 238, 272 Nårimanov, Narimån, 53, 76, 83, 108, 110n18, 362 narodniks, 36 Nåser al-Din Shah,, 31, 62n12 Nasim-e Shemål (Iranian periodical), 73 Nasreddin Hodja, 163, 164, 164, 176, 184 Nasrollah, Seyyed, 319 Nåtavån, Khurshid Bånu, 32, 32 national identities, 5–6, 7, 8, 35, 75 Nazis, 158n6 Nazli Khånum, 84–5 Nazmi, Ali, 111n32 Nemånzådeh, Ömar Fåeq, 10, 90–2, 91, 107 execution of, 92 and Gheyrat Press, 86–7 and Mollå Nasreddin, 1, 64, 66, 91, 94, 99 and Musavat Party, 92

392 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN Nemånzådeh, Ömar Fåeq (cont.) and Sharq-e Rus, 85–6 Nicholas I, Tsar, 22–3, 26, 28, 31, 34, 234 Nicholas II, Tsar, 54–5, 56, 57, 86, 116 nomads, 26 North Caucasus, 26, 27, 34 Nukhå, 23, 32 Nuri, Fazlullah, Sheikh, 309, 331, 349 oil industry, 2, 21, 32, 36, 37–9, 37, 57, 60 Omar Khayyam: Rubayyiat of Omar Khayyam, 176 opera, 29 Georgian National Opera and Ballet Theatre, Tiflis, 115 Tiflis Opera Theatre, 123 Ordubad, 23, 272 Ordubådi, Mohammad Said, 64–5, 109, 365 ‘Oriental Question’, 315 Orthodox Church and cultural identity, 58, 59 Georgian, 26 privileged status of, 24, 27, 35 Russian, 42, 356 satirising of, 291 orthodoxy, 2, 4, 15 orthopraxy, 2, 15 Ottoman Empire, 65 caricaturing of, 145, 146, 303, 332–3, 336–7, 339–40 dismemberment of, 77, 335 migrants from, 115 minorities in, 146 paedophilia, 94, 158, 183–5, 219–26; see also pederasty Pan-Islamism 21, 51–2, 53, 59 Pan-Turkism, 21, 51, 52, 67, 78 Paris belle époque, 342, 345 Commune, 315, 352, 356, 358 parody, 102, 282, 334, 348 passion plays, 30, 43, 46–7, 199, 201 peasants clothing, 275 German, 120–1 Mollå Nasreddin and, 3, 17, 66, 359, 368 portrayal of, 124, 130, 134, 350, 351–2, 363 rights of, 53, 57, 102

treatment of, 146, 158 see also serfs pederasty, 2, 222–4; see also paedophilia Peri, Ashiq, 32 Persia see Iran; Qajars; Safavid Empire Persian language, 29, 31, 33, 49, 51, 68, 69, 118, 127, 163 Persian literature, 4, 16, 29, 31, 73, 102, 173, 334–5 Mollå Nasreddin and, 334–5 tricksters in, 163, 164 wise fool in, 165–71 Peter I (Peter the Great), Tsar, 42 philanthropists, 1, 13, 21, 32, 39, 99 photographers and photography, 14, 29, 112, 113, 125–8, 129, 131, 133, 135, 139 physiognomy, 12–13, 216, 276 and caricature, 16, 342 depictions of, 158 Goya and, 286–7 and race, 337 Picasso, Pablo: Guernica, 286 pilgrimages, 41, 45, 47 hajj, 34, 178, 179, 198, 208–11 pilgrims see hajjis; hajjiyehs Pirosmanashvili (Pirosmåni), Niko, 128–31, 150, 318n3 Mousha with a Keg, 130 Mousha with a Wine Skin, 130 Shamil with Bodyguard and Prince Bariatinsky, 132 Plamia (Russian journal), 16, 324, 351 polygamy, 32, 109, 215, 229, 253–7, 327, 368 poverty Critical Realists and, 144 and marriage, 234, 242 migrant workers and, 187–91 processions, 43, 56, 199, 200, 203–4, 351 Pulemet (Russian newspaper), 356 Punch (British periodical), 12, 283–4, 324–7, 329–31 Qajars, 22, 78, 224–5 Qazvini, Ashraf, 334 Quluzadeh, Zumurud, 244, 248–9 Quran on divorce, 265 on evil, 194–5 on hijabs, 94 on homosexuality, 186n15 Kremlin, 28

393

INDEX



on polygamy, 253 reinterpretation of, 4 on sexual segregation, 273 study of, 49, 51 translation of, 41 on veiling, 251–2

Rabåni, Abu Bakr, 171 race see ethnic minorities racism and art, 16 and caricature, 287 Punch and, 327 see also physiognomy Radde, Gustav, 123 Radfar Humor (German magazine), 134 radicalism, 2, 13, 21, 57, 60–1, 356, 368 Ra’isniya, Rahim, 8 Ramadan, 177, 178, 185, 198, 204, 206 rape, 180, 183, 219, 220, 224, 238, 259 Rasht, 120, 221 Rassåm, Abbas (Arzhangi), 119 refugees, 99, 224, 357 Reisenauer, Eveline, 8–9 religion and rituals, 41–7 Russia and, 24 see also Christians and Christianity; Islam religious equality, 11, 33 religious freedom, 212–15 religious reforms, 39 religious tolerance, 10, 12, 26, 28, 41, 67, 169, 176, 212–13, 287 Repin, Ilya, 318n3, 351 Resulzade, Memed Emin, 63n21 Reza Shah, 159n12, 250, 364 Rice, Kelsey, 8, 11 Ritter, Markus, 125 rituals, 4, 41–7, 51, 71–2, 81, 170–1, 173, 176–8, 192–6, 198–9, 210–11, 263, 358, 359 Muharram, 199–204, 291, 293, 333 see also fasting Rosen, Baroness, 270–1 Rotter, Joseph (Yusuf), 4, 10, 64–5, 87, 106 caricatures, 72, 135–6, 150, 158 and Critical Realism, 351 drawing of and signature, 143 illustrations, 144–6, 148–50, 154, 158 influences, 16, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287–8, 300, 315

and Mollå Nasreddin, 151–2 as a numismatist, 154, 157 portrayal of women, 158, 154, 296, 315, 322 Roubaud, Franz, 123, 134 Capture of Imam Shamil, 124 Rowlandson, Thomas, 285 Rumi, Mawlana Jalål al-Din, 166, 176 Mathnawi, 169–70 Russia All-Russian Census (1897), 23, 37, 47, 114–15 Anglo-Russian Convention (1907), 326 art see under art; St Petersburg Academy of Arts colonialism, 10–11, 13, 21, 23–9, 34, 123 culture, 70 Dumas, 5, 56, 59, 105, 116, 215, 322 liberalism, 52–3 literature, 29, 76 nationalism, 28 religion, 24 see also Moscow; St Petersburg Russian language, 29, 30, 34, 35, 36, 51, 69–70, 121 Russian Revolution (1905–6), 6, 56–7, 86, 116 Russian Revolution (1917), 361 Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party (RSDWP), 53, 56, 60, 61, 116, 120 Russians Baku, 38 European heritage of, 24 prejudice against, 71 Russification, 13, 24, 26, 29–30, 34–5, 36, 57 Russo-Iranian Wars (1804–13 and 1826–8), 22 Russo-Japanese War (1904–5), 56, 59 Russo-Turkish War (1877–8), 34, 77 Såber, Ali-Akbar, 2, 64, 77, 100–4, 101 and Constitutional Revolution, 103–4 death, 89, 101 as a diasporic transnational, 8, 9 early life, 100–1 and education, 67, 101 memorials to, 104 and Mollå Nasreddin, 101, 367 originality, 102–3 poetry, 100, 101, 102–3, 104, 108, 334

394 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN Såber, Ali-Akbar (cont.) Sadi, Musleh al-Din, 166 Golestån, 334 Safavid Empire, 21–2, 41, 61n2 Said, Kurban see Chemenzeminli, Yusif Vazir St Petersburg, 35, 56, 57, 113, 198, 228 Bloody Sunday massacre (1905), 353 St Petersburg Academy of Arts, 12, 121, 122, 123, 124, 131, 133, 134, 350 Salzmann, Albert, 123, 134 Salzmann, Alexander, 123 Sanai (Sufi poet), 166 Sarabski, Husseingulu, 32 Sardarniyå, Samad, 8 satire, 2, 16, 86, 89–90, 109, 125 Åkhundov and, 32 and animal forms, 335 and conjure women, 215–16 Daumier and, 304 folk, 333 Goya and, 287, 291 Heine and, 348 in literature, 170–1, 176 political, 1, 4, 65, 283–4, 324, 327, 335–6, 362, 368 and religion, 176, 198 Rotter and, 148, 154 in Russian periodicals, 351, 353 Såber’s use of, 102–3 social, 157–8 spoof literary, 334, 335 Satire (Russian journal), 352, 355 Sattår Khån, 9, 103, 109, 334 Scheiwiller, Staci, 125 Schimmel, Annemarie, 166 Schmerling, Oskar, 4, 10, 64–5, 87, 106, 134–42, 134 background, 134 caricatures, 135, 139, 158, 291 cartoons, 244 and Critical Realism, 135, 351 education, 134 influences, 16, 125, 134, 139, 284, 287 and Khåtåbålå, 136, 158 and Mollå Nasreddin, 135, 140–1, 157–8 and politics, 146 signature example, 135 and Soviet Union, 140 as a teacher, 135, 139 portrayal of women, 136, 158, 244, 296, 322

schools girls’, 93; boarding school for girls, Baku, 40, 41, 55 midwifery, 228 migrants’, 121 Presbyterian American mission school, Tabriz, 362 Russian, 26, 35, 51 Tiflis Fine Arts Society, 121 see also education; madrasas; maktabs Sehhat, Abbas, 103–4 serfs, 31, 34, 57, 113 Sevruguin, Antoin, 127 Administrating bastinado at the textile shop, 128 sex education, 236–7 sexual practices, 2, 183–5; see also heterosexuality; homosexuality; paedophilia; pederasty seyyeds, 89, 192 Shåhtakhti, Memed, 55, 85 Shåhtakhtli, Leila Khånum, 228, 229 shaitåns (devils), 194–6, 291, 293, 348–50 Shakespeare, William, 41, 333 Shaki see Nukhå Shamanism, 41 Shamchizade, Ali Razi, 227n7 Shamil, Imam, 26, 123, 124, 130–1, 132 sharia law, 10–11, 27–8, 33–4, 179 and child marriage, 237 and divorce, 263 and homosexuality, 186n15 and pollution, 173 and polygamy, 253 and temporary marriage, 258 and women’s rights, 229 Sharifzådeh, Aziz, 81–2 Sharq-e Rus (newspaper), 85–6, 111n32, 228 sheikh al-Islam, 42, 43, 54, 91, 95, 119, 278, 340 Shii Muslims and akhunds, 43 and ambiguity, 173 beliefs, 154, 171 and child marriage, 213 criticism of, 21 and Ecclesiastical Boards, 42 Ismaili, 61n1 and Mollå Nasreddin, 64, 78 and polygamy, 255

395

INDEX



predominance of, 2, 42 and Ramadan, 178 and reform, 51 and religious education, 42 and religious tolerance, 26, 41, 212, 213, 368 and rituals, 4, 43, 45–6, 199 and temporary marriage, 258–63 and theatre, 30 Tiflis, 2–3, 118, 119 Twelver, 21 see also sheikh al-Islam Shirazi, Ziba, 8–9 Shirvåni, Azim, 100 Shissler, Holly, 8 shrines, 41, 51, 219, 258 Shusha, 23, 28, 54, 98, 99 Siberia, 34, 238, 267 Signaly (Russian journal), 16, 324, 351, 354, 356, 358 Simm, Franz Xavier, 123–4 Simon, Karl, 275 Simplicissimus (Russian magazine), 16, 284, 285, 324, 349, 349, 354 slaves and slavery, 32, 33, 180, 209, 220, 285, 303, 325 social democracy, 66 Iran, 120 Jalil, Mirza and, 363 Mollå Nasreddin and, 1, 4, 5, 10, 14, 16, 64, 70, 285, 368 Organisation of Social Democrats, 61, 109, 120 Tiflis, 115–16 social reform, 4, 36, 66, 120 socialism, 13, 30, 53, 115, 121, 283 Spivak, Gayatri, 11 Stalin, Joseph, 7, 109, 111n24, 140, 158n6, 363 Stolypin, Pyotr, 116 strikes, 56, 57, 60–1, 102, 115, 353 Sufis and Sufism, 26, 41, 43, 166, 173 and child marriage, 213 and education, 21 khåneqåh (Sufi lodges), 41 and religious intolerance, 212, 213 and temporary marriage, 258 Sunni Muslims beliefs, 154, 171 and Ecclesiastical Boards, 42 and education, 21, 47 immigration to Turkey, 26 and Pan-Islamism, 51

and religious tolerance, 26, 41, 201, 368 Suny, Ronald Grigor, 57, 115 supernatural, the, 286, 288 superstitions, 70–1, 72, 73, 89, 196–8, 286, 288, 351, 363 Sur-e Esråfil (Iranian newspaper), 76–7, 293, 350 Swietochowski, Tadeusz, 7, 33 synagogues, 41 Tabataba’i, Seyyed Muhammad, 291 Tabriz, 2, 9, 68, 76, 361–2, 368 constitutional movement, 120 paedophilia, 221 Presbyterian American mission school, 362 ‘print shops’, 192 Russian occupation (1911), 315 Safavids, 21 Secret Centre, 109 Siege of (1908), 99, 103, 109, 334 Taghiyev, Zeyn al-Åbedin, 39 and girls’ education, 55, 266 and philanthropy, 39, 41, 99 and translation of the Quran, 41 and women’s education, 228 Taghiyeva, Sonya Hanim, 56 Tahmasib (Azerbaijani folklorist), 185n3 Tålibi (Tålibov), Mirzå Abdul Rahim 119 Taqizadeh, Hasan, 120 Tarbiyat, Muhammad Ali, 120 Tarjomån (periodical), 51, 54, 67, 271 Tatars, 7, 23, 24, 27, 90, 114 Armenian–Tatar War (1905), 6, 58–9, 87, 116 Tbilisi see Tiflis Tchogoshvili, Nino, 135 Tehran, 39, 103, 109, 113, 120 coup (1908), 349 photography, 127, 128 sexual harassment, 250 temples: Zoroastrian fire temples, 41 theatres, 13, 21 and Russification, 29–30 Tiflis, 14, 112, 115, 115, 123 see also passion plays Thousand and One Nights, A, 201, 215 Tiflis (Tbilisi), 2–3, 112–58, 113, 114 architecture, 114, 117, 121 art schools, 121 bathhouses, 117, 118, 126

396 MOLLAˉ NASREDDIN Tiflis (Tbilisi) (cont.) Caucasian Museum, 123 Caucasian Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts, 131 culture, 14, 28, 29–30 destruction of (1795), 22 diasporic community, 14 Divån-e Hekmat (House of Wisdom), 31 Duma, 35 Ecclesiastical Board, 42 entertainment, 114 Iranian consulate, 118 Mensheviks, 56 Metekhi Church, 118 migrants, 60, 61, 113; German, 120–1, 123–4; Iranian, 117–20 Organisation of Social Democrats, 61 photography, 14, 113, 125–6 population, 114–15 prostitutes, 348 publishing houses, 118 revolutionaries, 31 Saint Nina Women’s Society School, 54 School of Painting and Sculpture, 135 Shaitån Bazaar, 72 social democracy, 115–16 theatres, 14, 112, 114; Georgian National Opera and Ballet Theatre, 115; Tiflis Imperial Theatre, 29, 114, 123; Tiflis Opera Theatre, 123 Tiflis Fine Arts Society, 12, 121, 123, 131 Tiflis People’s University, 90 Timur (Mongul ruler), 163, 176 Tolstoy, Leo, 29, 41, 76, 76, 85, 351 Topchibåshov, Ali Mardan bey, 55 Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de, 16, 342, 345, 348, 358 trade unionism, 13, 30, 39 Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic, 361 Treaty of Adrianople (1829), 22 Treaty of Golestan (1813), 22 Treaty of Turkmanchåy (1828), 22 tricksters, 14–15, 165, 283 female, 180–3, 230 see also Joha; Molla Nasreddin Triffin, Helen, 8 Turkestan, 34, 39 Turkey break-up, 315

cultural renaissance, 39 democratic reforms, 14, 66 Italian–Turkish War (1911–12), 78 Mollå Nasreddin’s portrayal of, 340, 341 republic (1917), 361 Russian defeat of (1829), 22 schools, 228 Türki language, 31 Turkic speakers, 22, 23 Turkish language, 51, 68 ulema (Muslim scholars), 43, 59n8, 193, 362 Umar, Caliph, 171, 258 Umayyad Dynasty, 45, 185n5 universities, 35, 57, 90 Usul-e Jadid (New Method), 49, 51, 52, 53, 54, 90, 221 Uthman, Caliph, 171 Våzeh, Mirza Shafi, 31, 33, 110n3 violence, 4, 165 communal, 200, 201, 203 domestic, 32, 158, 215, 230, 244, 248–50, 255, 286, 303–4 Gogol and, 284 and imperialism, 285 migrants and, 188 sexual, 169, 219, 282, 284 World of Art artists and, 354 Vorontsov, Mikhael Semenovich, 28, 29, 30, 33 ‘Wanderers, The’ (Russian school of art), 12, 124, 131 Wechsler, Judith, 305 Wiktor-Mach, Dobrostawa, 7 Wilhelm II, Kaiser, 159n7 Willewalde, Bogdan, 134 women abuse of, 158 ‘Azim ‘Azimzådeh’s portrayal of, 109, 322 and charities, 56 and childbirth, 230, 233 and clothing, 273, 274–7 as conjurers, 215–19 Daumier and, 315–16 and divorce, 263–6 and domestic violence, 244, 248–50 education of, 11, 47, 54–6, 228 enslavement of, 45 France, 322

397

INDEX

Goya and, 315 and hajj, 209 Iranian migrant, 119 malnourishment of, 233–4 and marriage, 81–2, 221, 258, 259, 261, 263, 265–6, 271 Muslim Women’s Benevolent Society, 93 non-Muslim, 264–5, 266–72 and polygamy, 253, 255 pregnant, 92, 165, 178, 179, 181–2, 183, 204, 249 and prostitution, 38 Punch and, 325 as representation of justice, 303, 322 rights of, 15–16, 32, 33, 66, 94, 95, 136, 215, 229, 361, 368 Rotter’s portrayal of, 158, 154, 296, 315, 318, 322 Schmerling’s portrayal of, 136, 158, 244, 296, 322 seclusion of, 222–3 and sex, 180–2, 226 sexual harassment of, 97, 99 Toulouse-Lautrec’s portrayal of, 342, 348 as tricksters, 180–3, 215–19, 230 veiling of, 4, 9, 15, 33, 94, 95, 97, 120,

217, 222–3, 238, 248–50, 267, 272–4, 276, 278 Women’s Charitable Society, 56 Yaghoobi, Claudia, 8–9 Yazid I, Caliph, 45, 201 Yerevan, 23 corruption, 188, 189 Ecclesiastical Board, 42 Iranian consulate, 118 migrants, 60 schools, 54 veils, 273 women’s clothing, 275 Young Turk Revolution (1908), 6, 14, 67, 77–8 Yusuf Mostashår al-Dowleh, 33–4 Zagatala, 54, 273 Zåkåni, Obeyd, 171, 178, 180, 184 Zamanov, Abbas, 367 Zardåbi, Hanifa Khånum, 54, 55 Zardåbi, Hasan bey, 36, 39, 54 Zhupel (Russian newspaper), 356 Zommer, Richard Karl, 135, 139 Caucasian Caravan, 131, 132 Zoroastrians, 24, 41 Zritel (Russian periodical), 16, 324