Jalil Mammadguluzadeh

Jalil Mammadguluzadeh was married three times. His first two wives predeceased him. His first wife, Nazli Kangarli, died in 1903, soon after he took her to Tbilisi for her treatment.

His final marriage was to the feminist civil rights activist and philanthropist Hamida Javanshir, in 1907. He had two children with Javanshir: Midhat and Anvar.

He died of natural causes on January 4th, 1932, in Baku. He was survived by his wife and two children.

Jalil Mammadguluzadeh was born in Nakchivan, in present-day Azerbaijan, on February 22, 1866. He is of Azeri ethnicity though his parents were from Iran.

Mammadguluzadeh was educated in religious schools through his childhood. At the age of 13, he entered a city school in Nakchivan. It was here he learned Russian.

In 1886, he moved to the Georgian city Gori to enroll in the Transcaucasia Teachers’ Seminary. This gave him his background as a teacher and allowed him to meet other intellectually-minded people.

After his graduation from Transcaucasia Seminary in 1887, he began teaching in Erivan province. There, he taught in different rural schools throughout the region.

In 1901, he moved to the capital of Erivan Province. He wanted to become a lawyer and stayed here to study law for two years.

In 1903, he wrote the short story ‘The Postbox.' Writer Muhammad agha Shakhtakhtinski read this story and encouraged Mammadguluzadeh to publish it in the Azeri publication ‘Sharqi-Rus’.

The ‘Postbox’ was published in 1904 in ‘Sharqi-Rus.’ He then became a columnist for ‘Sharqi-Rus’, which provided a place for him to publish fiction and gave him a background in publishing and journalism.

During his time at 'Sharqi-Rus’, Mammadguluzadeh met many other literati. With some friends and colleagues, he helped purchase the Geyrat Publishing House in 1905.

One year later, in 1906, he founded the literary and satire magazine ‘Molla Nasraddin’. The magazine compiled prose, poetry, and cartoons to comment on the issues of the time.

’Molla Nasraddin’ was highly controversial in the Tsarist government of the time and had to change office location several times. The magazine’s final home was in Baku, which is now the capital of Azerbaijan.

He was the editor of the magazine ’Molla Nasraddin’, from 1906 to 1931. The magazine circulated around 2,500 copies for each weekly print run.