Tiflis, where Mollå 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 community – 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 Fāeq 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.

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 latest plays were brought in from St Petersburg and Europe.