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

Explores the iconic illustrated periodical Mollā Nasreddin, whose editors, writers and illustrators were Azerbaijani Muslims and Georgians of South Caucasus

• Provides a new reading of the text and illustrations of one of the most well-known journals in the Muslim region in the early 20th century
• Draws upon primary and secondary materials in Azerbaijani, Persian, Russian and Georgian languages, as well as English and French sources, collected on trips to Baku, Tbilisi, Moscow and Tehran, and translated with the help of a team of researchers from the region
• Gives insight to the first sophisticated graphic periodical to present a social democratic and anti-colonial discourse that reflected the points of view of the Muslim world, especially the impoverished classes
• Shows the significance of cultural exchanges among several transnational diasporic communities before the rise of modern nation states in the Middle East and Transcaucasia
• Carefully curates a selection of 250 images from Mollā Nasreddin reproduced in colour throughout the book

In the early twentieth century, a group of Azerbaijani and Georgian artists and intellectuals reinterpreted the Middle Eastern trickster figure Nasreddin in their periodical Mollā Nasreddin. They used folklore, visual art and satire to disseminate a consciously radical and social democratic discourse on religion, gender, sexuality and power in South Caucasus and Iran. The periodical reached tens of thousands of people in the Muslim world, impacting the thinking of a generation.

This highly-illustrated book explores the milieu in which Mollā Nasreddin was born, the way the periodical recreated the trickster trope, and the influence of European graphic artists, especially Francisco Goya, on the journal. It focuses on the most creative period, 1906-11, when the journal reflected the social and political concerns of three major upheavals: the 1905 Russian Revolution, the 1906–1911 Iranian Constitutional Revolution, and the 1908 Young Turk Movement.