Muslim Women and Educational Reform in the Early-Twentieth-Century Southern Caucasus: Urbanization and Heterosocialization at the Dawn of Revolution

Abstract: In 1901 the Empress Alexandra Russian Muslim Boarding School for Girls, better known as Taghiyev's Girls' School for the industrialist who founded it, opened in Baku to celebration in the press and to protests in the street. Its opening initiated a period of expanded educational opportunities for Muslim girls in the southern Caucasus and increased the visibility and social and political influence of Muslim women teachers. This article investigates how girls' schools marked a transformation in Muslim women's sociality in the southern Caucasus. Heterosocialization characterized this transformation, enabling women's participation in public life through venues such as the theater, the press, and voluntary associations. These late imperial transformations and the women who led them would play an important role in shaping early Soviet Azerbaijan.