Not pursuing it, Shahtakhtinski returned to Paris to excel in Arabic, Persian and Turkish languages at the Collège de France and the École pratique des hautes études.

Here in March 1903, he founded the Azeri-language newspaper Sharg-i Rus (The Russian Orient) dedicated to the academic enlightenment of the Muslims of the Caucasus.

[8] He sharply criticised Islamic fanaticism, which in his opinion was a major obstacle in the development of Azeri culture and was incompatible with the idea of progress.

[7] He also dismissed Pan-Turkism, a popular theory among Turkic-speaking scholars and political activists of the time, and propagated the use of folk Azeri as a literary language, as opposed to the common practice of using Ottoman Turkish.

Between 1908 and 1918, Shahtakhtinski lived in various parts of the Middle East, including Anatolia, Iraq and Persia, meanwhile writing articles for Turkestan Times (Russian: Туркестанскія вѣдомости).

[11] The unsuitability of the Arabic alphabet to Turkic languages in general was in his opinion a major obstacle to the spread of literacy among Azeris.