According to the historian and political scientist Zaur Gasimov, the entirety of Akhundzadeh's intellectual landscape was "densely entangled with Persian thought".

[12] During the Russo-Iranian war of 1804–1813, the Shaki Khanate was occupied by the Russian Empire, who had installed Jafar Qoli Khan Donboli as their deputy.

[9] Mirza Mohammad-Taqi subsequently became a merchant and relocated to Nukha, where he married Akhundov's mother Na'na Khanum in the same year.

[13] In 1813, Iran and Russia agreed to the Treaty of Gulistan, which resulted in Shaki, along with other territories, coming under Russian rule.

[13] However, Na'na Khanum eventually became dissatisfied with living among the family of Mirza Mohammad-Taqi's first wife, and in 1818, she decided leave Khamaneh, taking Akhundov with her.

[9] Many years later, Akhundov attacked the idea of men having more than one wife as an evil and corrupting practice that not only oppressed women but also caused permanent animosity and friction between the wives and their children.

[14] Haji Ali Asghar was in charge of Akhundov's early education, which included the memorization of the Quran, teaching of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) and Arabic and Persian literature.

[15] In 1832, Akhundov was sent to the Shah Abbas Mosque in Ganja to study logic and Islamic jurisprudence with the Shia theologian Akhund Molla Hossein.

Initially, Akhundov planned to learn calligraphy from Mirza Shafi, but their conversations quickly strayed into topics such as Islam, philosophy, mysticism, and the activities of the Shia clergy.

Akhundov was adamant on learning Islamic law and jurisprudence in order to become a member of the Shia religious hierarchy, but this changed when he met Mirza Shafi.

Until the return of my second father from pilgrimage, Mirza Shafi inculcated in me all the elements of mysticism, and lifted the curtain of ignorance from my eyes.

[16] In 1834, Akhundzade moved to Tiflis (present-day Tbilisi, Georgia), and spent the rest of his life working as a translator of Oriental languages in the service of the Russian Empire's Viceroyalty.

[//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirza_Fatali_Akhundov#endnote_][1] In Tiflis his acquaintance and friendship with the exiled Russian Decembrists Alexander Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, Vladimir Odoyevsky, poet Yakov Polonsky, Armenian writers Khachatur Abovian,[2] Gabriel Sundukian and others played some part in the formation of Akhundzade's Europeanised outlook.

In early 1850s, Akhundzade wrote six comedies (Hekayati Molla Ibrahim-Khalil Kimyagar, The story of Monsieur Jourdan, a botanist and the dervish Mastalishah, a famous sorcerer, Adventures of the Lankaran Khanate Vizier, etc.)

[17] According to Walter Kolarz: The greatest Azerbaidzhani poet of the nineteenth century, "Mirza Fathali Akhundov" (1812–78), who is called the "Molière of the Orient", was so completely devoted to the Russian cause that he urged his compatriots to fight Turkey during the Crimean War.

The Crimean Tatar Ismail Bey Gasprinski and the Azerbaijani writer Mirza Fath Ali Akhundzade inspired Turkish intellectuals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

[19]According to Tadeusz Swietochowski: In his glorification of the pre-Islamic greatness of Iran, before it was destroyed at the hands of the "hungry, naked and savage Arabs", "Akhundzade was one of the forerunners of modern Iranian nationalism, and of its militant manifestations at that nor was he devoid of anti-Ottoman sentiments, and in his spirit of the age-long Iranian Ottoman confrontation, he ventured into his writing on the victory of Shah Abbas I over the Turks at Baghdad.

For Zia-Ebrahimi, Akhundzade must be credit with the introduction of ethno-racial ideas, particularly the opposition between the Iranian Aryan and the Arab Semite, into Iran's intellectual debates.

Zia-Ebrahimi disputes that Akhundzade had any influence on modernist intellectuals such as Malkum Khan (beyond a common project to reform the Alphabet used to write Persian) or Talibov Tabrizi.

[21][22] At that time, the Qajar dynasty was in great crisis as a consequence of their failures against the Russian empire and the British, and their corruption and mismanagement.

Just like Jalal ed-Din Mirza Qajar, with whom he corresponded, he argued that Arabic loan words, alphabet and Islam should be removed.

They "will deplore the fact that they did not know you until today and that throughout the history of Islam they have supported and admired Arabs, who are their enemies ... who destroyed their country", rather than Zoroastrians who are "their brothers, who speak the same language [sic], their compatriots, the living memory of their glorious forefathers, and their guardian angels".

[21] Akhundzadeh was under the spell of what seems to be Manekji's archaistic charisma, a sort of magnetism stemming from the special knowledge of the glorious past that he was perceived to possess.

Akhundzadeh put him on a pedestal because he saw him as an emissary of this Golden Age for which he and Jalal ed-Din Mirza longed, as if Manekji had just walked out of a time machine.

.Iranians knew that we are the children of the Parsis, that our home is Iran, that zeal, honour, idealism and our celestial aspirations demand that we favour our kin, rather than alien bloodthirsty bandits" (Akhundzadeh to Manekji, 29 July 1871, in Mohammadzadeh and Arasli 1963:249, emphasis added).

He accorded Parsis a genealogical ascendancy that can only be explained by the fact that he considered them as a kind of pure Iranians uncontaminated by Arabs and Islam, who should be "followed" by the contemporary debased Muslim lot.

He corresponded with Jalal al-Din Mirza (a minor Qajar prince, son of Bahman Mirza Qajar,1826–70) and admired this latter's epic Nameh-ye Khosrovan (Book of sovereigns), which was an attempt to offer the modern reader biographies of Iran's ancient kings, real and mythical, without recourse to any Arabic loanword.

Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani also followed Jalal-al-Din Mirza in producing a national history of Iran, A'ine-ye sekandari (The Alexandrian mirror), extending from the mythological past to the Qajar era, again to contrast a mythicised and fantasised pre-Islamic past with a present that falls short of nationalist expectations.

[24] Akhundzade was a keen advocate for alphabet reform, considering the Perso-Arabic script inadequate for representing Turkic sounds.