Her later attempts to establish secular education in Quba ended in a tragic way: religious fanatics retaliated by killing Akhundzadeh's husband.

[2] She herself fled to Baku (present-day capital of Azerbaijan), where she became one of the first teachers at the Empress Alexandra Russian Muslim Boarding School for Girls, established in 1901, where she taught Azeri, literature and religious studies.

It had opened only because the Azeri oil magnate Zeynalabdin Taghiyev had funded it, and it is said that the school was named after he had written a letter to Czarina Alexandra.

Encouraged by the successful performance, Akhundzadeh went on to write more plays; among them, Hagg soz aji olar ("Truth Hurts") and Galin va gayinana ("Daughter-in-Law and Mother-in-Law").

[5] In 1911, Huseyn Arablinski staged Akhundzadeh's remake of Namık Kemal's play Zavallı çocuk (Bakhtsiz ushag in Azeri, "The Unfortunate Kid"), which soon began being performed in amateur theatres outside the Caucasus.