The 1917 Russian Revolution brought the tsarist Russian Empire to a sudden end. Soon, in the area that today constitutes the republics of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic was declared. When that federation was also dissolved in May 1918, the leading Musāvāt Party declared the formation of the independent Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, adopting the name that until then had referred to the province of Azerbaijan inside Iran. The new state was the first modern parliamentary republic in the Muslim world, preceding the formation of a republic in neighbouring Turkey. Among its most important accomplishments was the extension of suffrage to women.

Mirza Jalil and Hamideh Khānum kept their distance from the new government. They neither opposed nor embraced it, probably because despite the republic’s democratic rhetoric they mistrusted the leaders of the new republic who were all descendants of beys and khāns. Hasan bey Agayev, a well-known political figure from Ganja, wished to nominate Hamideh Khānum as the representative of Kārābākh in the new parliament, but she refused. The Azerbaijan Democratic Republic lasted twenty-three workers, but it was attacked by the Red Army in spring 1920. The new Soviet Russia justified the invasion due to its desperate need for the oil of Baku in the midst of a civil war, and what they perceived as the conservative nature of the republic. The Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic was subsequently established on 28 April 1920.

The devastation of the 1917 Revolution and the subsequent civil war had led to the migration of thousands of Azerbaijani people across the Aras River into Iran. But migration intensified after the fall of the republic. The refugees were encouraged by the fact that Sheikh Mohammad Khiābani (1880–1920) had established the short-lived autonomous region of Åzādistan in the Iranian province of Azerbaijan. Among the refugees were Mirza Jalil and his family, who entered Tabriz in September 1920.

Six days after their arrival, Khiābani was killed. Then in early October, Mirza Jalil’s brother, Mirza Ali Akbar, was arrested due to his past revolutionary activities, and banished to the town of Marāgheh. The twin blows of the death of Khiābani and the arrest of Mirza Ali Akbar made life excessively difficult for Mirza Jalil and his family in their new homeland.