If so, did this tradition of glasses being available or in demand only by the scholarly also crop up in East Asia, as the stereotype of the "intelligent" or "nerdy" bespectacled man or woman also seems to have heavily pervaded those cultures as well. Or is this simply a modern bleed from Western culture?
The connection between bad eyesight and being smart/bookish seems to predate the invention of glasses themselves.
A number of Arab grammarians earned the laqab (nickname) "al-Akhfash" meaning roughly "the one who squints." Likewise the writer al-Jahiz apparently earned his nickname from being sort of bug-eyed.
Jahiz lived from the 8th to the 9th century, while "al-Akhfash al-Akbar" (i.e. "The Greater or Elder") died at the end of the 8th century.
I'm sure this association pre-dates even this, these are simply some of the oldest references I know of in my field.
edit: couple words.
I remember reading that eye-glasses extended the working life of those who read for a living or as a past-time--that is instead of having to give up reading or writing when their eyesight became too poor (Samuel Pepys is a post-glasses invention example of this, as his eyesight was not resolved by the glasses available to him). Since those who read were a specific subset of more-learned-than-usual people as opposed to a nearly universal group as it is today I suppose it's not that surprising that glasses became associated with readers/writers/thinkers or other people with highly detailed work (I'm thinking lace-makers, embroiderers).