The early-twentieth-century discovery of vast petroleum reserves beneath Persia, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula — and how it remade parts of the region, from small Gulf sheikhdoms to older states such as Iran and Iraq, into the strategic center of the world economy.
In May 1908, a drilling crew working for a near-bankrupt British speculator had been ordered to stop. The telegram telling them to pack up and abandon the well in southwestern Persia was already on its way. Days before it arrived, a column of oil and gas blew over the top of the derrick at Masjed Soleyman. The men kept the news quiet until the order could be ignored. That accidental persistence opened the first great oilfield of the Middle East — and began turning a region of empires and pilgrims into the place the rest of the world could not afford to lose control of.