May 26, 1908

Masjed Soleyman

Commercial oil is struck at Masjed-e Soleyman

Shortly after four in the morning, oil rose perhaps 50 feet above the rig and drenched the drillers — on a venture that had come close to being abandoned.

26 May 1908, shortly after 4 a.m.

Drillers at Masjed-e Soleyman in Khuzestan struck a large petroleum reservoir shortly after 4 a.m. on 26 May 1908. Encyclopaedia Iranica describes oil rising perhaps 50 feet above the rig and soaking the drillers.

George Reynolds, the field engineer directing the work, reported oil struck in No. 1 well at a depth of 1,180 feet. The site sits about 80 miles northeast of Ahvaz.

The news left by camel

A camel courier carried word toward the telegraph network, and the security officer Arnold Wilson sent a coded message of his own.

A test flow the following day was estimated at 297 barrels. That was near-immediate evidence the strike was commercially meaningful rather than another minor seep.

Who held the rights that morning

The Anglo-Persian Oil Company did not make the discovery — it did not yet exist. Reynolds worked for the Concessions Syndicate, financed by Burmah Oil, which held the concession Mozaffar al-Din Shah had granted William Knox D'Arcy in 1901.

So no rights changed hands on 26 May; what changed was that a near-abandoned venture now had a demonstrated commercial reservoir. D'Arcy, whose name was on the concession, never visited Persia.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 5 sources 2 audit passes

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

What the sources leave uncertain

Sources agree on May 26 and shortly after 4 a.m. but give different estimates for the gusher’s height, commonly about 50 feet or more than 80 feet. The more conservative Iranica figure is used here.
Spellings vary: Masjed-e Soleyman, Masjid-i-Sulaiman and Masjed Soleiman all refer to the same site.
“First in the Middle East” should be qualified as the first major commercial oil discovery or first commercial oilfield, not the first awareness, seep, drilling attempt or use of petroleum in the region.