Marked Masjed Soleyman

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

Oil and the modern Middle East

Oil was struck at Masjed Soleyman in Iran in 1908, and later across the Gulf. It made some states very rich, drew in foreign powers, and in 1973 an oil embargo shook the world’s economy.

Place
Masjed Soleyman · Abadan · Dhahran · KuwaitThe Middle East
Laid out as
A theme across timeOne idea followed through the eras it crosses.
Lessons
6 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. IThe strike at Masjed Soleyman
  2. IICompanies and concessions
  3. IIINationalising oil: Iran, 1951
  4. IVOPEC
  5. VThe 1973 crisis
  6. VIAfter oil?

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • William Knox D’Arcy
  • Mohammad Mosaddegh
  • Ahmed Zaki Yamani

Objects

  • Early drilling photographs

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

1908 to now. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?