The first commercial oil discovery in the Middle East was made in 1908 at Masjed Soleyman in Persia, now Iran.
At 4 a.m. on 26 May 1908, drilling at Masjed Soleyman struck commercial quantities of oil, producing a spectacular gusher. The operation was conducted under a concession granted in 1901 to William Knox D’Arcy, whose exploration effort was later supported by the Burmah Oil Company. George B. Reynolds led the drilling work.
The discovery transformed the region’s political and economic importance. In 1909, it helped lead to the creation of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which later became part of the company known as BP. A pipeline to the refinery at Abadan was operating by 1911, and Abadan later became one of the world’s most important refining centres.
The date can be confusing because oil had been found elsewhere in the region before 1908. Reynolds’s team discovered oil at Chiah Surkh in 1904, near the modern Iran–Iraq border, but that find did not become the landmark commercial development usually meant by this question. The 1908 Masjed Soleyman strike is therefore the standard quiz answer.