Published January 2025, Pg. 50-58

Section: From the history of oil industry development

UOT: 665.58 (09)

DOI: 10.37474/0365-8554/2025-01-50-58

First mentions of Azerbaijani oil (on the 155th anniversary of the first study of chemical nature of Baku oils; 1870–2025)

Mir-Yusif Mir-Babayev Dr. in Ch. Sc. - Azerbaijan Technical University

Oil has been known since ancient times: already in ancient Persia, pagan priests extracted it from wells for the sacred fire. And the building material for the construction of Babylon and Nineveh was asphalt (mountain or mineral) resin, which was formed as a residue from the evaporation of oil produced on the Ise River, a tributary of the Euphrates. According to the ancient Greek historian Plutarch, who described the campaigns of Alexander the Great (Makedonian), already in the 4th century BC, his warriors used oil from the Absheron peninsula for lighting, transporting it in wineskins or clay vessels. At the beginning of the 13th century the Arab historian Muhammad Bekran, who visited the Absheron Peninsula, noted in his book well oil production in Balakhani; that is the wells represented the first oil sources of Absheron. Oil springs on the Absheron peninsula (further in the article – Absheron) with burning gases served the followers of Zoroaster (Zarathushtra) as an object of religious veneration (in the 6th century BC on the Absheron there were temples of fire worshipers, in which sacred unquenchable fires burning, coming out of the ground). In the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century the fires were carefully maintained by the priests of the ancient Iranian sect “Parsis”, from whom the temple of fire worshipers in Surakhani (near Baku) has survived to this day. 
Next, at the beginning of the 13th century the Arab historian Muhammed Bekran, who wrote about Absheron, noted in his book about oil production in Balakhani. Oil springs on the Absheron with burning gases served the followers of Zoroaster (Zarathushtra) as an object of religious veneration (in the 6th century BC on the Absheron there were temples of fire worshipers, in which sacred unquenchable fires burning, coming out of the ground). In the 18th century and at the beginning of the 19th century the fires were carefully maintained by the priests of the ancient Iranian sect of the “Parses”, from whom they preserved the temple of fire worshipers in Surakhany remains to this day.
It is shown that ultimately, the development of the oil business in Absheron led to the emergence of a number of large oil and trading companies: “H.Z. Tagiyev” (1872), “Baku Oil Society” (1874), “Nobel Brothers” (1879), Rothschild’s “Caspian-Black Sea Society” (1883), “Oil” (1883), “S.M. Shibayev” (1884), “Mirzoyev Brothers” (1886), “Caspian Partnership” (1887), “Nagiyev Musa” (1887), “Asadullayev Shamsi” (1893), “Caucasus” (1896). ), “I.A. Akhverdov” (1896), “Russian Oil Industry Society” (1896), “Souchastniki” (1899), “Absheron Oil Society” (1899), “A.I. Mantashev” (1899), “Alexander Benkendorff” (1900), “Bibi-Heibat Petroleum Co. Ltd.” (1900), “Balakhani Syndicate Ltd.” (1900), “Moscow-Caucasian Oil Society” (1902), “Binagady Oil Industry and Trade Society” (1908), “St. Petersburg-Caucasus Oil Industry and Trade Society” (1911) and many others.

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