Masjed Soleyman or Masjed-i-Sulaiman (, ) also known as MIS is a city in the Central District of Masjed Soleyman County, Khuzestan province, Iran, serving as capital of both the county and the district. It is the site of the first commercial oil discovery in the Middle East (1908).
Etymology The name Masjed Soleyman means "Mosque of Solomon" (masjed "mosque" + Soleymān, the Persian form of Solomon). It does not refer to a mosque built by King Solomon, nor to any functioning mosque. The name belongs to the ruins of a pre-Islamic terraced sanctuary on a hill at the north-eastern edge of the town, known locally as Sar-Masjed ("top of the mosque"); the town later took its name from these ruins.
The ruins behind the name The Sar-Masjed terrace, built of large piled-up stones, was excavated by the French archaeologist Roman Ghirshman, who first worked there in 1948 and returned for excavations between 1967 and 1972. Together with the nearby site of Bard-Neshandeh, it is regarded as one of the monumental "sacred terraces" of the Hellenistic and Parthian-period kingdom of Elymais. A shrine of Herakles was identified on the site, and a stone statue of the god holding the Nemean lion was found there. In other words, the "mosque" of the name was in fact an ancient pagan temple complex, many centuries older than Islam.
Why "Solomon"? Attributing impressive ancient ruins to Solomon is a widespread naming pattern in Iran. In Islamic and Persian legend Solomon commanded jinn and demons who built wonders for him, so monuments whose real builders had been forgotten were often credited to him. Early Muslim geographers, for example, attributed the ruins of Persepolis to the legendary king Jamshid, whom they identified with Solomon, and accordingly called the site Masjed Solaymān as well. The Sasanian fire-temple complex in Azerbaijan is likewise known as Takht-e Soleymān ("Throne of Solomon"), with a nearby crater called Zendan-e Soleyman ("Solomon's Prison"). Such "Solomon" names were often given to former Zoroastrian religious buildings after the Arab conquest, which supports the interpretation of the Masjed Soleyman terrace as a sanctuary.
A local tradition, reported by the city's municipality, holds that at the time of the Arab conquest the inhabitants told the conquerors that the temple had been built by the prophet Solomon, who was revered by Muslims, so that it would be spared from destruction. This story is a local legend and is not attested in early historical sources.
Early records of the name The name was attached to the ruins long before a town existed. The British officer Henry Rawlinson, travelling in Khuzestan in 1836, did not visit the site but reported hearing from the Bakhtiari of ruins called Masjid-i-Suleïmán, which he considered one of the ancient temples of Elymais. Austen Henry Layard, who did visit the ruins during his travels among the Bakhtiari, noted that the site was sometimes called "Masjdi Suleiman" by the Lurs, and later recorded legends about it told to him by Bakhtiari tribesmen.
From Maidan-e Naftun to Masjed Soleyman When the oil prospectors of the D'Arcy concession set up camp in the area in the early 20th century, the settlement was called Meydan-e Naftun ("the plain of naphtha"), after the oil seepages of the area; the ruins of "Masjid-i-Suleiman" lay nearby. British oil company records and geological literature generally used the ruin's name, in the form Masjid-i-Sulaiman, for the oil field itself. The name Naftun is still used today for the cemetery south-east of the city.
The townspeople firmly believed that the ruins on the terrace were the ancient "Temple of Solomon", and used to leave small oil lamps there as votive offerings. After Reza Khan visited Sar-Masjed and heard this tradition, he proposed that the town be renamed after the ruins, and the National Consultative Assembly approved the name Masjed Soleyman in 1305 SH (1926).
Other names Local and municipal sources give further historical names for the area, including Asak (said to be its Elamite name), Parsomash, and the Qajar-era Tol-Ghor. The identification with Parsomash, the early homeland of the Achaemenids, rests on Ghirshman's interpretation of the terrace as an early Achaemenid residence and remains a hypothesis rather than an established fact.
History
The city of Masjed Soleyman is among the ancient cities of the early Mesopotamian Elam civilisation which was originally known as Assak, but was changed to Parsomash by the early Achaemenids. In 1955, Roman Ghirshman discovered evidence of human inhabitation dating to 10,000 years ago in Pepdeh cave in vicinity of the current city of Lali, making it one of the oldest inhabited sites in the Khuzestan plain. Ghirshman's excavations in the area of Masjed Soleyman led him to believe that Parsomash (present-day Masjed Soleyman) was the oldest capital of the Achaemenid Empire.
The remains of an ancient terrace sanctuary known locally as Sar-Masjed (from which the city takes its name; see Etymology) and attributed in local legend to the pre-historic king Houshang or to Solomon, and the ruins of the Elymaean sanctuary of Bard-Neshandeh, are among the archaeological ruins in the area. Under the Seleucids and the Parthians the site remained an important religious centre of the kingdom of Elymais.
During the Sasanian era canals and weir-bridges were built, resulting into the cultivation of tobacco and cereals in the region. The ruins of such edifices can be seen in the Tembi region, Godar Landar and Dow-Paloon region (near Izeh); however, following the Muslim conquest of Iran, many of the ancient monolithic structures of the region were demolished and the region was ruled by rulers imposed by the Umayyad Caliphs and remained relatively obscure, until the Qajar era when it became a center for the tar trade and its name was changed to Tol-Ghor, with its borders being limited from the Karun river's Western bank to the tar springs; however, with the advent of the discovery of oil in the region, this city was named Jahangiri, but after the first oil well began production it was known as Maidan-e Naftun. In 1926, following a proposal by Reza Khan, the National Consultative Assembly officially changed the city's name to Masjed Soleyman, after the ancient ruins of Sar-Masjed.
Masjed Soleyman in the 20th century Masjed Soleyman regained importance with the discovery of oil and the erecting of the first oil well in the middle east by D'Arcy's concession. In 1900, he agreed to fund a search for oil and minerals in Qajar Iran headed by Wolff, Ketabchee and Cotte, although D'Arcy never visited Persia himself. Negotiations with the reigning monarch Mozaffar al-Din Shah Qajar began in 1901, and with the offer of £20,000 (£ million today), for a sixty-year concession to explore for oil—later, the D'Arcy concession—was secured in May, covering , and stipulated that D'Arcy would have the oil rights to the entire country except for five provinces in Northern Iran.
In exchange, the Iranian government was given 16% of the oil company's annual profits, an agreement that would remain in effect until the 1979 Iranian Revolution. After the D'Arcy concession, the British government became much more concerned with the stability of Iran because of their reliance on the country's vast oil reserves.
Constitutional Revolution Ḥossain Qolī Khan Haft Lang was appointed superintendent (nāẓem) of the Baḵtīārīs by the Shah in 1862 and head of the tribe (īlḵān) in 1867. He was the first recipient of this title, and in the tribe he became known by the surname Īlḵānī. In 1882, the Shah caused him to be murdered and replaced by his brother Emām Qolī Khan, surnamed Ḥājī Īlḵānī.
From then almost without interruption until the abolition of the title khan in 1956, the successive heads of the tribe were descendants of one or the other of the two brothers. The Haft Lang tribe played a significant role; particularly during the advent of the country's Constitutional Revolution (1905–1907). This event largely succeeded as a result of the Bakhtari tribal coalition military campaign led by Ali-Gholi Khan, Sardar Asaad II, a chieftain of the Haft-lang tribe and his brother Najaf Qoli Khan Bakhtiari- Saad ad-Daula (also referred to as Samsam-os Saltane) whom in 1909 marched up to the gates of Tehran, and eventually deposed Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar (r. 1907–1909).
Following his abdication in 1909, Mohammad Ali Shah went to exile in Russia. This incident secured Saad ad-Daula the position of Prime Minister in the period that followed the abdication of the Qajar Shah. Nonetheless, with Russian backing, the Shah would attempt to regain his throne in 1911 by landing with a coalition of forces at Astarabad . p. 285-286 However, his efforts to reclaim his throne would bear no fruit. In this sense, the Bakhtiaris played a critical role in saving the revolution from the Qajar forces.
Pahlavi era With the expansion of Bakhtiari influence, influential policy makers (particularly in Tehran) began to worry regarding the potential Bakhtiari takeover of Iran's affairs. Prior to this point, the Bakhtiari had largely remained within their own territorial boundaries. In February 1921, the said policy makers instigated a coup by which Reza Pahlavi the commander of the entire Cossack Brigade which was based in Qazvinordered his troops to march towards Tehran and seized the capital.
He forced the dissolution of the government and installed Zia ol Din Tabatabaee as the new prime minister. In 1925, Reza Pahlavi was appointed as the legal monarch of Iran by the decision of Iran's constituent assembly. The assembly deposed Ahmad Shah Qajar, the last Shah of the Qajar dynasty, and amended Iran's 1906 constitution to allow selection of Reza Pahlavi as the Shah of Iran. The Bakhtiari influence in Iranian politics thus waned, but they would continue to play an important role within the early 20th century politics of Iran. Reza Shah Pahlavi (r. 1925–1941) made the destruction of the Bakhtiari influence his mission; moreover, the existence of oil on Bakhtiari territory further motivated the Pahlavi monarch to undermine the autonomy of the tribe and force its population to adhere to the commands of the central government.
Reza Shah would eventually execute a few noteworthy tribal leaders to crush Bakhtiari autonomy and maintain control over the tribe. Amongst the executed Khans was Mohammad Reza Khan (Sardar-e-Fateh), whose son later became the Pahlavi Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar. The latter event was a turning point for Bakhtiari and their rise within Iranian politics.
Discovery of oil in the early 20th century In the late 19th century Britain's Royal Navy, under the leadership of Sir Winston Churchill decided to shift its fuel source from coal to oil; therefore the British admiralty and the War office became the de facto force behind the British government's quest for oil. During the 1890s, research and reports were collected by the British foreign office indicating that Persia had great oil potential.
The British Foreign office selected William Knox D'Arcy, a millionaire investor, and provided him with the reports, promising him greater wealth and governmental support if he invested in the excavation of oil. D'Arcy agreed and sent out representatives to Tehran to win a concession that would give him the exclusive rights to prospect for oil in Persia. On 16 April 1901 negotiations commenced between D'Arcy's representatives and the Qajar monarch Mozzafar al-Din Shah over a potential oil concession.
On 28 May 1901, Shah Mozzafar al-Din signed an 18 article concession which exclusively gave D'Arcy the rights to prospect, explore, exploit, transport and sell natural gas, petroleum, asphalt and mineral waxes in Persia. This concession also granted D'Arcy these rights for a 60-year period, and it covered an area of 1,242,000 square kilometers. or roughly three quarters of the country.