In May 1908, a group of British geologists discovered a large amount of oil at Masjed Soleyman located in the Khuzestan Province in southwest of nowadays Iran. It was the first commercially significant find of oil in the Middle East. William Knox D'Arcy, by contract with Ali-Qoli Khan Bakhtiari, obtained permission to explore for oil for the first time in the Middle East,[1] an event which changed the history of the entire region.