Agreement with the Bakhtiari

On 15 February 1916, according to the British chronology of the war, the British government concluded an agreement with the khans of the Bakhtiari on cooperation in protecting the oilfields in Persia. The British official history of the Mesopotamian campaign does not describe the document itself, and its detailed terms are hard to establish from the available sources. What was at stake, however, is clear. Since 1908, when oil was struck at Masjed Soleyman, it had been extracted on Bakhtiari lands at the foot of the Zagros Mountains, and a pipeline ran from the oilfields through Ahvaz to the refinery at Abadan on the Shatt al-Arab. Production was run by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, in which the British government had held a majority of the shares since 1914. The company supplied fuel to the Royal Navy, whose newest ships were changing over from coal to oil.

The Bakhtiari, a people of nomadic herders from the Zagros Mountains, were a serious force in Persia. In 1909 their khans had led the victorious march of the constitutionalists on Tehran, and afterwards they sat in governments and held governorships. The oil deposits lay on their lands, so even before the war the khans received money and shares from the company in return for protecting its people and installations. There were, however, many clans, and their rivalry made a common policy difficult.

The war with Turkey put this arrangement to the test. In February 1915 Arab tribes from around Ahvaz, stirred up by the Turks, cut the pipeline and set it on fire in several places. The threat to Ahvaz diminished only in the spring, after the Turkish defeat at Shaiba. Arnold Wilson, then a political officer with the British corps in Mesopotamia, later wrote that the Bakhtiari as a whole remained quiet at the time, although an important section of them supported the Turco-German cause. The responsible khans, however, decided not to allow any damage to the oilfields, and two of them, Sardar Jang and Sardar Bahador, brought cash to the fields to pay the workers while chaos reigned in the area. German agents were active in Isfahan and other Persian cities, seeking the support of the tribes.

At the end of 1915, when after the failed advance on Baghdad General Townshend’s division was besieged at Kut, it was feared in India and in London that the Turks under Field Marshal Colmar von der Goltz would strike through Persian Arabistan at the oilfields. According to the British official history, on 11 December the company’s agents at Mohammerah (today Khorramshahr) reported that the company’s doctor, Dr M. Y. Young, was negotiating with the Bakhtiari for the protection of its interests and the continuity of work on the oilfields in the event of war. A few days later Young obtained their assurance that they would not admit to their lands any Europeans or their emissaries who might hatch intrigues. The company considered sending troops into the Bakhtiari mountains inadvisable and preferred such agreements, although at the same time it pressed for a brigade to be kept waiting in the Karun valley, ready to move to the oilfields if needed. The agreement of February 1916 was a continuation of these efforts.

In 1916 the oilfields remained quiet. Wilson recorded that the khans did not allow their internal quarrels to endanger the security of the fields, and that the activity of German agents was effectively countered by the British political officer, Captain Noel. Only once, in August 1916, did it seem that the pro-German party among the khans would gain the upper hand, and the garrison at Ahvaz was then reinforced. The threat did not materialise, however, and peace on the oilfields was maintained.