New-York tribune., 1918-09-09
Baku (Meaning the Windy City,


The great and rich city of oil on the
Caspian Sea whose wells were, at the
time, wantonly destroyed by the ravag-
ing hordes of the Central Powers is in
the hands of the British, and Hadji Gull
yum, of Potsdam, has to strike Off one
more item from the slate of his preda-
tory world dominion dreams. A birds
eye view Of the history and industrial
development Of the phenomenal town,
one Of the miraculous creatures Of mod
ern trade, will enrich the mind of the
reader and fill at the same time his
heart with JOY at the thought of the trick
John Bull put upon the oil magnates of
Germany, who had already laid their
plans to exploit the richest petroleum de-
posits in existence, covering the greater
part of the Caucasus and extending even
to the northern part of Persia.
Baku, which is the western terminus
OF the Transcaspian railway, was a nu-
merically and commercially insignificant
old town in its ante petroleum days; it is
to-day a city of nearly 25O,00O inhabi-
tants, with all modern improvements, as
up-to-date as Petrograd or Warsaw. It's
large and beautiful port in ante-belum
days was continuously jammed with all
sorts of sail and steam vessels, carrying
its trade into the furthest corners of the
Asiatc Continent According to local
tradition the town existed, under the
name of khansar long before the time
of Alexander the Great.
However this may be, it formed orgi-
nally part of the Persian Empire and
came under the power of the Arabs with
the Mahometan conquest in the seventh
century. After the fall of the Caliphs
Baku passed into the hands of the
princes Of Shirvan, who held sway over
it for several centuries.
The Arabic geographer Masudi (943
A. d. speaks of Baku as a place Of
naphtha and volcanoes, telling us of its
having been ravaecd by the Russians.
Marco Polo G254- 1920 the famous
Venetian traveller, gives us a vivid de-
scription Of the oil wells
In 1909 the Persians took the town and
kept it, with the exception of a short
Turkish interregnum, until 1928, when
Matushkin, one Of the generals of Peter
the Great, bombarded and took it. In
1885 it was restored to Persia, but finally
ceded to Russia in 1873
The earliest Engishmen to visit Baku
were Anthony Jenkinson (1562) and
Jeffrey Ducket (1574, the latter being
an agent of the Muscovy Company The
first German, a man with the very ap-
propriate name of Olearius, visited the
town in 1916
English capitalists, the famous founder
Of the Nobel Prize and the Rothschilds
were the first exploiters Of the wells, Of
which there were, couple Of years ago.
over 10000 in full activity.
The output of crude oil in 1898 was
nearly 100000 900 gallons. One single
well, for months at a time, spouted at
the astounding rate of nearly 1000 900
gallons a day. Poor Tartars who for
mery were pounding stone on the streets
suddenly became multimillionaires
through the sale of their few hundreds
of acres of seemingly worthless land.
AS far back as 1925 A. d. one of the
wells daily produced oil to the value Of
about 5000
During 1908 the production was 55.-
o63,504. barrels of AZ gallons each the
worlds total output of crude oil in that
year being 2S4,614 O22 barrels. Baku's
share of it was 1876 per cent
Oil is in the air one breathes the verv
dust of the streets and the soil of the
home garden are impregnated with it. A
pail of smoke hangs over the BLACK
Town ("Tshorny Gorod") as the Rus
SLAMS call it,
remarkable pyrotechnic display of
the oil burning on the waters in the bav
OF BaAu is sometimes made by throwing
lighted torch into the waves.
The population is mixed one-Tar-
tars, Armenians, Georgians, Persians.
Cossacks, Jews and so on The shon
signs on the cleanly kept thoroughfares
are in Russian, Arabic and Yiddish
Moslem minarets are intermjnq)od
with Russian and Armenian churches
Two of the most prominent educational
institutions of the city are a school for
girls and technical institute.