Masjed-e Soleyman, city in western Iran, located in the Zagros Mountains in northeastern Khuzestan province. The country's oldest producing oil wells are in the area around Masjed-e Soleyman, which also has a refinery for producing petroleum products. Almost all of the city's businesses service the oil industry or its employees. Roads connect Masjed-e Soleyman to Ahvaz and Dezful to the northwest. A new highway, completed in the 1990s, runs between Ahvaz in the west to Esfahan in the east, passing around the city. Crude petroleum that is not refined in Madjed-e Soleyman is carried by piplines to the refinery at Abadan and to oil export terminals. Although the area to the east of Masjed-e Soleyman contains many ancient and medieval monuments and ruins, no urban center existed on its site before the development of the oil industry in the early 20th century. Commercial quantities of oil were discovered at rural Masjed-e Soleyman in 1908, and an oil boomtown developed there during the next decade. By 1956 Masjed-e Soleyman was a well-established city of 45,000. It continued to grow during the latter part of the 20th century, although it was bombed several times during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988). Population (1994) 109,224.
