Biography
From a poor stonemason of the Old City to an oil millionaire.
A stonemason of the Old City
Haji Zeynalabdin Taghiyev was born around 1838 in the Old City of Baku, into a poor family. Losing his mother early, he barely learned to read and as a small boy went to work — as a stonemason's apprentice. Diligence and grit soon told: by the age of eighteen he had become a contractor taking on building work.
But oil overturned his fate. In the 1870s Taghiyev and partners bought plots near Baku, at Bibi-Heybat. When the partners, tired of waiting, withdrew from the venture, a gusher of oil struck on his land. So the former stonemason became, in an instant, one of the richest men in Baku.
Through a life
Not only the fields
Taghiyev did not stop at oil. Having sold the oil business to the British in 1897, he invested the proceeds in the most varied enterprises: he built a large textile mill in Baku, dealt in fisheries and Caspian shipping. He was not just an oilman but one of the most far-sighted entrepreneurs in all the Caucasus.
Wealth and responsibility
For all his wealth, Taghiyev remained a man of the people: illiterate, he kept all his life a respect for the knowledge of which he himself had been deprived. It was this feeling — that a fortune must be returned to the people — that made him not just a millionaire but a legend.
He received no education himself — and so all his life he gave it to others.