Mammadhasan Adigozalov

Mammadhasan Adigozalov was one of the first highly skilled oil drilling masters of the Baku oil fields. Born on 23 June 1861 in Khirdalan in the Baku governorate, although another account gives 1860, he left farming at the age of fifteen for the oil industry and spent his whole life in it. He was known as a fishing master, able to recover tools lost in a drilled well and so save the drilling from stopping, and the owners of the oil fields competed to hire him. He joined the Hummet social democratic party in 1906, was among the founders of the oil workers union and its treasurer from 1907 to 1911, and took part in the talks that produced the first collective agreement of the oil industry in 1904. After 1917 he chaired the Khirdalan Soviet and later the Binagadi executive committee. He received the title Hero of Labour in 1934 and the Order of the Red Banner of Labour in 1956, and died in Baku in 1960. He is included here as an early oil field craftsman and labour organiser.