Armenian businessman and great philanthropist Galust Sargis Gulbenkyan was born on March 23, 1869 in Constantinople. He has had a huge role in the process of making the Middle East oil reserves accessible to Western exploitation. Calust Gulbenkyan has chosen the profession of oil expert-miner. He received his education in noted European universities and mastered eight languages. Back in 1860, Galust’s father, Sargis Gulbenkyan, was active in the oil industry, owning several oil companies in the Caucasus, especially in Baku, and represented the Alexander Mantashev International Organization in the Ottoman Empire since 1880. After the genocide of 1915 , he got territories in Mesopotamia to shelter refugees. Gulbenkyan formed the General Committee on Petroleum during the First World War. He had oil fields in Venezuela, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, and was aware of the legal and illegal entries of the Sultanate and the Persian courts. He had the levers of large oil companies in his hands. He had managed a valuable collection of art, where about 6,000 original samples were included. From 1920 to 1940, he took over the Armenian schools and medical centers in Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq, and undertook the construction of numerous churches in the Middle East. In 1936, Gulbenkyan donated $ 400,000 to the Mother See of Holy Ejmiatsin. Galust Gulbenkyan died on July 20, 1955, at the age of 86 in Lisbon. His body was buried in St. Sargis Church in London.
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