Himself a member of the exiled imperial Ottoman family, Mahmud Sami has written an passonate history of how Great Britain came to control the Ottoman Empire’s oil wealth following the First World War. The Ottoman Empire’s Mesopotamian provinces, which would later be joined to form the country of Iraq, were in fact known to hold oil reserves before 1914. Sami tells the story of how the British and an enterprising Armenian made an initial attempt to secure rights to Ottoman oil and then how British interests were consolidated following the war. Sami argues that the heirs to the Ottoman throne, which was abolished by the republican government in the 1920s, were deprived of their rightful inheritance by the British desire for control over Iraq’s oil. Sami additionally details the attempts of these heirs over the course of the twentieth century to retain control over their lost properties. The Quest for Sultan Adülhamid’s Oil Assests is a unique look at the Middle East oil question.