Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
INTRODUCTION
A thousand years ago, in the days when Muslim geographers roamed over
Asia, imagine yourself in a caravan, on a camel, on the legendary east-
west road from Nishapur to Bukhara... After fighting with sand storms in
the Karakum Desert and just when your food is about to expire, you arrive
at an oasis, which you thought was just a mirage. Such a city that when
you go inside the castle walls; once you have inhaled the sweet smell of
melons rising from the bazaar and feasted your eyes with colorful silk fab-
rics and carpets, all you want to do is to see the city's palaces and mosques,
and run to the libraries for the unique topics and manuscripts that you can
find only in this city. Because, the place that you arrived is none other than
Merv, at those times the eastern capital of Islam and the next most impor-
tant Muslim city after Baghdad; of whose observatories were visited by
the likes of Omer Hayyam, of whose libraries had welcomed scientists like
Yakut Al-Hamawi, and who had deserved to be named “Marvelousness.”
Today Merv, located in the Mary province of Turkmenistan, is an oa-
sis city established on the delta of the Murgab river, which takes its roots
from the Afghan mountains and vanishes up north in the Karakum desert
(Fig. 1). Being surrounded by the Karakum desert has provided a natural
isolation for Merv, and also made it an important stop for obtaining food
on the Silk Road.
FIGURE 1
Turkmenistan Map and Mary province (www.orsam.org.tr).
Retrieved
November
15,
2013
from
http://www.orsam.org.tr/tr/haritaGaleri.
aspx?HaritaID=38
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