Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
At the end of the 14th century, Merv accepted the dominance of the
famous Turkish ruler Timur. Only in the beginning of the 15th century,
with the order of the Timurid ruler Shahruh (1405/6-1447), were some of
the buildings and water bend fixed, and the city reconstructed and inhab-
ited by people brought in from different places. The new city was built
between 1407 and 1409 in the south of old city, with the name Abdullah
Han Kala (Fig. 4) (Sayan, 1999).
FIGURE 4
Abdullah Han Kala City Walls, 15th century (Sayan, 1999).
The Turkmens in Khorasan and Mawarannahr lived with other Turk
tribes like Uzbeks, Khazaks, Kirghiz and Karakalpaks, and lived under
the reign of Mongols first, and then Timurids. In the 16th and 17th cen-
turies, Merv was first ruled by Uzbek Sheybanids and later for a short
while by Safavids. After the Sheybanids took charge again, the Bukhara
Emirate and Khiva Khanate fought for power to rule Merv in the 18th and
19th centuries. The Turkmens who lived in Mangishlak went to the Kopet
mountains after the 17th century and got stronger there. Being disturbed
by this, the Khiva khan and Persian shah, backed by the Uzbek-Turkmen
coalition, started their Turkmen attacks and invaded Merv. The Turkmens
who successfully fought for their freedom in 1830-1860, this time were
faced by the attacks of tsarist Russia, who wanted to invade their lands.
After bloody wars, in 1884, the Khiva Khanate decided to recognize the
ruling of Russia, and became a colony of Russia. In 1924, after the Rus-
sian Bolshevik Revolution, the Soviet Socialist Republic of Turkmenistan
was declared as one of the six socialist republics of Russia, and after the
disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, achieved independence as the
Republic of Turkmenistan (Saray, 1993).
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