Merv

The largest city on Earth in 1150, and empty ever since 1221

Merv lies in the oasis of the Murgab river near Mary, in southern Turkmenistan, the oldest and best-preserved of the oasis cities on the Silk Roads of Central Asia, according to UNESCO, which listed Ancient Merv in 1999. People lived here from the 3rd millennium BC until the 18th century AD, and the park takes in Bronze Age centres such as Gonur alongside a chain of walled cities built side by side as the town shifted over time: Erk Kala with its citadel, Gyaur Kala, refounded by the Seleucid king Antiochus Soter as Antiochia Margiana, Sultan Kala of the Seljuks, and the post-medieval Abdullah Khan Kala.

It changed hands again and again, under Achaemenids, Greeks, Parthians, Sasanians, Arabs, Ghaznavids, Seljuks, Khwarazmians and Timurids. It was a centre of Buddhist learning, with stupas and monasteries, before Islam. Early in the 9th century it was the seat of the caliph al-Ma'mun and capital of the whole caliphate, and in the 11th and 12th centuries the capital of the Great Seljuk Empire, which stretched from Central Asia to the Mediterranean. Omar Khayyam worked at its observatory, Yaqut al-Hamawi counted ten great libraries, one with 12,000 volumes, and al-Istakhri praised its clean, good streets and its markets. Walls five miles round enclosed narrow lanes, mosques, schools and bathhouses, among canals and orchards green against the Karakum desert. By some estimates it was the largest city in the world around 1200, with more than half a million people.

In 1221 Merv opened its gates to the Mongols under Tolui, son of Genghis Khan, and by contemporary accounts the whole population, refugees included, was killed, some 700,000 people. It was partly rebuilt but never regained its former prosperity. In 1788 and 1789 Shah Murad of Bukhara razed it for the last time and deported its people, and by the 1800s the area was deserted.

When George Curzon came in 1888 he found walls, towers, ramparts and domes stretching in bewildering confusion to the horizon. The great monument still standing is the restored mausoleum of the Seljuk sultan Ahmad Sanjar, who ruled from 1118 to 1157, once part of a large religious complex in Sultan Kala. The site has been protected since 1987 as the State Historical and Cultural Park Ancient Merv.