The site of Merv in Turkenistan lies in the 100 kilometre-wide fertile delta of the river Mugar which flows from the Afghan mountains into the Karakum desert. This position was crucial in the city’s development on the Silk Road – because of the surrounding terrain it is difficult to bypass. Temperatures range from 55ºC in midsummer to -20ºC in winter. Merv was one of the really great cities of the world and in the 11th century was probably the second or third largest in the world. Sacked by the Mongols in 1221 it was substantially abandoned afterward. Turkmenistan, colonised under the Czars, became independent when the Soviet Union broke up. The modern, Soviet, town of Mary lies 30 kilometres to the West. So there is nothing on top of 1000 hectares of archaeology comprising 17 metres of stratigraphy, only 0.002% of which has yet been investigated.

It had been thought that the delta was not much occupied before the Iron Age, but recent work has found Bronze Age civilisation in the area, probably in contact with the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia and which died out in 18-1900BC as sites were abandoned, perhaps due to decreased rainfall as river channels dried up.

By 550BC an oval site 600 metres across was occupied, probably by Achaemenids from Russia; called Erk Katal, it had strategic importance. In the north of this area was an open space, perhaps a rest place for caravans. When Alexander the Great went through south Turkmenistan on his way to India he may have visited Merv. After his empire fragmented the city was Hellenised under Antiochus 1st, with a grid street layout with agora, theatre etc. and a rectangular town wall with gates at the compass points. Now known as Gyaur Kala it became very built up and by the third century BC covered 337 hectares: the old city became a citadel within it. In the third, fourth and fifth centuries AD it was very cosmopolitan with Christians, Jews and Buddhists. By 651 AD Merv was part of the Islamic world and was refounded as Sultan Kala, Gyaur Kala becoming a surburb. Islam was the official religion but other religions were tolerated. From a canal which ran through the city a ceramic-piped water system fed houses on either side, and again there was a grid system of streets and buildings. From the 11th century the city was ruled from Baghdad and scholars such as Omar Khayyam and Yaqut the great geographer lived there.

Yvonne Masson