Turkmenistan - Early History
Tools from the Stone-Age have been discovered along the Caspian Sea shore and near the modern port of Turkmenbashi, establishing the pre-historic presence of humans in the area that is today known as Turkmenistan. The remains of farming settlements in the Kopet-Dag Mountains date back 8,000 years. The ancient cultivators in this region used the mountain streams to irrigate their crops. They also survived by herding livestock and by hunting wild game. As early societies learned to make pottery and metal tools, they began to trade with other people of central Asia. This profitable trade, however, also attracted foreign invaders. By the 6th century B.C., the powerful Persian Empire had established the provinces of Parthia and Margiana in what is now Turkmenistan. From their base south of the Kopet-Dag range the Persians controlled trade through central Asia and subdued the many nomadic people who lived on Turkmenistan’s arid plains.
In the 4th century B.C., the Persian Empire was defeated by the army of Alexander the Great. In 330 B.C., Alexander marched northward into Central Asia and founded the city of Alexandria near the Murgab River. Located on an important trade route, Alexandria later became the city of Merv (modern Mary). The ruins of Alexander’s ancient city are still visible along the banks of the Murgab River. After Alexander’s death in 323 B.C., his generals fought for control of his empire, which quickly fell apart. The Scythians—fierce, nomadic warriors from the north—then established the kingdom of Parthia, which covered present-day Turkmenistan and Iran. The Parthian kings ruled their domain from the ancient city of Nisa. At its height, Parthia extended south and west as far as the Indus River in modern India. Parthia fell in A.D. 224 to the Sasanian rulers of Persia. At the same time, several groups—including the Alans and the Huns—were moving into Turkmenistan from the east and north. A branch of the Huns wrested control of southern Turkmenistan from the Sasanian Empire in the 5th century A.D.
Although Turkmenistan was still populated mostly by nomadic herders, permanent settlements were prospering in the fertile river valleys. Farmers raised grains, vegetables, and fruits along the Amu Darya River; and Merv and Nisa became centers of sericulture (the raising of silkworms). A busy caravan route, connecting China and the city of Baghdad (in modern Iraq), passed through Merv. In addition, merchants, traders, and missionaries introduced the religions of Buddhism and Zoroastrianism to the region.
Central Asia came under Arab control after a series of invasions in the late 7th and early 8th centuries. Meanwhile, the Oguz—the ancestors of the Turkmen—were migrating from eastern Asia into central Asia, the Middle East, and Asia Minor (modern Turkey). The Arab conquest brought the Islamic religion to the Oguz and to the other people of central Asia.
By the 11th century, the Oguz were pushing to the south and west, and the Arabs were retreating from Turkmenistan. In 1040, the Seljuk clan of the Oguz tribe established the Seljuk Empire, with its capital at Merv. At one time, the Seljuk realm stretched all the way to Baghdad. Other Oguz groups moved west across the Caspian Sea, settling in Azerbaijan and in Asia Minor, where they joined the Seljuk Turks in establishing the Ottoman Empire. After mixing with the settled people in Turkmenistan, the Oguz living north of the Kopet-Dag Mountains gradually became known as the Turkmen.
In the 11th and 12th centuries, the main centers of Turkmen culture were at Khiva in the north (now in Uzbekistan) and at Merv in the south. Khiva controlled the cities and farming estates of the lower Amu Darya Valley. Merv became a crossroads of trade in silk and spices between Asia and the Middle East. This business created vast wealth in the ancient city, where the Seljuk rulers built fabulous mosques and palaces. At the same time, a growing class of wealthy traders and landowners was challenging the Seljuks for control of Turkmenistan.
In 1157, during a revolt of powerful landowners, the Seljuk Empire collapsed. The leaders of Khiva took control of Turkmenistan, but their reign was brief. In 1221, central Asia suffered a disastrous invasion by Mongol warriors who were sweeping across the region from their base in eastern Asia. Under their commander Genghis Khan, the Mongols conquered Khiva and burned the city of Merv to the ground. The Mongol leader ordered the massacre of Merv’s inhabitants as well as the destruction of Turkmenistan’s farms and irrigation works. The Turkmen who survived the invasion retreated northward to the plains of Kazakhstan or eastward to the shores of the Caspian Sea.
After Genghis Khan’s death in 1227, the Mongols lost control of Turkmenistan. Small, semi-independent states arose under the rule of the region’s landowners. In the 1370’s, the Mongol leader Timur (known as Tamerlane in Europe), a descendant of Genghis Khan, conquered these states once more and established the Timurid Empire. But after Timur’s death in 1405, the realm weakened and soon disintegrated.
The Mongol invasions had divided the Turkmen into small clans and had pushed them into the desert. Later, as the Mongols retreated from Turkmenistan, the Turkmen fell under the control of Muslim khans (rulers) who established khanates in Bukhara (in modern Uzbekistan) and Khiva. The rivalry between the khans and the rulers of Persia touched off centuries of war in Turkmenistan. Persians, Turkmen, and the khans fought for the scattered oases in southern Turkmenistan. From the 14th through the 17th century, Turkmenistan was in decline. To escape the conflicts, most Turkmen moved to the remote deserts along the borders of Persia and Afghanistan.
During the Mongol conquest of Central Asia in the thirteenth century, the Turkmen-Oghuz of the steppe were pushed from the Syrdariya farther into the Garagum (Russian spelling Kara Kum) Desert and along the Caspian Sea. Various components were nominally subject to the Mongol domains in eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Iran. Until the early sixteenth century, they were concentrated in four main regions: along the southeastern coast of the Caspian Sea, on the Mangyshlak Peninsula (on the northeastern Caspian coast), around the Balkan Mountains, and along the Uzboy River running across north-central Turkmenistan. Many scholars regard the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries as the period of the reformulation of the Turkmen into the tribal groups that exist today. Beginning in the sixteenth century and continuing into the nineteenth century, large tribal conglomerates and individual groups migrated east and southeast.
Historical sources indicate the existence of a large tribal union often referred to as the Salor confederation in the Mangyshlak Peninsula and areas around the Balkan Mountains. The Salor were one of the few original Oghuz tribes to survive to modern times. In the late seventeenth century, the union dissolved and the three senior tribes moved eastward and later southward. The Yomud split into eastern and western groups, while the Teke moved into the Akhal region along the Kopetdag Mountains and gradually into the Murgap River basin. The Salor tribes migrated into the region near the Amu Darya delta in the oasis of Khorazm south of the Aral Sea, the middle course of the Amu Darya southeast of the Aral Sea, the Akhal oasis north of present-day Ashgabat and areas along the Kopetdag bordering Iran, and the Murgap River in present-day southeast Turkmenistan. Salor groups also live in Turkey, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and China.
Much of what we know about the Turkmen from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries comes from Uzbek and Persian chronicles that record Turkmen raids and involvement in the political affairs of their sedentary neighbors. Beginning in the sixteenth century, most of the Turkmen tribes were divided among two Uzbek principalities: the Khanate (or amirate) of Khiva (centered along the lower Amu Darya in Khorazm) and the Khanate of Bukhoro (Bukhara). Uzbek khans and princes of both khanates customarily enlisted Turkmen military support in their intra- and inter-khanate struggles and in campaigns against the Persians. Consequently, many Turkmen tribes migrated closer to the urban centers of the khanates, which came to depend heavily upon the Turkmen for their military forces. The height of Turkmen influence in the affairs of their sedentary neighbors came in the eighteenth century, when on several occasions (1743, 1767-70), the Yomud invaded and controlled Khorazm. From 1855 to 1867, a series of Yomud rebellions again shook the area. These hostilities and the punitive raids by Uzbek rulers resulted in the wide dispersal of the eastern Yomud group.
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