State Historical and Cultural Park Ancient Merv. "merv" can still be searched

The city where Abu Muslim proclaimed the Baghdad Caliphate

The largest historical and cultural reserve on the territory of modern Turkmenistan is included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.

In the first centuries of Islam, Merv was one of the most important centers of Muslim civilization. Its heyday dates back to the 11th–12th centuries, during the reign of the Great Seljuk dynasty, whose empire stretched from the left bank of the Amu Darya to Palestine. In those days it was one of the most beautiful cities of the East, and today it is the largest archaeological park in Central Asia near the small town of Bayramaly, where unique mausoleums of Islamic warriors and still revered shrines, numerous ruins of mosques, palaces and clay castles, caravans have been preserved. sheds and bazaars, as well as kilometers of powerful fortress walls.

Merv is the name of not only one of the oldest Asian cities, but also the entire surrounding area in the old delta of the Murghab River. Since time immemorial, these lands have attracted people with their fertility and abundance of water. In the Bronze Age, the fertile region, later called the country of Margush, or Margiana, was inhabited by agricultural and semi-nomadic tribes, who created a unique culture of the ancient Eastern type. But on the plain, where city life was in full swing four thousand years ago, the Karakum desert now stretches, and ancient settlements discovered by archaeologists of the twentieth century are slowly absorbing the sands, or they are leveled with graders by yesterday's collective farmers, who have now become unpunished invaders of protected lands, so tempting for new irrigation. Thus, history is already disappearing before our eyes, its priceless evidence is disappearing, often not even having time to become the property of science.

Against the backdrop of an extremely scarce written tradition, when entire eras have sunk into oblivion without leaving any memory of themselves, preserving the heritage of ancestors is becoming a serious problem on a national scale in Turkmenistan. Ancient Merv, declared a state historical and cultural reserve back in 1988, and since 1999 included in the UNESCO World Heritage List, serves as an example of how monument protection authorities are trying to resist the greed of entrepreneurs and the indifference of local authorities. With the support of international organizations and foreign research centers, Turkmen specialists are implementing projects for the study and conservation of individual ancient structures and are systematically working to form their social status. This routine but necessary work has nothing in common with the official campaigns of recent years, such as the celebration of the 2500th anniversary of Merv - a fictitious anniversary that was postponed and was never carried out.

This age of the city is nothing more than a vulgarization of history, especially characteristic of Soviet ideology and not having any serious scientific basis. Neither archaeologists nor ancient orientalists would dare to say when exactly a settlement arose on the site of Merv. There is indirect evidence that this happened around the 7th century BC, when the Bronze Age oases in the lower reaches of the Murghab delta, on the site of the current Erk-Kala settlement, which towers above the entire area, had long been abandoned.

But then it was just one of many settlements, far from the largest and not the most important. However, it was he who was destined to become over time an important political center, which under the Achaemenids turned into a powerful citadel, and after the campaign of Alexander the Great began to be called Alexandria of Margiana.

Erk-kala is the oldest core of Merv, which is an oval in plan. Later, a square Hellenistic city was added to it on the western side - Antioch of Margiana (now Gyaur-kala), which developed together with Erk-kala under the Parthians and Sassanids and accumulated a twelve-meter cultural layer! After the Arab conquest, Sultan-kala grew even further to the west, but close to it - Merv of the Abbasid and Tahirid era, and the Seljuk capital of the mid-11th century. At the beginning of the 15th century, when it was already uninhabited, Tamerlane’s son Shahrukh erected the Abdullakhan-kala fortress two kilometers to the south, to which the last Merv settlement, Bayramalikhan-kala, was added at the end of the same century. So, over the centuries, the building site of Merv has drifted following the receding water, leaving ruins almost nowhere covered by later layers, which now greatly facilitates the work of archaeologists. But before this nomadic city, moving in space, stopped forever, becoming a museum-reserve, it experienced a turbulent history of the rise and fall of kingdoms and dynasties, countless wars and destruction, but at the same time creation, the revival of life after acute social upheavals.

In 651, 19 years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him), Yazdegerd III, the last monarch of the Sassanid state, was killed in a small village near Merv. This date was a milestone that marked the Arab conquest of Iran and Central Asia, as well as the beginning of the spread of Islam among the peoples of this region, who previously professed Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Christianity, Manichaeism and local forms of paganism. Immediately after the capture of Merv, the Benu-Makhan cathedral mosque was erected in the center of Gyaur-kala, which later became an integral part of the cult-memorial complex, which developed until the 11th century. At this site, archaeologically recorded masonry walls and the remains of a minaret, as well as semi-columns made of carved ganch with rich ornamentation that decorated the mihrab. When the very first cathedral mosque became cramped, another was erected at the city gate on the Razik canal, and in the middle of the 8th century the next one was built even further to the west, on the Majan canal. By this time, Gyaur-kala was almost deserted as a result of the policy of the Arabs, who everywhere evicted residents from fortified shakhristans. As a result, rabad began to expand, where the main life of the city moved.

The center of the future brilliant Merv was the western suburb of Gyaur-Kala. It was founded by the legendary Abu Muslim, the leader of the Abbasid movement in Khorasan, who in 748 led Abbasid supporters to Merv to proclaim a new dynasty, which soon defeated the Umayyads in the struggle for power in the Arab Caliphate. Having settled in Merv, he moved the government residence from the old city, Gyaur-kala, and built a new one near the Majan canal - where Sultan-kala later grew. The palace of Abu Muslim, known as Dar-al-imara and built around 750, was a pretentious building that, according to the description of the Arab geographer al-Istakhri, who saw it a century and a half later, included a domed audience hall, four iwans and a courtyard. This fusion of Sasanian architectural forms (dome and ivan) for centuries determined the character of Islamic architecture in this part of the world - not only civil, but also cultic.

Despite the assassination of Abu Muslim in 755, Merv remained the main political center for the entire Abbasid, or, as it was also called, the Baghdad Caliphate and even for some time became the de facto capital of the entire Islamic world.

This was at the beginning of the 9th century, after the Khorasan governor of the Caliphate al-Mamun, the son of Caliph Harun al-Rashid, arrived here. In 813, al-Mamun himself became caliph, but for a long time after that he lived in Merv, sending from there all the instructions and appointments throughout the Arab state. During this time, Merv experienced a short but brilliant period in its history. There are no architectural monuments of the 9th century left, but it is known that the mentioned Benu Mahan mosque was restored in the center of Gyaur-kala. A large underground water tank with a collapsed dome is the only landmark by which one can now find the former complex of this oldest mosque. Meanwhile, Merv, located on the eastern outskirts of the Caliphate, was not very suitable for the role of an imperial center, and al-Mamun nevertheless moved to Baghdad, and the city again became the main center of the Caliphate province of Khorasan, where in 821 a governor was appointed - Tahir ibn Hussein . According to al-Istakhri, he wanted to move the center of Merv even further to the west and erected a number of buildings along the Hurmuzfarra canal.

The first large structures that greet visitors to the reserve today are the mysterious clay castles Big and Small Kyz-Kala with their harsh rhythm of tightly pressed semi-columns forming corrugated facades. There are different assumptions about the age of these gigantic dwellings. The English researcher Hugh Kennedy recently substantiated the hypothesis that these could well be the buildings of Tahir. And if the features of their designs and building materials cannot serve as accurate indicators in this case, then the presence of a mihrab in one of the premises of Greater Kyz-Kala clearly indicates that the building was already built under the Arabs. Corrugated keshki are typical for Central Asian architecture, there are many of them not only in Merv and its surroundings, but also in Khorezm, they were found in Bukhara and Termez, but they are completely absent in Iran. It is clear that this is a purely local architectural type, dating back to the pre-Islamic past and continued to be reproduced at least until the 12th century, not only in mud brick, but also in burnt brick; A striking example of this is Rabat-i Malik, the steppe residence of the Karakhanids in the Bukhara oasis.

In the 10th–11th centuries, an era of unprecedented cultural upsurge began, when the best minds of the Muslim world, poets, artists and architects flocked to Merv, leaving their imperishable works to their descendants. It is enough to name Omar Khayyam and Fakhr ad-din Gurgani, who lived here for many years, the author of the romantic epic “Vis and Ramin”, which contains the following lines about its architecture:

If the city enchanted hearts,

Imagine the grandeur and splendor of the palace!

It sparkled with paintings of walls and towers,

Decorated with Chinese patterns.

However, depending on the mood of the heroine of the poem, the perception of the city also changes:

This brazier is Merv, not the capital,

Not a city, but a deep dungeon.

A painted palace, a priceless palace,

Gehenna seems fiery to me.

And yet, love for the place where Gurgani spent many prosperous years as a poet at the court of the Seljuk Sultan Togrulbek evoked completely different emotions in him:

Beautiful Merv, shelter of earthly rulers!

Merv is beautiful, where the flower beds bloom!

Merv is beautiful in winter and in the summer heat,

It is beautiful in autumn and spring!

Who saw Merv, who settled in it,

Will he find happiness in another city?

(Translations by S. Lipkin)

Exactly a thousand years ago, Merv became the largest city in Central Asia and one of the largest in the entire Muslim East: together

with its suburbs, its area reached 1800 hectares, and its population was 150 thousand people. Considering that the majority of cities in that era had from two to five thousand inhabitants, one can imagine the scale of Seljuk Merv. Literally every kilometer here you can see one or another evidence of the distant past. Around the metropolitan metropolis, since Parthian times, there has been a dense network of towns and separate rich estates. Sometimes it is not clear where the remains of the city itself are, and where there was a conglomerate of overgrown villages. In the 10th century, city dwellers made up, according to some estimates, about 40 percent of the total number of inhabitants of the oasis.

Under Sultan Melik Shah, at the end of the 11th century, the adobe wall of the rabad, the central square part of the Sultan Kala, was erected or completely rebuilt. The wall was surrounded by a deep and wide ditch, and along the perimeter of the walls there were about two hundred semicircular towers with a diameter of 4 m with two-tiered vaulted chambers for shooters. The walls reached a height of 10–12 meters with a width

6 meters; Inside there were casemates and secret staircases. Before the Mongol invasion, the slender walls and towers of Sultan-Kala were reinforced on the outside with thick cases made of mud brick. The city gates were located on two mutually intersecting axes - powerful structures made of baked bricks, pushed forward from the line of the wall. One of them - the Firuz gate on the western side - was opened by archaeologists. This is in many ways a unique fortification device with a labyrinth; its outside gate part was decorated with cladding made of figured burnt bricks of eighteen types!

In the northeastern corner of Sultan Kala is Shahriyar Ark, a walled citadel of Seljuk Merv. In its northern part there are the remains of adobe walls and arches of former barracks, and in the center is the so-called ruler’s house. It was a two-story building with a square, four-aisled courtyard, built of adobe and only on the facades faced with figured baked bricks. Next door are the ruins of another adobe monumental building, which contained one elongated and high hall, covered with a vault on supporting arches. The facades are decorated

in the old traditions of corrugated locks. Perhaps it was a sofa - the place where the state council met. Among other adobe monuments of the 11th–12th centuries, a country residential house 4 kilometers west of Sultan-Kala stands out. Its brutal forms, the composition of the same type of facades with slit-like loophole windows and the planning structure with a central domed hall indicate the sustainability of the traditions of the castle architecture of pre-Arab Merv.

Almost on the spot where Abu Muslim's palace was located, in the middle of the 12th century (no later than 1152), the mausoleum of Sultan Sanjar, the last ruler of the Great Seljuk dynasty, was erected. It was part of an ensemble of large royal buildings that towered in the center of Sultan Kala. Here there was a palace and a cathedral mosque, to which the Sanjar mausoleum adjoined one of its facades. Many evidence points to its dominant role: “...a blue dome rises above it, which is visible at a distance of one day’s journey” (Yakut al-Hamawi, XIII century), “the largest building in the world” (Rashid ad-din , XIV century),

“One of the greatest buildings of the kingdoms of the universe, so strong that damage cannot touch it” (Isfizari, 15th century). And in its current state, the mausoleum of Sultan Sanjar evokes admiration. This is a huge cube that is crowned by a dome with a diameter of 17 meters. The outer dome, covered with tiles, has not survived, but was restored without cladding in 2004. The height of the dome space of the hall is 36 meters. In the upper part of the cube there is a bypass gallery, revealed on the facades by the rhythm of openwork through arches.

The decor of the gallery uses figured sets of burnt bricks and carved ganch with stylized floral patterns and epigraphy. The interior features wall paintings done in blue and red on a white background. The design of the unloading arched devices and the double shell of the dome of the Sanjar mausoleum is one and a half centuries ahead of the ideas of the builders of the Oljeitu-Khodabendeh mausoleum in Soltaniye (northwest Iran) and 300 years ahead of the ideas of Philippe Brunelleschi, the creator of the dome of the famous Florence Cathedral.

The majestic tomb of the Sultan stands alone in the desert landscape, where time has literally razed the dense network of city blocks to the ground. Only recently, right opposite the entrance to the mausoleum, archaeologists from Great Britain began to excavate the remains of a large bazaar from the time of Abu Muslim, but known from medieval sources as a cathedral mosque with a minaret, the Sultan’s palace, as well as other extraordinary buildings, including ten libraries, an astronomical observatory in which Omar worked Khayyam, are not even localized.

The high level of architecture in Merv is also evidenced by the small memorial mosque of Muhammad ibn Zeid, built in the suburbs near the ceramics quarter in 1112–1113. The main facade of this symbolic building is designed in the form of three arches with intermediate arched niches and frieze horizontal inserts above them. Carefully polished figured bricks and girikh give it a rich pattern. In the interior there are traces of ornamental painting, as well as a brick Kufic inscription and a rare multi-bladed mihrab covered with polychrome painting. Stylistically close to him is another monument of the first quarter of the 12th century - it is called, according to later tradition, Khudaynazar-ovliya. It also belongs to the category of portalless centric mausoleums, the basis of the decor of which is the textural qualities of baked brick.

In 1153, Merv was captured by Ghuz nomads and brutally plundered. The ensuing anarchy against the background of feudal wars for the possession of Khorasan, which lasted for several decades, interrupted construction activity. Only after becoming part of the state of the Khorezmshahs, the city was able to partially recover from the damage caused, but already in 1221 it was completely destroyed by the Mongols. Almost 200 years later, under the Timurids, Merv was reborn, but could no longer reach its previous level not only due to frequent political cataclysms, but also natural factors. The climate became drier, pastures were depleted, Murghab became shallow, sown areas were reduced, and people began to leave their habitable places.

To the north of the fortress wall of Abdullakhan-kala, in the 15th century, a charbagh was laid out - a huge park with the summer residence of the Merv ruler. The entrance to it was formed by an arched gate, and the ceremonial park pavilion rose strictly along the axis. The only surviving Merv ensemble from that period is the mausoleum of the Ashabs, the companions of the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him), buried in Merv back in the 7th century. Over their graves under the Timurids, marble slabs with magnificent carved decoration and inscriptions were placed, hidden by domed kiosks, and behind, in the background, two adjacent vaulted ivans, lined with blue and light blue tiles, were erected. There is nothing behind them - they serve only as a monumental backdrop for both graves. Even in the vicinity of Abdullakhan-kala you can see yakhdans - huge, almost conical adobe domes, erected directly on the ground. These were public refrigerators: snow, densely packed in winter, was stored in them all year round, covered with a compressed layer of camel thorn.

Several centuries passed before Merv opened up to the world again, now thanks to travelers and scientists from Europe and Russia. The ancient city and its surroundings became the object of close interest of orientalists and archaeologists. The pioneer was a thirty-two-year-old professor at the Faculty of Oriental Languages at St. Petersburg University, Valentin Zhukovsky, who came to Merv in 1890 on instructions from the Imperial Archaeological Commission. It was he who carried out the first truly scientific presentation of the history and study of the monuments of the Mary oasis. His fundamental work, which at one time was awarded the gold medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences, has not yet lost its practical value. In the autumn of the same 1890, Merv was recorded in detail by the French photographer Paul Nadar, who left Paris on the famous Orient Express and arrived here along the newly built railway through Istanbul, Tiflis, Baku, Krasnovodsk and Ashgabat. More than a thousand photographs were the result of a journey that combined the curiosity and skill of a man who, using a new type of transport and the quality of photographic equipment of those years, was the first to present previously inaccessible images of the mysterious East to the West. In 1904, Merv was visited by an American expedition of the Carnegie Institution led by Professor Raphael Pampelli. And although his research at Gyaur-Kala was short-lived and episodic, it was they that marked the beginning of the archaeological study of the Murghab oasis.

In the 20th century, academicians Vasily Bartold, Mikhail Masson and the South Turkmenistan Archaeological Complex Expedition (UTAKE), which he headed from 1946 to 1986, made a great contribution to the study of the history and culture of Merv. Several volumes of the works of this mission are dedicated specifically to Merv, not to mention a number of monographs, scientific collections and articles about his monuments, many of which were identified and published by the Utahns. Finally, since 2001, the International Merv Project has been carried out, organized by the Institute of Archeology of University College London on the basis of the State Historical and Cultural Reserve “Ancient Merv”. Dozens of young specialists from Turkmenistan, Great Britain, Germany, Denmark, Iran, China, the USA and other countries undergo internships here, mastering the wisdom of the profession, and develop their own scientific topics, extracting material from the inexhaustible treasury of Merv.

Ruslan Muradov.

Deputy Head of the National Department of Turkmenistan for the Protection, Study and Restoration of Historical and Cultural Monuments.
Website materials used: http://islam.ru/

The ancient city of Merv is one of the oldest cities in Central Asia and the whole world. Merv occupies one of the largest archaeological sites in Central Asia. Here are the ruins of five different fortifications. The ancient city of Merv is also famous for the brightest minds of the Islamic world, such as Al-Khwarizmiya and Omar Khayyam, who lived and worked there.

The ancient city of Merv is located 30 km east of the city of Mari, the capital of the province, or vilayet of the same name, located in the southeast of Turkmenistan, bordering Afghanistan. Merv lies on one of the main branches of the ancient Silk Road, along which trade took place between Europe, Africa and the Far East. Historically, Merv was also an important starting point for the 180-kilometer journey through the desert northwest to ancient Amul (today Turkmenabad), located on the banks of the Amu Darya River. The ruins of ancient Merv are located next to the small town of Bayram Ali, a Russian garrison town founded in the early twentieth century.

A wide delta of rich alluvial lands created by the Murghab River, which flows north of Afghanistan, forms an oasis on the southern edge of the Karakum Desert.

The first written mentions of the ancient city of Merv date back to the 8th-6th centuries. BC. It is known that ancient chroniclers gave large cities the most pretentious names possible, for example, Samarkand was called the “Pearl of the Islamic World.” But here are the names that were given to ancient Merv: “The Soul of the King”, “The City on which the Universe rests”, “Mother of the Cities of Khorasan”. Well, it is very likely that the ancient city fully justified all these names, because even its ruins create unforgettable impression.

What remains of five settlements - Gyaur-Kala, Erk-Kala, Sultan-Kala, Bayramali-khan-Kala and Abdullah-khan-Kala, allows us to reconstruct the chronology of the area for many centuries. Some of the most interesting sights of Ancient Merv are the tomb of Sultan Sanjar, the Shakhriyar-ark citadel, the Sultan-Kala settlement, the ruins of fortresses, a Christian temple and a Buddhist monastery. Big and Small Kyz-Kala, ruins of palaces, baths.

Currently, the ancient city of Merv is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site as the best-preserved ancient center of the Great Silk Road.

ii, iii Link Region*** Asia Inclusion 1999 (23 session)

Coordinates: 37°39′46″ n. w. 62°11′33″ E. d. / 37.6628028° s. w. 62.1925194° E. d. / 37.6628028; 62.1925194(G) (I)

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After the Arab conquest of Central Asia in the 7th century. finds a second life as a springboard for aggressive expeditions to the north and east. Under the Abbasids, Merv was one of the main centers of Arab book learning, possessing ten libraries.

The heyday of the city begins under the reign of the Samanid dynasty. Merv reached its greatest prosperity in the middle of the 12th century, when Sultan Sanjar made it the capital of the Seljuk state. At this time, Merv amazed contemporaries with the scale of its buildings and its huge population, which, according to some estimates, was greater than the population of Constantinople and Baghdad. It continued to be the largest center of Central Asia even under the Khorezmshahs.

In 1221, Merv was destroyed by the Mongols and was not revived until the 15th century, when the Timurids finally put its irrigation structures in order, but Merv could not achieve its former greatness, and over time the settlement was moved to the site of the modern city of Mary. With the arrival in the 1880s. The Russian army (see the battle on Kushka) began an archaeological study of the territory of the Merv oasis, which became systematic in the post-war period thanks to the activities of M. E. Masson.

Infrastructure

The 12-hectare Erk-Kala citadel dates back to the Achaemenid era. A building on a monolithic platform rises above the fort, surrounded by a mud wall.
The territory of the early medieval settlement of Gyaur-Kala with the ruins of several Buddhist and Christian monasteries, as well as two-story castles of nobles.
The Sultan-Kala settlement in the shape of an irregular quadrangle is the core of the capital of the Seljuk Turks, somewhat west of Gyaur-Kala.
The Shahriyar Ark citadel dates back to the Seljuk period and includes extensive ruins of barracks and palace buildings, as well as the mausoleum of Sultan Sanjar.
Mausoleum of Muhammad ibn-Zeid on the suburban territory of the Seljuk capital - erected ca. 1112
The southern settlement of Abdullah Khan-Kala represents the last period of development of Merv and is distinguished by a regular layout (palace, mosques, madrassas, mausoleums).

Famous people from Merv

Ahmad ibn Abd Allah al-Marwazi (770-870), mathematician and astronomer.
Abbas Marwazi is a 9th century Persian poet.
Masudi Marwazi - Persian poet of the 10th century.
Sharaf al-Zaman Tahir al-Marwazi, 12th century physician

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Notes

Literature

V. M. Masson Merv is the capital of Margiana. - Mary, 1991 - 73 p.

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Excerpt characterizing Merv (ancient city)

“I give it to you with pleasure,” said Napoleon. -Who is this young man next to you?
Prince Repnin named Lieutenant Sukhtelen.
Looking at him, Napoleon said, smiling:
– II est venu bien jeune se frotter a nous. [He came to compete with us when he was young.]
“Youth doesn’t stop you from being brave,” Sukhtelen said in a breaking voice.
“Excellent answer,” said Napoleon. - Young man, you will go far!
Prince Andrei, who, to complete the trophy of the captives, was also put forward, in full view of the emperor, could not help but attract his attention. Napoleon apparently remembered that he had seen him on the field and, addressing him, used the same name of the young man - jeune homme, under which Bolkonsky was reflected in his memory for the first time.
– Et vous, jeune homme? Well, what about you, young man? - he turned to him, - how do you feel, mon brave?
Despite the fact that five minutes before this, Prince Andrei could say a few words to the soldiers carrying him, he now, directly fixing his eyes on Napoleon, was silent... All the interests that occupied Napoleon seemed so insignificant to him at that moment, so petty seemed to him his hero himself, with this petty vanity and joy of victory, in comparison with that high, fair and kind sky that he saw and understood - that he could not answer him.
And everything seemed so useless and insignificant in comparison with the strict and majestic structure of thought that was caused in him by the weakening of his strength from the bleeding, suffering and the imminent expectation of death. Looking into the eyes of Napoleon, Prince Andrei thought about the insignificance of greatness, about the insignificance of life, the meaning of which no one could understand, and about the even greater insignificance of death, the meaning of which no one living could understand and explain.
The emperor, without waiting for an answer, turned away and, driving away, turned to one of the commanders:
“Let them take care of these gentlemen and take them to my bivouac; let my doctor Larrey examine their wounds. Goodbye, Prince Repnin,” and he, moving his horse, galloped on.
There was a radiance of self-satisfaction and happiness on his face.
The soldiers who brought Prince Andrei and removed from him the golden icon they found, hung on his brother by Princess Marya, seeing the kindness with which the emperor treated the prisoners, hastened to return the icon.
Prince Andrei did not see who put it on again or how, but on his chest, above his uniform, suddenly there was an icon on a small gold chain.
“It would be good,” thought Prince Andrei, looking at this icon, which his sister hung on him with such feeling and reverence, “it would be good if everything were as clear and simple as it seems to Princess Marya. How nice it would be to know where to look for help in this life and what to expect after it, there, beyond the grave! How happy and calm I would be if I could now say: Lord, have mercy on me!... But to whom will I say this? Either the power is indefinite, incomprehensible, which I not only cannot address, but which I cannot express in words - the great all or nothing, - he said to himself, - or this is the God who is sewn up here, in this palm, Princess Marya? Nothing, nothing is true, except the insignificance of everything that is clear to me, and the greatness of something incomprehensible, but most important!
The stretcher started moving. With each push he again felt unbearable pain; the feverish state intensified, and he began to become delirious. Those dreams of his father, wife, sister and future son and the tenderness that he experienced on the night before the battle, the figure of the small, insignificant Napoleon and the high sky above all this, formed the main basis of his feverish ideas.
A quiet life and calm family happiness in Bald Mountains seemed to him. He was already enjoying this happiness when suddenly little Napoleon appeared with his indifferent, limited and happy look at the misfortune of others, and doubts and torment began, and only the sky promised peace. By morning, all the dreams mixed up and merged into the chaos and darkness of unconsciousness and oblivion, which, in the opinion of Larrey himself, Doctor Napoleon, were much more likely to be resolved by death than by recovery.
“C"est un sujet nerveux et bilieux," said Larrey, "il n"en rechappera pas. [This is a nervous and bilious man, he will not recover.]
Prince Andrey, among other hopelessly wounded, was handed over to the care of the residents.

At the beginning of 1806, Nikolai Rostov returned on vacation. Denisov was also going home to Voronezh, and Rostov persuaded him to go with him to Moscow and stay in their house. At the penultimate station, having met a comrade, Denisov drank three bottles of wine with him and, approaching Moscow, despite the potholes of the road, he did not wake up, lying at the bottom of the relay sleigh, near Rostov, which, as it approached Moscow, came more and more to impatience.

Merv is the oldest known city in Central Asia, standing on the banks of the Murghab River in the southeastern part of Turkmenistan, 30 km east of the modern city of Mary. The capital of the Persian satrapy of Margiana and the Seljuk state.

The Merv oasis was inhabited already in the era of the Margiana civilization (late 3rd - early 2nd millennium BC). In cuneiform texts it is referred to as Margu, from which the name of the surrounding area is derived. At the turn of the Common Era, Merv is one of the main urban centers of Parthia with an area of 60 km² and several rings of walls. According to Chinese sources, in 97, the Chinese military leader Ban Chao reached Merv with his detachment.

The heyday of the city began under the reign of the Samanid dynasty. Merv reached its greatest prosperity in the middle of the 12th century, when Sultan Sanjar made it the capital of the Seljuk state. At this time, Merv amazed contemporaries with the scale of its buildings and its huge population, which, according to some estimates, was greater than the population of Constantinople and Baghdad. It continued to remain the largest center of Central Asia even under the Khorezmshahs.

In 1221, Merv was destroyed by the Mongols and was not revived until the 15th century, when the Timurids finally put its irrigation structures in order, but Merv could not achieve its former greatness, and over time the settlement was moved to the site of the modern city of Mary. With the arrival in the 1880s. Russian army (battle on Kushka) began an archaeological study of the territory of the Merv oasis, which became systematic in the post-war period thanks to the activities of M. E. Masson.

On the territory of Ancient Merv there are:

- The 12-hectare Erk-Kala citadel dates back to the Achaemenid era. Once upon a time, in the ancient city of Merv, there was a building on a monolithic platform, which was surrounded by a high fortress wall. Now this place looks more like the crater of an extinct volcano or a clay funnel. There are shards of clay vessels lying underfoot, and sometimes ancient coins are found.
The territory of the early medieval settlement of Gyaur-Kala with the ruins of several Buddhist and Christian monasteries, as well as two-story castles of nobles.
The Sultan-Kala site in the shape of an irregular quadrangle is the core of the capital of the Seljuk Turks, somewhat to the west of Gyaur-Kala.
The Shahriyar Ark citadel dates back to the Seljuk period and includes extensive ruins of barracks and palace buildings.
Mausoleum of Muhammad ibn-Zeid on the suburban territory of the Seljuk capital - erected ca. 1112
The southern settlement of Abdullah Khan-Kala represents the last period of development of Merv and is distinguished by a regular layout (palace, mosques, madrassas, mausoleums).

Merv (Persian مرو; Turkmen Merw) is the oldest known city in Central Asia, standing on the banks of the Murgab River in the southeastern part of Turkmenistan, 30 km east of the modern city of Mary. The capital of the Persian satrapy of Margiana and the Seljuk state. The ruins of Merv are a World Heritage Site.

If previously four ancient centers of civilizations were known (Mesopotamia, Egypt, India and China), now Margiana is recognized as the fifth such center.

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State Historical and Cultural Park “Ancient Merv” is the remains of the oldest known city in Central Asia, which stood on the banks of the Murgab River in the southeastern part of Turkmenistan, 30 km east of the modern city of Mary.

Merv is the capital of the Persian satrapy of Margiana and the Seljuk state. Merv, the oldest settlement located on the Great Silk Road, which apparently arose back in the 2nd millennium BC, grew and developed over many centuries. A number of monuments from Merv have survived to this day, with the best preserved objects dating back to the last two millennia.

Now on the site of the huge city of Merv, whose population in the Middle Ages exceeded at one time, according to some estimates, a million people, you can see only ancient ruins and individual surviving ancient buildings. These ruins, as well as a thick (more than 10 m) cultural layer, absorb traces of 5 different settlements, which are united under one common name - Ancient Merv. Firstly, this is the most ancient (still prehistoric) fortified settlement - Erk-Kala; secondly, this is ancient Merv - the ancient settlement of Gyaur-Kala; thirdly, this is a fortified settlement of the Arab period - Shaim-Kala; further, this is the most developed - Seljuk Merv, or Old Merv, with the Sultan-Kala fortress as the urban center. Finally, this is a settlement of a later, Timurid period - Abdulla-Khan-Kala, or New Merv, which arose 2 centuries after Old Merv was destroyed by the Tatar-Mongols.

Now we can only observe individual buildings from each era. One of these structures is the Big Kyoshk (kyoshks are fortified bastion buildings with strong, like corrugated walls), dating back to the 7th-8th centuries. Very valuable monuments have survived to this day from the 11th-12th centuries. One of them is the mausoleum of Muhammad ibn Zeid in the western suburb of Sultan Qala, the interior of which is decorated with a unique wall inscription in Arabic, made of baked bricks with figured ornaments. One of the most valuable architectural objects of Merv, also dating back to the 12th century, is the mausoleum of Sultan Sanjar. The strict classical architecture of this monument reflects the highest achievements of the Seljuk power during its heyday. The Timurid period (around the 15th century) is represented by several mausoleums, as well as the ruins of an adobe fortress wall.

In 1987, the State Historical and Cultural Park Ancient Merv was formed. The ruins of Merv are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.