TurkmenistanTürkmenistan

Long before the Silk Road, the Murghab delta supported a Bronze Age civilisation that archaeologists call Margiana, or the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex. At Gonur Depe, north of Mary, excavations since the 1970s revealed palaces, temples and fire altars from around 2000 BCE, which some link to early Zoroastrian practice.

In the third century BCE the Parthians, a people from the steppe north of Iran, built an early royal seat at Nisa at the foot of the Kopet Dag. Their empire went on to rival Rome for four centuries. Nisa's mud-brick walls and the ivory drinking horns (rhytons) found there — now in museums in Ashgabat and St Petersburg — are the best evidence of their court.

Merv, in the same Murghab oasis, was a city for over two thousand years. Successive walled towns were built beside each other rather than on top of each other: Erk Kala, Gyaur Kala, Sultan Kala and later ones. Under the Seljuks in the eleventh and twelfth centuries Merv may have been one of the largest cities in the world. In 1221 the Mongols destroyed it; the mausoleum of Sultan Sanjar, with its double dome, is what stands tallest now.

In the north, on the old course of the Amu Darya, Gurganj was the capital of Khwarezm, a rich state that controlled trade between the steppe and Persia. Its shah provoked Genghis Khan by killing his envoys, and the city was destroyed in 1221, the river reportedly diverted to flood it.

Gurganj revived under the Golden Horde, and its fourteenth-century monuments are the finest in the country: the Kutlug-Timur minaret, about 60 metres tall, and the tiled conical dome of the Turabek Khanum mausoleum, whose ceiling has 365 panels. When Timur sacked the city in the 1370s–1380s and the river shifted, the capital moved to Khiva, now across the border in Uzbekistan.

Konye-Urgench (Old Urgench) remains a place of pilgrimage. Visitors see women rolling down a slope or placing stones and cloth at the tombs of saints like Najmuddin Kubra, the founder of a Sufi order.

The Turkmen are descendants of the Oghuz Turks, who also founded the Seljuk and Ottoman states. For centuries they lived as semi-nomadic tribes — Teke, Yomut, Ersari, Salyr, Saryk and others — herding, farming oases and raiding caravans and Persian villages for captives sold in Khiva and Bukhara.

Russia's advance reached the Turkmen last. In January 1881 General Skobelev stormed the Teke fortress of Gökdepe near Ashgabat; thousands of defenders and civilians were killed. The date, 12 January, is now a national day of mourning, and a mosque stands at the site. Ashgabat grew from a Russian fort after the conquest, and the Trans-Caspian Railway linked it to the Caspian.

Tribal identity is still visible in carpet designs: each tribe had its own gul, the repeated medallion in a Turkmen rug. Five of them appear on the national flag.

The Turkmen SSR was created in 1924. Collectivisation forced nomads into settlements and the Basmachi resistance was crushed. Cotton became the main crop, watered after 1954 by the Karakum Canal, which carries Amu Darya water over 1,000 km west through the desert and contributed to the Aral Sea's collapse.

On 6 October 1948 an earthquake destroyed Ashgabat and killed a very large share of its population; estimates range widely, and the Soviet state concealed the scale. The city was rebuilt as a low-rise Soviet town — most of which was demolished again in the 2000s for the marble city.

The Darvaza crater dates from this era: a Soviet gas-drilling site collapsed, probably in 1971, and geologists set the gas alight to burn it off. It has burned ever since.

Turkmen carpets, deep red with repeated guls, were traded across Asia and Europe as 'Bukhara' rugs because that was where they were sold. Hand-knotting remains a women's craft, and the state has a Carpet Day on the last Sunday of May. The Carpet Museum in Ashgabat holds one of the largest hand-woven carpets in the world.

The Akhal-Teke horse, bred in the Akhal oasis, is slim, fast and known for a metallic sheen to its coat. Horses are national symbols: they appear on the state emblem, and the president has written books about them. A horse holiday falls in late April with races at the Ashgabat hippodrome.

Both carpets and horses are protected exports. Buying a new carpet is straightforward with a certificate; taking a horse abroad requires state permission.

Saparmurat Niyazov, the Soviet-era party chief, ruled independent Turkmenistan from 1991 until his death in 2006 as 'Turkmenbashi', leader of the Turkmen. He built a personality cult: a revolving golden statue, months renamed after himself and his mother, and the Ruhnama, a book of spiritual guidance required reading in schools. He also ordered most hospitals and libraries outside Ashgabat closed.

His successor Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov reversed some of the most eccentric measures but built his own cult, rebuilding Ashgabat in white marble. In 2022 his son Serdar became president, while Gurbanguly kept power as chairman of the upper house with the title 'Hero-Arkadag'. A new city named Arkadag opened in 2023.

Gas sales, mainly to China, fund the state, but ordinary people face shortages, a gap between official and street currency rates, and one of the most restricted internets in the world. Press freedom groups rank the country near the bottom. For visitors this means a strictly managed trip: courteous officials, empty avenues, a guide at your side, and limits on what you can photograph or say.