1.
Turkmenistan
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Turkmenistan has been at the crossroads of civilizations for centuries. In medieval times, Merv was one of the cities of the Islamic world and an important stop on the Silk Road. Annexed by the Russian Empire in 1881, Turkmenistan later figured prominently in the movement in Central Asia. In 1924, Turkmenistan became a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic, Turkmenistan possesses the worlds fourth largest reserves of natural gas resources. Most of the country is covered by the Karakum Desert, since 1993, citizens have received government-provided electricity, water and natural gas free of charge. Turkmenistan was ruled by President for Life Saparmurat Niyazov until his death in 2006, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow was elected president in 2007. According to Human Rights Watch, Turkmenistan remains one of the world’s most repressive countries, after suspending the death penalty, the use of capital punishment was formally abolished in the 2008 constitution. Historically inhabited by the Indo-Iranians, the history of Turkmenistan begins with its annexation by the Achaemenid Empire of Ancient Iran. In the 8th century AD, Turkic-speaking Oghuz tribes moved from Mongolia into present-day Central Asia, part of a powerful confederation of tribes, these Oghuz formed the ethnic basis of the modern Turkmen population. In the 10th century, the name Turkmen was first applied to Oghuz groups that accepted Islam, There they were under the dominion of the Seljuk Empire, which was composed of Oghuz groups living in present-day Iran and Turkmenistan. Turkmen soldiers in the service of the played a important role in the spreading of Turkic culture when they migrated westward into present-day Azerbaijan. In the 12th century, Turkmen and other tribes overthrew the Seljuk Empire, in the next century, the Mongols took over the more northern lands where the Turkmens had settled, scattering the Turkmens southward and contributing to the formation of new tribal groups. The sixteenth and eighteenth centuries saw a series of splits and confederations among the nomadic Turkmen tribes, by the 16th century, most of those tribes were under the nominal control of two sedentary Uzbek khanates, Khiva and Bukhoro. Turkmen soldiers were an important element of the Uzbek militaries of this period, in the 19th century, raids and rebellions by the Yomud Turkmen group resulted in that groups dispersal by the Uzbek rulers. According to Paul R. Spickard, Prior to the Russian conquest, Russian forces began occupying Turkmen territory late in the 19th century. From their Caspian Sea base at Krasnovodsk, the Russians eventually overcame the Uzbek khanates, in 1916 the Russian Empires participation in World War I resonated in Turkmenistan, as an anticonscription revolt swept most of Russian Central Asia. In 1924 the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic was formed from the tsarist province of Transcaspia, by the late 1930s, Soviet reorganization of agriculture had destroyed what remained of the nomadic lifestyle in Turkmenistan, and Moscow controlled political life. The Ashgabat earthquake of 1948 killed over 110,000 people, during the next half-century, Turkmenistan played its designated economic role within the Soviet Union and remained outside the course of major world events
2.
Mary, Turkmenistan
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Mary, formerly named Merv, Meru and Margiana, is a city on an oasis in the Karakum Desert, located on the Murghab river. It is the city of Mary Province, Turkmenistan. In 2009, Mary had a population of 123,000, in Kerait tradition, Mary, mother of Jesus, was buried here. The ancient city of Merv was a city on the Silk Road. It was occupied by Imperial Russia in 1884, triggering the Panjdeh Incident between Afghan forces and the Imperial Russian Army, the modern settlement was founded later that year as a Russian military and administrative post. Mary was developed by the Soviet Union as a center for production through the use of extensive irrigation. In 1968, huge reserves of gas were discovered 20 kilometers west of the city. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the proclamation of independence of Turkmenistan, in the 2000s, is an accomplishment streets, construction of large residential facilities. In 2012, the city was declared one of the capitals of the CIS. Mary is Turkmenistans fourth-largest city, and an industrial centre, for the natural gas and cotton industries. It is a center for cotton, cereals, hides. Mary is known for its Regional Museum, the city lies near the remains of the ancient city of Merv, which in corrupted form gives its name to the modern town. The main football team is Merw Mary who play at the Mary Stadium
3.
Afghanistan
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Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located within South Asia and Central Asia. It has a population of approximately 32 million, making it the 42nd most populous country in the world. It is bordered by Pakistan in the south and east, Iran in the west, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan in the north and its territory covers 652,000 km2, making it the 41st largest country in the world. The land also served as the source from which the Kushans, Hephthalites, Samanids, Saffarids, Ghaznavids, Ghorids, Khiljis, Mughals, Hotaks, Durranis, the political history of the modern state of Afghanistan began with the Hotak and Durrani dynasties in the 18th century. In the late 19th century, Afghanistan became a state in the Great Game between British India and the Russian Empire. Following the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919, King Amanullah unsuccessfully attempted to modernize the country and it remained peaceful during Zahir Shahs forty years of monarchy. A series of coups in the 1970s was followed by a series of wars that devastated much of Afghanistan. The name Afghānistān is believed to be as old as the ethnonym Afghan, the root name Afghan was used historically in reference to a member of the ethnic Pashtuns, and the suffix -stan means place of in Persian. Therefore, Afghanistan translates to land of the Afghans or, more specifically in a historical sense, however, the modern Constitution of Afghanistan states that he word Afghan shall apply to every citizen of Afghanistan. An important site of historical activities, many believe that Afghanistan compares to Egypt in terms of the historical value of its archaeological sites. The country sits at a unique nexus point where numerous civilizations have interacted and it has been home to various peoples through the ages, among them the ancient Iranian peoples who established the dominant role of Indo-Iranian languages in the region. At multiple points, the land has been incorporated within large regional empires, among them the Achaemenid Empire, the Macedonian Empire, the Indian Maurya Empire, and the Islamic Empire. Archaeological exploration done in the 20th century suggests that the area of Afghanistan has been closely connected by culture and trade with its neighbors to the east, west. Artifacts typical of the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze, urban civilization is believed to have begun as early as 3000 BCE, and the early city of Mundigak may have been a colony of the nearby Indus Valley Civilization. More recent findings established that the Indus Valley Civilisation stretched up towards modern-day Afghanistan, making the ancient civilisation today part of Pakistan, Afghanistan, in more detail, it extended from what today is northwest Pakistan to northwest India and northeast Afghanistan. An Indus Valley site has found on the Oxus River at Shortugai in northern Afghanistan. There are several smaller IVC colonies to be found in Afghanistan as well, after 2000 BCE, successive waves of semi-nomadic people from Central Asia began moving south into Afghanistan, among them were many Indo-European-speaking Indo-Iranians. These tribes later migrated further into South Asia, Western Asia, the region at the time was referred to as Ariana
4.
Oasis
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In geography, an oasis is an isolated area of vegetation in a desert, typically surrounding a spring or similar water source, such as a pond or small lake. Oases also provide habitat for animals and even if the area is big enough. The location of oases has been of importance for trade and transportation routes in desert areas, caravans must travel via oases so that supplies of water. Thus, political or military control of an oasis has in many cases meant control of trade on a particular route. For example, the oases of Awjila, Ghadames, and Kufra, oases are formed from underground rivers or aquifers such as an artesian aquifer, where water can reach the surface naturally by pressure or by man-made wells. Occasional brief thunderstorms provide subterranean water to sustain natural oases, such as the Tuat, substrata of impermeable rock and stone can trap water and retain it in pockets, or on long faulting subsurface ridges or volcanic dikes water can collect and percolate to the surface. Any incidence of water is used by migrating birds, which also pass seeds with their droppings which will grow at the waters edge forming an oasis. It can also be used to plant crops, the word oasis came into English via Latin, oasis from Ancient Greek, ὄασις óasis, which in turn is a direct borrowing from Demotic Egyptian. The word for oasis in the later attested Coptic language is wahe or ouahe which means a dwelling place, people who live in an oasis must manage land and water use carefully, fields must be irrigated to grow plants like apricots, dates, figs, and olives. The most important plant in an oasis is the date palm and these palm trees provide shade for smaller trees like peach trees, which form the middle layer. By growing plants in different layers, the farmers make best use of the soil, many vegetables are also grown and some cereals, such as barley, millet, and wheat, are grown where there is more moisture. Great Man-Made River – the worlds largest irrigation project, developed in Libya to connect cities with fossil water. Guelta Mirage Oasification Qanat Wadi Water supply référence, Jardins au désert |Battesti, Jardins au désert, Evolution des pratiques et savoirs oasiens, Jérid tunisien, Paris, Éditions IRD, coll. À travers champs,2005,440 p. ISBN 2-7099-1564-2 Open Archives, book in free access / in French The dictionary definition of oasis at Wiktionary
5.
Natural gas
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It is formed when layers of decomposing plant and animal matter are exposed to intense heat and pressure under the surface of the Earth over millions of years. The energy that the plants originally obtained from the sun is stored in the form of bonds in the gas. Natural gas is a fuel used as a source of energy for heating, cooking. It is also used as fuel for vehicles and as a feedstock in the manufacture of plastics. Natural gas is found in underground rock formations or associated with other hydrocarbon reservoirs in coal beds. Petroleum is another resource and fossil fuel found in proximity to. Most natural gas was created over time by two mechanisms, biogenic and thermogenic, biogenic gas is created by methanogenic organisms in marshes, bogs, landfills, and shallow sediments. Deeper in the earth, at temperature and pressure, thermogenic gas is created from buried organic material. In petroleum production gas is burnt as flare gas. The World Bank estimates that over 150 cubic kilometers of gas are flared or vented annually. Before natural gas can be used as a fuel, most, Natural gas is often informally referred to simply as gas, especially when compared to other energy sources such as oil or coal. However, it is not to be confused with gasoline, especially in North America, Natural gas was used by the Chinese in about 500 BCE. They discovered a way to transport gas seeping from the ground in crude pipelines of bamboo to where it was used to salt water to extract the salt. The worlds first industrial extraction of gas started at Fredonia, New York. By 2009,66000 km³ had been used out of the total 850000 km³ of estimated remaining reserves of natural gas. An annual increase in usage of 2–3% could result in currently recoverable reserves lasting significantly less, unwanted natural gas was a disposal problem in the active oil fields. If there was not a market for natural gas near the wellhead it was expensive to pipe to the end user. In the 19th century and early 20th century, unwanted gas was burned off at oil fields
6.
Merv
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Several cities have existed on this site, which is significant for the interchange of culture and politics at a site of major strategic value. It is claimed that Merv was briefly the largest city in the world in the 12th century, the site of ancient Merv has been listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. The geography of the Zend-Avesta mentions Merv along with Balkh, in Zoroastrianism, the god Ahura Mazda created Mouru as one of sixteen perfect lands. The first city of Merv was founded in the 6th century BC as part of the Achaemenid expansion into the region of Cyrus the Great, Alexander the Greats visit to Merv is merely legendary, but the city was named Alexandria for a time. After Alexanders death in 323 BC, Merv became the capital of the Province of Margiana of the Seleucid, Bactrian, Parthian, the Seleucid ruler Antiochus Soter renamed Merv as Antiochia Margiana, he rebuilt and expanded the city at the site presently known as Gyaur Gala. After the fall of the Seleucid dynasty, Bactria, Parthia, Merv was a major city of Buddhist learning, with Buddhist monastery temples for many centuries until its Islamicization. At the site of Gyaur Kala and Bairam Ali Buddhism was followed and practised often at the Buddhist stupa, during this period Merv was home to practitioners of various religions beside the official Sassanid Zoroastrianism, including Buddhists, Manichaeans, and Christians of the Church of the East. Between the 6th and 11th centuries AD, Merv served as the seat of an East Syrian metropolitan province, the Hephthalite occupation from the end of the 5th century to 565 a. d briefly interrupted Sassanid rule. Sassanian rule came to an end when the last Sassanian ruler, Yazdegerd III was killed not far from the city, representatives of the caliph Umar occupied the city, which became the capital of the Umayyad province of Khorasan. In 671 Ziyad ibn Abi Sufyan sent 50,000 Arab troops to Merv as a colony and this colony retained its native Kufan sympathies and became the nucleus of Khurasan. Using the city as their base, the Arabs, led by Qutayba ibn Muslim from 705 to 715, brought under subjection large parts of Central Asia, including Balkh, Bokhara, and Fergana. Merv, and Khorasan in general, became one of the first parts of the Persian-speaking world to become majority-Muslim, Arab immigration to the area was substantial. A Chinese captured at Talas, Du Huan, was brought to Baghdad and he observed that in Merv, Khurasan, Arabs and Persians lived in mixed concentrations. After the Abbasids became established in Baghdad, Abu Muslim continued to rule Merv as a semi-independent prince until his eventual assassination, the influential Barmakid family, based in Merv, played an important part in transferring Greek knowledge into the Arab world. Throughout the Abbasid era, Merv remained the capital and most important city of Khurasan, during this time, the Arab historian Al-Muqaddasi called Merv delightful, fine, elegant, brilliant, extensive, and pleasant. Mervs architecture perhaps provided the inspiration for the Abbasid re-planning of Baghdad, the city was notable as a home for immigrants from the Arab lands as well as for those from Sogdia and elsewhere in Central Asia. In the period from 813 to 818, the residency of the caliph al-Mamun effectively made Merv the capital of the Muslim world. During this period Merv, like Samarkand and Bukhara, functioned as one of the cities of Muslim scholarship
7.
Faryab Province
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Faryab is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan, which is located in the north of the country bordering neighboring Turkmenistan. It has a population of about 948,000, which is multi-ethnic, the province encompasses 15 districts and over 1,000 villages. The capital of Faryab province is Maymana, Faryab is a Persian toponym meaning lands irrigated by diversion of river water. It is named after a town that was founded by the Sassanids and it is the hometown to the famed Islamic philosopher, al-Farabi, per the biographer Ibn al-Nadim. The area has part of Greater Khorasan. British geographers referred to the area as Afghan Turkestan, the history of settlement in Faryab is ancient and comprises layer upon layer of occupation. At times, it was a pot within which a host of cultures have merged into a non-conflictual whole or at least peaceable coexistence. Maymana and Andkhui actually entered written history 2,500 years ago when Jews arrived and settled in 586 BC, the territory was under Persian control at the time, which later gave way to Greek rule following the conquest by Alexander the Great in 326 BC. Persian dominance was restored from the 3rd to the 7th century AD, the pre-Islamic period ended with the conquest of northern Afghanistan by Arab Muslims. The area turned into a vast battlefield as the two great Arab and Persian cultures battled for not only political and geographical supremacy but ideological supremacy, as a result, centuries of Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Nestorian Christianity and indigenous pagan cults were swept away. Various Islamic dynasties rose to power and influenced the locals and they included the Saffarids, Samanids, Ghaznavids, Seljuks, and Ghurids. The history of Faryab was greatly altered yet again in the 11th century, as he moved into the area from the north, cities and towns including Maymana were razed, populations massacred, grain, fields and livestock stolen or burnt and ancient irrigation systems obliterated. Control by the descendants of Genghis Khan stemmed from the capitals of Bukhara or Samarkand north of the Amu Darya River. They ruled in a manner, however, allowing local tribal chiefs in Maymana and elsewhere considerable autonomy. Uzbek occupation of the area began within the Turko-Mongol period, in 1500, Uzbek princes, also known as Khanate of Bukhara, themselves a Turco-Mongol product, swept across the Amu Darya, reaching Faryab and related areas around 1505. They joined a substantial and largely pastoral Arab population and ruled the area until the mid-18th century and it was conquered by Ahmad Shah Durrani in 1748 and became part of the Durrani Empire. The area was untouched by the British during the three Anglo-Afghan wars that were fought in the 19th and 20th centuries, Faryab become a province in 1964. From the administrative reforms of the 1930s until then it was known as Maymana and was a sub-province of Balkh Province, which had its headquarters in Mazar-i-Sharif
8.
Balkanabat
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Balkanabat, formerly Nebit Dag, is a city in western Turkmenistan, and the capital of Balkan Province, the largest province in the country. It is located at 39°31′0″N 54°22′0″E, at an altitude of 17 meters, Balkanabat lies at the foot of the Balkan Daglary mountain range. Balkanabat is about 450 km west of Ashgabat and 160 km east of the city of Turkmenbashi. The city has an airport with scheduled flights to Ashgabat. The former name, Nebit Dag, means Oil Mountain in Turkmen language, the town was founded in 1933, as a settlement along one of the stations of Trans-Caspian Railway. There is a monument on the far eastern side of the city called Monument to the Desert Explorers which depicts a camel. Nebit Dag was renamed to Balkanabad in 2001 by the decree of former President of Turkmenistan Saparmurat Niyazov. The city has a Health Path, which is a path outside of the city built to give the citizens of the town a place to take a moderate hike along the mountainside. It was opened in 2004 to model a similar concrete path outside of Ashgabat, the city has five bazaars Gök, Jennet, Gündogar, Bereket and bazaar on 5th microregion. There is hotel Nebitçi, a theatre, museums, restaurants, the north side of town contains the large park Saparmyrat Türkmenbaşy Seýilgähi which contains tennis courts, a life-size chess board and plenty of benches. The Yomud tribe was historic to the Balkan region and the Yomud carpet göl is one of the five patterns represented on the Turkmen flag, most of residence are Turkmens, other ethnic includes Russians, Kazakhs, Lezgins, Azeri, Armenians, Uzbeks, Tatars and Karakalpaks. It is a center for petroleum and natural gas production. Animal breeding and wheat and cotton cultivation are another areas of economy in Balkanabat, the city is served by Balkanabat Airport. The city is connected to Ashgabat by Turkmenistan Airlines, as well as by train, buses route is from east to the west of Magtymguly shayoly and makes stops at bus station. While there is no official cab company, private citizens operate shared cabs, almost any vehicle will pick up passengers and a ride costs is about 1 Turkmen manats. If the driver has already passengers in the car, then he will agree to take you if headed in the direction of their other available passengers. The city layout is a grid of apartment blocks called kvartal, there are main streets called Magtymguly, Pervomayskiy and Gurbansoltan eje shayoly. There are range of banks, Turkmenpostal services in the centre by Magtymguly Shayoly
Mary Region
