ТУРКМЕНСКАЯ АРХИТЕКТУРА СРЕДНЕВЕКОВЬЯ - КЁНЕУРГЕНЧ
LOST CITIES #5: HOW THE MAGNIFICENT CITY OF MERV WAS RAZED – AND NEVER RECOVERED
Once the world’s biggest city, the Silk Road metropolis of Merv in modern Turkmenistan destroyed by Genghis Khan’s son and the Mongols in AD 1221 with an estimated 700,000 deaths. It never fully recovered When George Curzon visited the ruined city of Merv in 1888, the vision of its decay overwhelmed him. “In the midst of an absolute wilderness of crumbling brick and clay,” the future viceroy of India wrote , “the spectacle of walls, towers, ramparts and domes, stretching in bewildering confusion to the horizon, reminds us that we are in the centre of bygone greatness.” Modern-day visitors to the site of Merv in southern Turkmenistan can still tour its dusty, windswept remains. Like Curzon, they might struggle to imagine the true size, density and lushness of one of the world’s greatest vanished cities . In its 12th-century pomp, Merv straddled the prosperous trade routes of the Silk Road. It was a capital of the Seljuk sultanate that extended from central ...
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