{"id":6311,"date":"2018-05-31T06:51:53","date_gmt":"2018-05-31T03:51:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ak-sai.com\/?page_id=6311"},"modified":"2019-02-05T11:04:38","modified_gmt":"2019-02-05T05:04:38","slug":"highlights","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/ak-sai.com\/fr\/destinations\/turkmenistan\/highlights\/","title":{"rendered":"Points forts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ashgabat<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ashgabat is a relatively young city, growing out of a village of the same name established by Russians in 1881. It is not far from the site of Nisa, the ancient capital of the Parthian Empire, and it grew on the ruins of the Silk Road city of Konjikala, which was first mentioned as a wine-producing village in 2nd century BCE and was leveled by an earthquake in 1st century BCE (a precursor of the 1948 Ashgabat earthquake). Konjikala was rebuilt because of its advantageous location on the Silk Road and it flourished until its destruction by Mongols in the 13th century CE. After that it survived as a small village until the Russians took over in the 19th century.<\/p>\n

In 1869, Russian soldiers built a fortress on a hill near the village, and this added security soon attracted merchants and craftsmen to the area. Ashgabat remained a part of Persia until 1881, when it was ceded to Tsarist Russia under the terms of Akhal Treaty. Russia chose to develop Ashgabat as a regional center due to its proximity to the border of British-influenced Persia. It was regarded as a pleasant town with European style buildings, shops and hotels.<\/p>\n

Soviet rule was established in Ashgabat in December 1917. However in July 1918 a coalition of Mensheviks, Social Revolutionaries and Tsarist former officers of the Imperial Russian Army revolted against the Bolshevik rule emanating from Tashkent and established the Ashkhabad Executive Committee. After receiving some support (but even more promises) from General Malleson, the British withdrew in April 1919, and the Tashkent Soviet resumed control of the city and in July 1919, when the city was renamed Poltoratsk (\u041f\u043e\u043b\u0442\u043e\u0440\u0430\u0446\u043a) after a local revolutionary. The name Ashgabat was restored in 1927 after the establishment of Turkmen SSR as a Soviet republic, though it was usually known by the Russian form Ashkhabad. From this period onward, the city experienced rapid growth and industrialisation, although this was severely disrupted by a major earthquake on October 6, 1948. An estimated 7.3 on the Richter scale, the earthquake killed 110-176,000 (2\/3 of the population of the city), although the official number announced by Soviet news was only 40,000.<\/p>\n

Modern Ashgabat<\/strong><\/p>\n

Museums include the Turkmen Fine Arts Museum and Turkmen Carpet Museum, noted for their impressive collection of woven carpets as wellas a Turkmen history museum and the Ashgabat National Museum of History, which displays artifacts dating back to the Parthian and Persian civilizations. The Academy of Sciences of Turkmenistan is an important institute of higher learning.<\/p>\n

Large mosques include the Azadi Mosque (which resembles the Blue Mosque in Istanbul), the Khezrety Omar Mosque, and the futuristic Iranian Mosque. Ashgabat was also home to the Arch of Neutrality, a 250-foot-tall tripod crowned by a golden statue of late president Saparmurat Niyazov (also known as Turkmenbashi, or leader of all Turkmen). The 50-foot-high statue, which rotated in order to always face the sun during daylight hours, was removed on August 26, 2010 after Niyazov\u2019s successor, current President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, made it clear earlier in the year that the statue was going to be taken out of Ashgabat\u2019s parliament square.<\/p>\n

Merv, formerly Achaemenid Satrapy of Margiana, and later Alexandria and Antiochia in Margiana, was a major oasis-city in Central Asia, on the historical Silk Road, located near today’s Mary in Turkmenistan. 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.<\/p>\n

Merv<\/strong><\/p>\n

Merv consists of a few discrete walled cities very near to each other, each of which was constructed on uninhabited land by builders of different eras, used, and then abandoned and never rebuilt. Four walled cities correspond to the chief periods of Merv’s importance: the oldest, Erkgala, corresponds to Achaemenid Merv, and is the smallest of the three. G\u00e4w\u00fcrgala, which surrounds Erkgala, comprises the Hellenistic and Sassanian metropolis and also served as an industrial suburb to the Abbasid\/Seljuk city, Soltangala \u2013 by far the largest of the three. The smaller Timurid city was founded a short distance to the south and is now called Abdyllahangala. Various other ancient buildings are scattered between and around these four cities; all of the sites are preserved in the \u201cAncient Merv Archaeological Park\u201d just north of the modern village of Ba\u00fdramaly and thirty kilometers west of the large Soviet-built city of Mary (Herrmann 1993).<\/p>\n

The best-preserved of all the structures in Merv is the 12th-century mausoleum of Sultan Sanjar. It is the largest of Seljuk mausoleums and is also the first dated mosque-mausoleum complex, a form which was later to become common. It is square, 27 meters per side, with two entrances on opposite sides; a large central dome supported by an octagonal system of ribs and arches covers the interior. The dome’s exterior was turquoise, and its height made it quite imposing; it was said that approaching caravans could see the mausoleum while still a day’s march from the city. The mausoleum’s decoration, in typical early Seljuk style, was conservative, with interior stucco work and geometric brick decoration, now mainly lost, on the outside. With the exception of the exterior decoration, the mausoleum is largely intact, and remains, just as is in the 12th century, Merv’s main tourist attraction.<\/p>\n

Nisa<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nisa (also Parthaunisa)<\/strong> was an ancient city, located near modern-day Bagir village, 18 km northwest of Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. Nisa isdescribed by some as one of the first capitals of the Parthians. It was traditionally founded by Arsaces I (reigned c. 250 BC\u2013211 BC), and was reputedly the royal necropolis of the Parthian kings, although it has not been established that the fortress at Nisa was either a royal residence or a mausoleum.<\/p>\n

Excavations at Nisa have revealed substantial buildings, mausoleums and shrines, many inscribed documents, and a looted treasury. Many Hellenistic art works have been uncovered, as well as a large number of ivory rhytons, the outer rims (coins) decorated with Iranian subjects or classical mythological scenes.<\/p>\n

Nisa was later renamed Mithradatkirt (\u00ab\u00a0fortress of Mithradates\u00a0\u00bb) by Mithridates I of Parthia (reigned c. 171 BC\u2013138 BC).<\/p>\n

Nisa was totally destroyed by an earthquake, which occurred during the first decade BC.<\/p>\n

The fortress at Nisa was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2007.<\/p>\n

Konye Urgench<\/strong><\/p>\n

Konye-Urgench is a municipality of about 30,000 inhabitants in north-eastern Turkmenistan, just south from its border with Uzbekistan. It is the site of the ancient town of \u00dcrgen\u00e7 (Urgench), which contains the unexcavated ruins of the 12th-century capital of Khwarezm. Since 2005, the ruins of Old Urgench have been protected by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.<\/p>\n

Formerly situated on the Amu-Darya River, Old \u00dcrgen\u00e7 was one of the greatest cities on the Silk Road. Its foundation date is uncertain, but the extant ruins of the Kyrkmolla fortress have been dated (rather ambitiously) to the Achaemenid period. The 12th and early 13th centuries were the golden age of \u00dcrgen\u00e7, it became the capital of Khorezm Empire and it surpassed in population and famed all other Central Asian cities barring Bukhara. In 1221, Genghis Khan razed it to the ground in one of the bloodiest massacres in human history.<\/p>\n

The city was revived after Genghis’s assault, but the sudden change of Amu-Darya’s course to the north and the town’s destruction again in the 1370s, this time by Timur, forced the inhabitants to leave the site forever.<\/p>\n

The area was later inhabited by Turkmen in 1831, but they built outside the old town, using it as a graveyard.<\/p>\n

A new town of Urgench was developed to the Southeast, in present-day Uzbekistan. First archeological research on the old city site was conducted by Alexander Yakubovsky in 1929.<\/p>\n

Most of \u00dcrgen\u00e7’s monuments have completely or partly collapsed. Nowadays, the site contains three small mausoleums of the 12th century and the more elaborate 14th-century T\u00f6rebeg Hanym Mausoleum, which was much restored in the 1990s.<\/p>\n

The most striking extant landmark of Old Urgench is the early 11th-century Gutluk-Temir Minaret, which, at 60 meters, used to be the tallest brick minaret prior to the construction of the Minaret of Jam – which was later surpassed by the Qutb Minar when it was completed in 1368. Also of note is the Il-Arslan Mausoleum – the oldest standing monument: a conical dome of 12 facets, housing the tomb of Mohammed II’s grandfather, Il-Arslan, who died in 1172. Somewhat to the north, sprawls a vast medieval necropolis.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ashgabat Ashgabat is a relatively young city, growing out of a village of the same name established by Russians in 1881. It is not far from the site of Nisa, the ancient capital of the Parthian Empire, and it grew on the ruins of the Silk Road city of Konjikala, which was first mentioned as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1079,"parent":6283,"menu_order":5,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page_country.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ak-sai.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6311"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ak-sai.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ak-sai.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ak-sai.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ak-sai.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6311"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ak-sai.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11362,"href":"https:\/\/ak-sai.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6311\/revisions\/11362"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ak-sai.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6283"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ak-sai.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ak-sai.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}