Merv was a great city in a part of the world where most of us never look… It was an oasis city on the Silk Road; it had a history going back for nearly 5 millennia. Cyrus the Great re-founded the city in the 540’s B.C.E. Alexander the Great had a historic entrance into the city.
Merv became the capital of Khorasan under Umayyad rulers in the 670’s C.E. By the 1,000’s the Seljuk Turks ruled, from the 1100’s to the 1200 Merv was arguably the largest city on earth.
All was good, until the Mongols appeared…
In 1221, Merv opened its gates to Tule, son of Genghis Khan, chief of the Mongols, on which occasion most of the inhabitants are said to have been butchered. The Persian historian Juvayni, writing a generation after the destruction of Merv, wrote
“The Mongols ordered that, apart from four hundred artisans… the whole population, including the women and children, should be killed, and no one, whether woman or man, be spared. To each [Mongol soldier] was allotted the execution of three or four hundred Persians. So many had been killed by nightfall that the mountains became hillocks, and the plain was soaked with the blood of the mighty.”
Some historians believe that over one million people died in the aftermath of the city’s capture, including hundreds of thousands of refugees from elsewhere, making it one of the most bloody captures of a city in world history.
This was one of the darker parts of human experience, but is now little covered, especially is the ruins of Merv (now called Mary) lie in Turkmenistan…not on the traditional tourist routes for…anyone.
For me, this would have covered most of my perceptions about this city and its history, that is, until I read Jack Weatherford’s book Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. In many ways this is a great book, it covers much of the life the Mongols had, many aspects of the intrigues involved in the reign of Genghis Khan….but…it skillfully elides commentary about this particular part of Mongol history. My problem with this is that is goes with the author’s perspective, that the Mongols have been unjustly denigrated as being the epitome of barbarism.
In a similar manner I have even seen some related coverage of the Mongol rule over most of central Asia as the ‘greenest’ conquerors (and thus the…best?). I think the results of the reduction of Merv would show that this is a rather fatuous way to look at things…
Merv
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merv
Silk Road Cities: Merv
http://www.suite101.com/content/silk-road-cities-ancient-merv-a29743
Mary city
http://www.turkmenistan.orexca.com/mary_city.shtml
History of Turkmenistan
http://www.turkmenistanembassy.org/turkmen/history/history.html
