Antiquity (before 500)

Merv (Gyaur Kala / Sultan Kala)

c. 3rd c. BCE–13th c. CE · Turkmenistan · Central Asia · Military, colonial, and ideal-city planning · Planned by Successive Hellenistic, Sasanian and Seljuk founders
Interpretive plan of Merv's successive adjacent walled cities on a satellite base: Achaemenid Erk Kala inside Hellenistic-Sasanian Gyaur Kala (green), the Seljuk city of Sultan Kala with its Shahriyar Ark citadel (blue), and the later Abdullah Khan Kala to the south.
Interpretive plan of Merv's successive adjacent walled cities on a satellite base: Achaemenid Erk Kala inside Hellenistic-Sasanian Gyaur Kala (green), the Seljuk city of Sultan Kala with its Shahriyar Ark citadel (blue), and the later Abdullah Khan Kala to the south. · © UCL Institute of Archaeology (Ancient Merv Project) — used with credit · Ancient Merv Project, UCL Institute of Archaeology (via Internet Archive)

Core idea

Silk Road oasis metropolis of successive adjacent walled cities.

Why it matters

Best-preserved sequence of layered planned oasis cities on the Central Asian Silk Road.

Description

Merv is the best-preserved of the oasis cities of the Central Asian Silk Road, comprising a series of adjacent walled cities built across more than two millennia. The Achaemenid-era citadel of Erk Kala was followed by the Hellenistic foundation of Gyaur Kala, a roughly square walled city about two kilometres on a side containing a central mosque, a Buddhist stupa and monastery and other monuments. From the eleventh century the medieval city of Sultan Kala grew alongside as a Seljuk capital, dominated by the great brick mausoleum of Sultan Sanjar, until the oasis was devastated in the thirteenth century.

Significance

Merv documents, in a single oasis, the long evolution of planned urbanism along the Silk Road, from Hellenistic and Sasanian walled cities to a Seljuk imperial capital. Its surviving citadels, walls, mosque, mausoleum and water systems make it an exceptional record of layered city-building and cross-cultural exchange in Central Asia, recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

What shaped it

Sources

Open it on the interactive timeline →
hub.toekom.st — History of Urbanism · an interactive timeline of 850 planned cities across 6,000 years.