As an aircraft approaching Ashgabat begins its descent, one can see through the window how the grey, monotonous ripples of desert sand dunes give way to green rectangles of fields, after which the landscape is enlivened by hills and mountains. The land below is Akhal – a narrow, fertile strip along the foothills of the Kopetdag, stretching for dozens of kilometres, rich in pastures and water sources since time immemorial, the cradle of the earliest ancient farming culture in Central Asia and homeland of the renowned Akhal Teke horses.
The history of the ancient settlements that existed along this strip of land spans at least eight thousand years. Their artifacts can be found everywhere – in the desert and the foothills, along the beds of dried up rivers and in caves. Traces of human activity have survived in the form of tools, household items and genuine works of art made of stone and bone, ceramics and metal, including bronze, silver and gold. The distant ancestors of the Turkmens also left reminders of themselves through architecture – from clay houses, sanctuaries and once impregnable fortresses to monumental mausoleums and mosques. Naturally, very little of what once constituted the glory of local cities has survived to the present day. Yet long before their emergence, there had already emerged centres of primitive economy, the study of which allowed archaeologists to conclude that present day Akhal served as the northeastern frontier of a once unified Near Eastern world that stretched from here to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.
Jeitun is perhaps the first link in the endlessly long chain of successive settlements. It is now an unremarkable sandy mound on the edge of the Karakum Desert, a few kilometres northwest of Ashgabat, surrounded by ploughed fields and neat rows of greenhouses belonging to present day tenants. Yet in the late seventh and sixth millennia BC, it was home to one of the settlements of the earliest farmers and herders. Thanks to the thoroughness of its study in the twentieth century, it was precisely Jeitun that came to be regarded as a benchmark monument of its era.
The history of its discovery spanned over several years. In the late 1930s, the Ashgabat archaeologist Aleksandr Marushchenko heard from a shepherd from the village of Keshi that not far away, in the sands, there was a place where the Turkmens had long been finding flints for fire strikers and where a scatter of clay potsherds lay exposed on the surface. Marushchenko managed to locate this place only in 1944, yet an entire further decade passed before excavations began there. They were undertaken by his younger colleagues Vadim Masson, Igor Khlopin and Viktor Sarianidi. Thanks to them, the concept of the “Jeitun culture” became firmly established in scholarship.
It is difficult even to imagine the depth of time in which it flourished. The wheel had not yet been invented; it happened only in the fourth millennium before our era. Consequently, there were no wheeled carts and no domesticated horses, yet people had already learned to cultivate wheat, had domesticated goats and sheep, and dogs had become their faithful companions in hunting, guarding herds and dwellings. The climate was far milder, and the foothill zone was considerably broader.
Perhaps the most interesting of the monuments of the Jeitun culture is located within the boundaries of the central estate of the Akhal peasant association. In scholarship it became known as Pessejik depe. In reality, this name is conventional, just like Jeitun itself, having been devised by archaeologists. In fact, it was an ordinary cultivated field, in no way different from neighbouring plots except for the discovery of several potsherds. Today, the remains of the ancient settlement are situated within a modern settlement.
Pessejik was discovered in 1967 by the archaeologist Viktor Pilipko, while excavations were initiated by his senior colleague Ovlyakuli Berdyev, who at that time was the leading specialist in prehistoric archaeology of Turkmenistan. His excavations were crowned with important results - typical Jeitun residential architecture was uncovered, as well as a building with a standard layout that was almost twice as large in area as the other structures. Its walls were decorated with polychrome painting featuring ornamental motifs and schematic representations of animals. According to Berdyev, this structure may have been used for collective gatherings of all the inhabitants of the settlement or as a sanctuary.
Anau is the next link in the chain of cultures that succeeded one another. Near the modern town, which has now become the administrative centre of the Akhal velayat, two hills have been preserved, whose age is estimated at approximately seven thousand years. Excavations here started as early as 1904 by an American expedition led by Raphael Pumpelly, and a century later they were continued through the joint efforts of archaeologists from Turkmenistan and the United States. The Anau hills are also ordinary settlements among many similar sites on the land of Akhal that became famous entirely by chance. Like Jeitun, they gave their name to a group of archaeological monuments. The period of the Anau culture falls within the V to the early III millennium before our era. This represented a fundamentally higher level of social development. There emerged applied art as evidenced by clay vessels with ornamental painting and ornaments in the form of beads made from various kinds of stone, including turquoise and carnelian, often forming rich necklaces.
The unearthing of charred wheat grains dated more than five thousand years, along with massive stone grain grinders and hand millstones, was one of the most sensational discoveries at Anau. Such striking evidence of cereal cultivation in the Eneolithic period was celebrated with the construction of the Museum of Bread named Ak Bugday (White Wheat) in Anau. Its extravagant cylindrical building crowned with a wreath of golden ears of grain has since become the symbol of this small town.
Many centuries later, a Parthian settlement arose two kilometres from the Anau hills and eventually developed into a Muslim city. Yet not a single known medieval source mentions its name. However, the writings of the fifteenth century Timurid historian Abd al Razzaq Samarkandi mentions a certain fortress called Suluk, which belonged to Emir Muhammad Khudaydat – the very man whose name has been preserved in the inscription on Anau’s commemorative mosque. This mosque was an unquestioned jewel of Akhal. According to the same inscription, it was erected in the year 860 of the Hijra, that is, 1456 by the Gregorian calendar, behind the grave of the Sufi sheikh Jamal al Din, on the slope of the citadel of medieval Anau.
The mosque was distinguished by the fact that its main facade was adorned with two dragons in a heraldic pose, composed of shaped fragments of coloured glazed ceramic. This mosaic captivated the imagination of many generations who beheld it and sought to explain a theme so unusual for a Muslim building. The dragons (ajdarha in Turkmen) came to be regarded as the protectors of Anau, and the very site of the former mosque – destroyed during the Ashgabat earthquake of 6 October 1948 – is still revered as a sacred place.
Yet the most world famous historical monument of Akhal is located on the western outskirts of Ashgabat, at the foot of the mountains. These are the Parthian fortresses of Nisa, included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. There are two of them – Old Nisa and New Nisa. Their ancient name is also known – Mithridatkert, meaning the City of Mithridates, one of the earliest Parthian kings. It is precisely with Nisa that the renown of the finest horses of the ancient world is associated – graceful animals with slender, supple necks, large eyes, finely sculpted heads and strong, well proportioned legs.
Even before the emergence of the Parthian state, Herodotus (5th century BC) described in the seventh book of his “Histories” a procession in which the Persian king Xerxes travelled “in a chariot drawn by Nisaean horses.” Ahead of him went ten Nisaean horses in splendid harness, followed by the sacred chariot of Zeus, drawn by eight white horses. And on the Nisaean plain, where, as Herodotus wrote, “such great horses are bred,” the same pursuit continues today, twenty five centuries later.
The International Akhal Teke Equestrian Sports Complex named after Aba Annaev, a renowned Turkmen horse breeder, is located just fifteen kilometres from Nisa.
At the foot of the eroded, yet still mighty walls of Old Nisa, fragile clay structures of the Turkmen village of Bagir have miraculously survived. They were built relatively recently, in the nineteenth century. These include a small, isolated tower (known as a ding) and the miniature fortress of Gulmergen kala, an ordinary family estate of that era.
Across the expanses of Akhal, especially in the foothills, many such ancestral estates have survived, reminiscent of the era of Turkmen free rein, when there was no state authority and each family could rely only on itself for protection against raids. One of the most picturesque of them, which has also survived, belonged to Nurberdy Khan, the renowned military leader of the Akhal Teke Turkmens.
The Turkmens generally lived in yurts, which were erected inside such low “fortresses.” The clay walls protected against petty marauders but proved useless in times of war, when regular armies of neighbouring monarchies attacked.
To defend against such an enemy, enormous fortresses were erected through communal construction, capable of sheltering the entire population of the oasis together with their possessions. Their walls formed massive, impregnable ramparts. Such was the heroic fortress of Geokdepe, which fell in 1881 only after a siege lasting many days. It is now a State Historical and Cultural Reserve, and within its walls a memorial mosque and a national museum of military glory were built.
The ruins of small nineteenth century Turkmen kala, one of which has recently been partially reconstructed, can also be found near another major archaeological site located between Ashgabat and the new city of Arkadag. This is Paryz depe, a multilayered monument preserving within its mass strata layers from the Eneolithic period (5th–4th millennia BC) and the Middle Ages (9th–16th centuries). At the initiative of the National Leader of the Turkmen people, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, excavations were resumed there several years ago. They are now being continued by the Institute of History and Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of Turkmenistan. Shehrislam, a trading city with two citadels located deep in the desert, and recently uncovered underground water cisterns, which flourished in the pre Mongol period, are another important site of many years of work by specialists of this institute.
These are only the most widely known spots on the map of Akhal, yet they by no means exhaust the list of attractions of this land. Finally, one unresolved question remains: what does the toponym Akhal actually mean, and what is its origin? Scholars have suggested various interpretations. The name has been known since the eighteenth century and gradually replaced the older designation of the same territory – Arkach, or Kese Arkach, which in semantic translation means “the plain behind the mountains.” At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Khivan historian, Munis, wrote: “By Akhal, the Turkmens refer to lands that are damp and rich in water. This country belongs to the district of Nisa and Abiverd. Most places here are marshy and suitable for rice cultivation.”
Professor Soltansha Ataniyazov, the author of the “Dictionary of Geographical Terms of Turkmenistan”, noted that the Akhal oasis owes its name to the religious missionary Akhal ishan, who preached Islam among the Turkmens. The name Akhal is translated as “White Mole”, as the Turkmens sometimes gave such names to a child with a birthmark.
The burial place of Saint Akhal is marked on old maps of the Trans Caspian Region, north of the modern city of Geokdepe. The ruins of a sixteenth century mausoleum have indeed survived there, known under the later names of Kumbetli yayla (Dome on the Meadow) and Jan Aziz baba, which may be translated as “The Soul of the Dear Grandfather.” Clearly, this is not a proper name but a folk epithet commonly bestowed upon an anonymous Sufi sheikh or a forgotten hero of early Islam.
Another prominent historian, Academician Aga Karryev, likewise associated the origin of the toponym Akhal with Akhal ishan.
The Turkmens of Akhal not only preserved and enhanced the rare breed of racehorses inherited from their ancestors. They also left behind many legends and tales about their cherished steeds. Here is one of them. Once, during a contest, no rival could be found for a bay racehorse. The elders conferred and decided to choose not another horse, but a falcon, as its opponent. News of this unusual competition spread throughout Akhal, and thousands of people came to watch. Then the owner of the falcon stepped out of the crowd and raised the bait – a piece of raw meat – high into the air. At the same moment, both the bay racehorse and the bird were released onto the course. The horse flashed past the astonished spectators like an arrow, and a second later the falcon settled onto its owner’s hand.
It is said that since then Akhal Teke horses have been given the names of birds – Garagush (eagle), Garlavach (swallow), Lachin (falcon), Durna (crane), Burgut (golden eagle).