Old Urgench
Konye-Urgench ( tk, Köneürgenç / Көнеүргенч; fa, کهنه گرگانج, ''Kuhna Gurgānj'', literally "Old Gurgānj"), also known as Old Urgench or Urganj, is a city of about 30,000 inhabitants in north Turkmenistan, just south from its border with Uzbekistan. It is the site of the ancient town of Gurgānj, which contains the ruins of the capital of Khwarazm. Its inhabitants deserted the town in the early eighteenth century in order to develop a new settlement, and Konye-Urgench has remained undisturbed ever since. In 2005, the ruins of Old Urgench were inscribed on the UNESCO List of World Heritage Sites. Overview Located on the south side of the Amu Darya River, Old Ürgenç was situated on one of the most important medieval paths: the Silk Road, the crossroad of western and eastern civilisations. It is one of the most important archaeological sites in Turkmenistan, lying within a vast zone of protected landscape and containing a large number of well-preserved mo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ala Al-Din Tekish
Ala ad-Din Tekish (Persian: علاء الدين تكش; full name: ''Ala ad-Dunya wa ad-Din Abul Muzaffar Tekish ibn Il-Arslan'') or Tekesh or Takesh was the Shah of Khwarazmian Empire from 1172 to 1200. He was the son of Il-Arslan. His rule was contested by his brother, Sultan Shah, who held a principality in Khorasan. Tekish inherited Sultan Shah's state after he died in 1193. In Turkic the name Tekish means ''he who strikes in battle''. In 1194 Tekish defeated the Seljuq sultan of Hamadan, Toghrul III, in an alliance with Caliph Al-Nasir, and conquered his territories. After the war, he broke with the Caliphate and was on the brink of a war with it until the Caliph accepted him as Sultan of Iran, Khorasan, and Turkestan in 1198. He died of a peritonsillar abscess Peritonsillar abscess (PTA), also known as quinsy, is an accumulation of pus due to an infection behind the tonsil. Symptoms include fever, throat pain, trouble opening the mouth, and a change to the voice. Pain ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran border, west, Turkmenistan to the Afghanistan–Turkmenistan border, northwest, Uzbekistan to the Afghanistan–Uzbekistan border, north, Tajikistan to the Afghanistan–Tajikistan border, northeast, and China to the Afghanistan–China border, northeast and east. Occupying of land, the country is predominantly mountainous with plains Afghan Turkestan, in the north and Sistan Basin, the southwest, which are separated by the Hindu Kush mountain range. , Demographics of Afghanistan, its population is 40.2 million (officially estimated to be 32.9 million), composed mostly of ethnic Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, and Uzbeks. Kabul is the country's largest city and ser ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Caspian Sea
The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, often described as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia; east of the Caucasus, west of the broad steppe of Central Asia, south of the fertile plains of Southern Russia in Eastern Europe, and north of the mountainous Iranian Plateau of Western Asia. It covers a surface area of (excluding the highly saline lagoon of Garabogazköl to its east) and a volume of . It has a salinity of approximately 1.2% (12 g/L), about a third of the salinity of average seawater. It is bounded by Kazakhstan to the northeast, Russia to the northwest, Azerbaijan to the southwest, Iran to the south, and Turkmenistan to the southeast. The sea stretches nearly from north to south, with an average width of . Its gross coverage is and the surface is about below sea level. Its main freshwater inflow, Europe's longest river, the Volga, enters at the shallow north end. Two deep ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Oxus
The Amu Darya, tk, Amyderýa/ uz, Amudaryo// tg, Амударё, Amudaryo ps, , tr, Ceyhun / Amu Derya grc, Ὦξος, Ôxos (also called the Amu, Amo River and historically known by its Latin name or Greek ) is a major river in Central Asia and Afghanistan. Rising in the Pamir Mountains, north of the Hindu Kush, the Amu Darya is formed by the confluence of the Vakhsh and Panj rivers, in the Tigrovaya Balka Nature Reserve on the border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan, and flows from there north-westwards into the southern remnants of the Aral Sea. In its upper course, the river forms part of Afghanistan's northern border with Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. In ancient history, the river was regarded as the boundary of Greater Iran with "Turan", which roughly corresponded to present-day Central Asia.B. SpulerĀmū Daryā in Encyclopædia Iranica, online ed., 2009 The Amu Darya has a flow of about 70 cubic kilometres per year on average. Names In classical anti ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sarykamysh Lake
The Sarygamysh Lake, also Sarykamysh or Sary-Kamysh (, , ), is a lake in Central Asia. It is about midway between the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea. It is the largest lake in Turkmenistan, in which three quarters of the entire lake's area is located (a quarter of the area falls on Uzbekistan). The Sarykamysh basin and the Sarykamysh delta of the Amu Darya river are physical and geographical nature regions of the Dashoguz Region of Turkmenistan. Up until the 17th century, the lake was fed by the Uzboy River, a distributary of the Amu Darya River, which continued on to the Caspian Sea. Today, its main source of water is a canal from the Amu Darya but also the runoff water from surrounding irrigated lands, containing high levels of pesticides, herbicides and heavy metals. Contribution to the drying up of the Aral Sea This and many other "unintended" lakes, such as Aydar Lake on the Syr Darya deny the Aral Sea about of annual inflow of water, directly contributing to, if not actua ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bukhara
Bukhara (Uzbek language, Uzbek: /, ; tg, Бухоро, ) is the List of cities in Uzbekistan, seventh-largest city in Uzbekistan, with a population of 280,187 , and the capital of Bukhara Region. People have inhabited the region around Bukhara for at least five millennia, and the city has existed for half that time. Located on the Silk Road, the city has long served as a center of trade, scholarship, culture, and religion. The mother tongue of the majority of people of Bukhara is Tajik language, Tajik, a dialect of the Persian language, although Uzbek language, Uzbek is spoken as a second language by most residents. Bukhara served as the capital of the Samanid Empire, Khanate of Bukhara, and Emirate of Bukhara and was the birthplace of scholar Imam Bukhari. The city has been known as "Noble Bukhara" (''Bukhārā-ye sharīf''). Bukhara has about 140 architectural monuments. UNESCO has listed the historic center of Bukhara (which contains numerous mosques and madrasas) as a List o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Central Asia
Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a subregion, region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes the former Soviet Union, Soviet republics of the Soviet Union, republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, which are colloquially referred to as the "-stans" as the countries all have names ending with the Persian language, Persian suffix "-stan", meaning "land of". The current geographical location of Central Asia was formerly part of the historic region of Turkestan, Turkistan, also known as Turan. In the pre-Islamic and early Islamic eras ( and earlier) Central Asia was inhabited predominantly by Iranian peoples, populated by Eastern Iranian languages, Eastern Iranian-speaking Bactrians, Sogdians, Khwarezmian language, Chorasmians and the semi-nomadic Scythians and Dahae. After expansion by Turkic peop ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Afrighid
The Afrighids ( Khwarazmian: ''ʾfryḡ'') were a native Khwarezmian IranianClifford Edmund Bosworth, The New Islamic Dynasties: A Chronological and Genealogical Manual, Columbia University, 1996. dynasty who ruled over the ancient kingdom of Khwarezm. Over time, they were under the suzerainty of the Sasanian Empire, the Hephthalite Empire, the Göktürk Khaganate, the Umayyad Caliphate, Abbasid Caliphate and the Samanid Empire. They were ultimately deposed by a rival family, the Ma'munids of Gurganj, who became the new rulers of Khwarazm. Sources Al-Biruni, the native Khwarezmian scholar, mentions twenty-two members of the Afrighid dynasty for a total span of 690 years with an average rule of 31 years for each ruler. According to him, the Afrighids ruled from 305, through the Arab conquests under Qutayba ibn Muslim in 712, and up to their overthrow in 995 by the rising rival family of Ma'munids. The main source on the Afrighids prior to Islam is also Al-Biruni. Part of the re ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Khwarazmian Empire
The Khwarazmian or Khwarezmian Empire) or the Khwarazmshahs ( fa, خوارزمشاهیان, Khwārazmshāhiyān) () was a Turko-Persian Sunni Muslim empire that ruled large parts of present-day Central Asia, Afghanistan, and Iran in the approximate period of 1077 to 1231, first as vassals of the Seljuk Empire and the Qara Khitai (Western Liao dynasty), and later as independent rulers, up until the Mongol conquest in the 13th century. It is estimated that the empire spanned an area of 2.3 million square kilometers to 3.6 million square kilometers effectively making it one of the largest land empires in history. In the beginning of the 13th century, the empire was the greatest power in the Muslim world. The empire, which was modelled on the preceding Seljuk Empire, was defended by a huge cavalry army composed largely of Kipchak Turks. However, in 1219, the Mongols under their ruler Genghis Khan invaded the Khwarazmian Empire, successfully conquering the whole of it in just t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Iranic
The Iranian peoples or Iranic peoples are a diverse grouping of Indo-European peoples who are identified by their usage of the Iranian languages and other cultural similarities. The Proto-Iranians are believed to have emerged as a separate branch of the Indo-Iranians in Central Asia around the mid-2nd millennium BC. At their peak of expansion in the mid-1st millennium BC, the territory of the Iranian peoples stretched across the entire Eurasian Steppe, from the Great Hungarian Plain in the west to the Ordos Plateau in the east and the Iranian Plateau in the south.: "From the first millennium b.c., we have abundant historical, archaeological and linguistic sources for the location of the territory inhabited by the Iranian peoples. In this period the territory of the northern Iranians, they being equestrian nomads, extended over the whole zone of the steppes and the wooded steppes and even the semi-deserts from the Great Hungarian Plain to the Ordos in northern China." The anc ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Kath (city)
Beruniy ( uz, Beruniy/Беруний; kaa, Biruniy/Бируний; russian: Беруни) is a city in the autonomous republic of Karakalpakstan, Uzbekistan. It is located on the northern bank of the Amu Darya near Uzbekistan's border with Turkmenistan. The city is the seat of Beruniy District. Historically, Beruniy was known as Kath (Arabic/ fa, کاث; modern uz, Kos) and served as the capital of Khwarazm during the Afrighid dynasty. In 1957, it was renamed "Beruniy" in honor of the medieval scholar and polymath Al-Biruni who was born here. Beruniy received city status in 1962. Beruniy is an important industrial city in Karakalpakstan. It is home to an asphalt plant, a brick factory, a cotton plant, and a shoe factory. There are also many textile factories. History Beruniy was the capital of Khwarezm from the time of the Afrighid dynasty around 305 CE, replacing the old capital of Toprak-Kala. At that time it was known as Kath (modern uz, Kos). The city underwent many name ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |