Konya-Urgench

Konya-Urgench is located 110 km northwest of Dashoguz. The outskirts of the town adjoin the territory of the State Historical and Cultural Museum-Reserve, covering nearly 640 hectares . The Reserve was founded in 1985 and recently was entered the list of the UNESCO World Heritage for its handful of beautiful old buildings.

Konya-Urgench was the ancient capital of Khorezm, a fertile country on the lower reaches of the Oxus (now Amu-Darya) River. Through its centuries-old history it had passed through the hands of many conquerors. The first mention of Konya-Urgench is found in the Chinese written records dated from the early 1st century AD. Until the year of 711 Khorezm maintained its independence before it fell to the Arabs. Konya-Urgench began its upward path when its ruler Mamun succeeded in uniting the country in AD 995. At this time the Amu-Darya flowed through the city.

In the 11 th century Khorezm fell to the all-conquering Seljuks, but rose in the 12 th century under a local dynasty of the Great Khorezmshahs. The Khorezmshahs conquered an enormous area including Persia, most of Afghanistan and all of Central Asia/ With its mosques, madrasas, libraries and flourishing bazaars the city became, at the start of the 13 th century the center of the Muslim world. “I have never seen a larger, richer, or more beautiful town:, wrote a Greek scholar, who visited nearly all the cities of the east about the capital of Khorezm.

In the year of 1221 Khorezm was attacked by Genghiz-Khan`s hordes. The Mongols besieged the city for six month and then destroyed it. They left nothing but a heap of skulls and smoking ashes. Then they broke a wooden dam on the river and let it wash through the city. “Konya-Urgench became the abode of the jackal and the haunt of the owl and the kite”, wrote one local historian. Fortunately, a few architectural monuments survived unharmed after this tragedy.

Still, the city rose again. An Arabic traveler Ibn Battuta described it in 1333 as “the largest, greatest, most beautiful and most important city, shaking under the weight of its population, with bazaars so crowded that it was difficult to

pass”. Konya-Urgench was again embellished by a new generation of monumental buildings.

Then came Timur. He mounted five separate campaigns between 1372 and 1388, each time inflicting the city to havoc. During the final attack in 1388 he finished off the city. Konya-Urgench was partly rebuilt to be abandoned again when the Amu-Darya changed its course in the 16 th century.

The monuments survived on the site fall into two groups;

1. Pre-mongolian monuments.
2. Post-mongolian monuments.

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