Situated at the foot of the Kopet Dag Mountains, Ashgabat, capital and largest city of Turkmenistan, lies in the Akhal Tekin oasis on the border of the Karakum Desert.
Ashgabat is a relatively young city, growing out of an aul (Turkmen village) in 1818.
The name of the city is believed to derive from the Persian Ashk-abad meaning "the City of Arsaces". Its original founding fathers were Russian troops who landed in Krasnovodsk (present-day Turkmenbashy) in 1869 and who built a fortress on a high hill to accommodate their administration.
From 1924 until 1991, year of Turkmenistan’s independence, Ashkabad served as the capital of the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic.
Unfortunately, in October 1948 a terrible seism destroyed most of the city. The inevitable process of reconstruction, carried out according to modern urban planning, deeply modified Ashgabat into a pleasant modern city with wide avenues and stately buildings that recall in their style ornamental patterns characteristic of Turkmen traditional architecture.
Ashgabat has a primarily Sunni Muslim population.

Merv is an archaeological site in the country of Turkmenistan. The city was a major oasis in Central Asia and is also said to have been the large...