Merv, the Queen of the
World;
and the Scourge of the Man-stealing Turcomans. With an
Exposition of the Khorassan Question:
By Charles Thomas Marvin, Published by W.H. Allen, 1881
CHAPTER III. THE ORIGIN OF THE Turkmen.
WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE MINOR TRIBES.
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leadership of
the Merv Tekkes, a powerful Turcoman state might grow up
in northern Khorasan, and possibly spread to Heratand to
the Caspian. All writers agree that " while* the
Kirghiz and other Central Asian nomads have, in retaining
the vicissitudes of their nomadic existence, lost the
striking features of their national individuality, owing
to the intermixture of Mongolian and various South
Siberian elements, the Turkmen
has always remained in comparative seclusion from his
nearest relatives, and this accounts mainly for his
quality of an indomitable warrior, and of an
indefatigable adventurer, of which he was always famous
in the history of Asia."
Turkmenia has not suffered immunity from invasion. Persia
has repeatedly endeavored to break the power of the
tribes. Shah
Abbas the Great, in the seventeenth century, after
driving them back to the Kopet
Dagh planted 15,000 Kurdish families along the
border. This was not a very successful experiment at the
time, as the Kurds
adopted the predatory pursuits of the Turkmen, and had to
be repeatedly conquered; but to-day a strong feeling of
enmity exists between the Kurds and the Turkmen,
and although the former do not efficiently protect the
Persians, still they render the depredations of the
children of the desert less dreadful than they might
otherwise be. Another
Persian sovereign, Nadir Shah, himself of Turcoman origin,
conducted a successful campaign against them a century
later, and kept them in order during his lifetime ;
partly, * Vambery’s
Lecture.
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