a substantial
Christian community.
In 1009
the Archbishop of Merv
sent a letter to the Patriarch at Baghdad
asking that the Keraites be allowed to fast less than other
Nestorian Christians.
As the caliphate weakened,
Arab rule in Merv was replaced by that of the
Persian general Tahir b. al -Husayn and his
Tahirid dynasty in 821.
The Tahirids ruled
Merv
from 821 to 873,
followed by the Saffarids (873-),
then the Samanids
and later the Ghaznavids.
Turks in Merv
In 1037,
the Seljuks,
a clan of
Oghuz Turks
moving from the steppes east of the Aral Sea, peacefully took over
Merv under the leadership of Toghril Beg-the Ghaznavid sultan Masud was extremely unpopular in the city. Togrul's brother Çagry stayed in Merv as the Seljuk domains grew to include the rest of Khurasan and Iran, and it subsequently became a favorite city of the Seljuk leadership. Alp Arslan (Sultan: 1063-1072) and his descendant Sultan Sanjar (died 1157) were both buried at Merv.
During this period
Merv expanded to its greatest size-Arab and Persian geographers termed it
"the mother of the world", the "rendezvous of great and small", the "chief city of Khurasan" and the capital of the eastern Islamic world.
Written sources also attest to a large library and madrasa founded by
Nizam al-Mulk (Vizier: 1064-1092), as well as many other major cultural institutions.
Merv was "the best of the major cities of Iran and Khurasan" (Herrmann 1999).
Sanjar's rule, marked by conflict with the Kara-Khitai and Khwarazmians,
ended
in 1153 when
Turkish Ghuzz nomads from beyond the Amu Darya pillaged the city.
Subsequently,
Merv changed hands between the Khwarazmians of Khiva, the Ghuzz, and the Ghurids -
it began to lose importance relative to Khurasan's other major city,
Nishapur.
Mongols in Merv
In 1221
Merv opened its gates to Tolui, son of Genghis Khan, chief of the Mongols, on which occasion
most of the inhabitants are said to have been butchered.
The Persian historian Juvayni, writing a generation after the destruction of Merv, wrote
"The Mongols
ordered that, apart from four hundred artisans. ..,
the whole population,
including
the women and children,
should be killed, and no one, whether woman or man, be spared.
To each [Mongol soldier] was allotted the execution of three or four hundred Persians.
So many had been killed by nightfall that the mountains became hillocks, and the plain was soaked with the blood of the mighty."
Some historians[who?] believe that
over one million
people died in the aftermath of the city's capture,
including hundreds of thousands of refugees from elsewhere,
making it one of the most bloody captures of a city in world history.
Excavations revealed drastic rebuilding of the city's fortifications in the aftermath, but the prosperity of the city had passed.
The Mongol invasion spelt the eclipse of Merv and indeed of other major centres for more than a century.
After the Mongol conquest,
Merv
became part of the
Ilkhanate
and was consistently looted by
Chagatai Khanate.
In the early part of the 14th century
the town became the seat of a
Christian archbishopric of the Eastern Church
under the rule of the Kartids,
vassals of the Ilkhanids.
By 1380
Merv
belonged to the empire of Timur
(Tamerlane).
Uzbeks in Merv and its final destruction
In 1505
the Uzbeks occupied
Merv;
five years later Shah Ismail, the founder of the Safavid dynasty of Persia, expelled them.
In this period a Persian nobleman restored a large dam (the 'Soltanbent') on the river Murghab, and the settlement which grew up in the area thus irrigated became known as "Ba'yramaly", as referenced in some 19th-century texts.
Merv
remained in the hands of Persia
(except for periods of Uzbek rule between 1524 and 1528 and again between 1588 and 1598) until 1785, when Shah Murad, the Emir of Bokhara, captured the city.
A few years later,
in 1788 and 1789,
the Bukharan Manghit king,
Shah Murad Beg
razed the city to the ground,
broke down the dams,
and converted the district into a waste.
The entire population of the city and the surrounding oasis of
about 100,000
were then
deported in several stages to the Bukharan oasis and Samarkand region in the Zarafshan Valley.
Being nearly all Azerbaijani Turkish-speaking Shi'as from the Izzeddinlu branch of Qajar tribe, the deportees resisted assimilation into the Sunni population of Bukhara, despite the common language they spoke with most Bukharan natives.
These Marvis survive as of
2016 -
Soviet censuses listed them as
"Iranis/Iranians" through the 1980s.
They live in Samarkand as well as in Bukhara and in the area in between on the Zarafshan river.
...
Merv
is currently the focus of
the Ancient Merv Project
(initially as
the International Merv Project).
From 1992 to 2000, a joint team of archaeologists from Turkmenistan and the UK have made remarkable discoveries.
In 2001, a new collaboration was started between the Institute of Archaeology, University College London and the Turkmen authorities.
four cities; all of the sites are preserved in the
"Ancient Merv Archaeological Park"
just north of the modern
village of
Baýramaly (Ba'yramaly)
and thirty kilometers east of the large Soviet-built
city of
Mary
(Herrmann 1993)."
(from Wikipedia)
Resource
"Merv"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merv
************
But as this was just my fantazy ideas about a possible versa of possible linguistic links between the ancient town Merv and name Merlin, Wizard Mervin in island England, a popular hero in legends about King Arthur,