The Foreign Service Journal, April 2003

11th century was marked in Turkmenistan by the birth of a pow- erful centralized empire, founded by the Turkic Seljuks, famous for their military prowess. During their apogee, they ruled lands stretching from Palestine to the Chinese bor- der. Merv’s 12th-century mausoleum of the Seljuk Sultan Sanjar has been rebuilt, but with new bricks cement- ed to old. Mohammed, a trained archaeologist, lamented that with the fall of the USSR, money for archaeol- ogy dried up and most excavations at Merv ceased. Yet money suddenly materialized to rebuild the mau- soleum, “a really pedestrian piece of medieval Islamic architecture,” according to Moham- med. Many of the area’s Moslem clerics, however, con- sider the late sultan a saint, even if, in my driver’s opinion, “he obviously chose his architects badly.” Indeed, Sanjar is a noted historical figure and the successor of Mohammed Togrulbek the Turkman, the founder and first Sultan of the Seljuks. It was Sanjar who is credited with Merv’s rebirth after the Arabs sacked it, turning it into the cultural capital of Central Asia and inviting emi- nent Islamic scholars and poets to work there, including the world-famous Omar Khayyam. Nearby stand the Great Kyz Kala and the Small Kyz Kala, two remarkable fortresses. Built just before the Arab invasion in the seventh century, they feature a totally unique architectural style, with walls shaped like petrified, undulating waves. Tragically, half of the Small Kyz Kala crumbled in 1995. Mohammed attrib- uted the decay to increased humidity from the F O C U S A P R I L 2 0 0 3 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 53 An FSO since 1984, Tatiana Gfoeller has served with her FSO husband Michael in Warsaw, Riyadh, Manama, Moscow (twice), Brussels, Ashgabat, St. Petersburg and Washington. She is currently the direc- tor of multilateral affairs in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, and is also a member of the Foreign Service Journal Editorial Board. The Gfoellers are co-authors of United by the Caspian (2001, Georgetown University Press) and have co-written numerous articles. The author unearthing a human skeleton (under archaeological supervision) at Margiana, and below, in front of the Sultan Sanjar mausoleum in Merv.