Konye-Urgench

The town takes its name — old Urgench — from the city that stood here as the capital of Khwarazm, the irrigated land along the lower Amu Darya. Urgench grew rich on the caravan routes between Iran, the Volga and China, and by about 1200 the Khwarazmshahs ruled an empire stretching across Central Asia and into Iran. Contemporary writers described it as one of the great cities of the Islamic world, with mosques, madrasas and libraries; the mathematician al-Khwarizmi and the scholar al-Biruni came from this region.

In 1221 the Mongol armies of Genghis Khan besieged the city after the killing of his envoys. Urgench held out for months and was destroyed, its dams broken and its population massacred. It recovered under the Golden Horde during the 14th century, when the governor Kutlug-Timur and his wife gave their names to the minaret and, by tradition, the tiled mausoleum that are the finest monuments on the site. That revival ended in the 1380s, when Timur's forces sacked the city again.

What finished old Urgench was water. The Amu Darya shifted its channel, leaving the city without irrigation, and in the 16th century the rulers of Khwarazm had moved their capital to Khiva, taking much of the population with them. The site was left as a field of ruins and graves outside a small modern settlement, which grew again in Soviet times as a cotton town. The monuments were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2005.

Konye-Urgench is a religious place as much as an archaeological one. The mausolea draw pilgrims from across Turkmenistan and neighbouring Uzbekistan, particularly to the tomb associated with Najm ad-Din Kubra, the 13th-century founder of the Kubrawiya Sufi order, who is said to have died in the Mongol attack. Visitors walk between the shrines, circle them, leave small offerings and tie strips of cloth to frames; some sleep nearby, and newly married couples come to be blessed. Cemeteries have grown around the monuments over centuries, so the ruins sit among graves.

The region belongs to historic Khwarazm and looks culturally towards Khiva as much as towards Ashgabat. A large share of the local population is ethnic Uzbek, and Uzbek is widely spoken alongside Turkmen; music, dress and food all carry Khorezmian as well as Turkmen features. Carpet patterns, embroidery and the heavy silver jewellery worn by brides differ in detail from those of the south.

Social life follows the national pattern. Weddings are large, public and central to the calendar, with music and feasting late into the night, and the whole extended family is involved in the arrangements. Hospitality is expected of hosts and accepted by guests: tea is poured immediately, bread is treated with care, and elders are greeted first and served first.

About 37,000 people live in the town, in a district of villages and irrigated fields that supports many more. The economy is agricultural: cotton above all, along with wheat, rice, melons and vegetables grown on canal water drawn from the Amu Darya, with cotton gins, small food-processing plants and the trade that comes with a nearby international border. State farms and quotas shape the working year, and the autumn harvest pulls in labour from across the district.

Everyday life is quiet and low-rise. Families live in single-storey courtyard houses or Soviet apartment blocks, shop at the bazaar rather than in shops, and travel between villages in shared cars and minibuses. Days start very early in summer to avoid the heat, and the afternoon is spent indoors. Livestock, poplar windbreaks and irrigation ditches line the lanes outside town.

The north's persistent difficulties are water and salt. This is part of the wider Aral Sea basin, where decades of irrigation have lowered river flow and left salt in the soil, and drinking water quality is a long-standing problem; tea is often drunk with milk to soften it. Work is limited, so many households depend on relatives working in Turkmenabat, Ashgabat or abroad, and the internet is slow and heavily filtered. For all that, the town is neat and orderly, and the monuments give it a steady trickle of visitors.

The food here is Turkmen with a strong Khorezmian accent, shaped by the Uzbek population and by what the oasis grows. Chorek, the round loaf baked against the wall of a clay tandoor, is on every table and treated with respect. Palow — rice slow-cooked with mutton, carrot and onion — is the dish for guests, weddings and holidays, and the northern version is close to the Khorezmian style across the border. Chorba, a mutton and vegetable soup, and dograma, torn bread with boiled meat and onion in broth, cover everyday and feast days respectively.

Bazaar food is quick and filled: somsa baked in the tandoor, gutap fried in half-moons with meat, pumpkin or greens, manty steamed in stacks, and lagman noodles in broth, a dish shared with the whole region. Shashlik over charcoal appears wherever there are crowds. Gatyk, a thick sour yoghurt, and suzma, its drained form, accompany meals and cool the heat.

The land's pride is fruit. Melons and watermelons from the Daşoguz oasis are famous within the country and have their own national day in August; grapes, apricots, pomegranates and mulberries follow through the season, and much of the crop is dried for winter. Green tea is drunk from bowls throughout the day, and in the north it is often taken with milk, a habit that also softens the salty local water. Fish from the Amu Darya turns up on tables closer to the river.