Koneurgench: Khorezmian Architecture and a Medieval Capital in Turkmenistan

On a flat plain on the left bank of the Amu Darya, a brick minaret about 60 metres tall rises above a scattering of domed tombs, mud-brick mounds and graves. This is Koneurgench, also written Konye-Urgench or Kunya-Urgench and known in the Middle Ages as Gurganj, once the capital of Khorezm and, for a few decades around 1200, the seat of an empire that reached deep into Iran. Its surviving monuments explain how a river oasis came to shape buildings, scholarship and Sufi teaching far beyond its own borders. On Day 7 of our small group tour through Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, the group crosses from Khiva into Turkmenistan and spends the day among them.

Koneurgench and the capitals of Khorezm

Khorezm is the oasis country of the lower Amu Darya, south of the Aral Sea, and today it is divided between Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. The ancient fortresses of the right bank, in what is now Karakalpakstan, are the subject of our article on the desert fortresses of ancient Khorezm. Koneurgench belongs to a later chapter. In 995 the rulers of Gurganj, on the left bank, overthrew the Afrighid Khwarazmshahs of Kath, and the centre of Khorezm moved with them; the city’s surviving buildings are medieval and Islamic rather than ancient.

The site’s roots are older than its monuments. ICOMOS, the body that evaluated the site for UNESCO, dates the city’s origins to the sixth or fifth century BC, dates the Kyrkmolla fortress mound on the site to the fifth century BC, and records that Arab armies reached the town in 712. From the tenth to the fourteenth century Gurganj was a major centre on the trade routes; by the twelfth century it was the capital of Khorezm and, in ICOMOS’s assessment, the second city of Central Asia after Bukhara. Our four-country journey through the Stans sets this stop within the whole route, from the Aral Sea to the mountains of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.

A court of scholars at Gurganj

Gurganj first rose to prominence under the Ma’munids, the local dynasty behind that overthrow of 995, according to Encyclopaedia Iranica. The Ma’munid court became known for its intellectual brilliance. The polymath al-Biruni, born in Kath, spent about seven years in the service of the Khwarazmshah Ma’mun ibn Ma’mun, who ruled from 1009 to 1017, as companion, adviser and occasional envoy, and Iranica notes that Ibn Sina, the physician and philosopher known in Europe as Avicenna, corresponded with him.

That court did not last. In an anecdote preserved by the twelfth-century writer Nizami Aruzi, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna demanded that Khorezm send its leading scholars to his court. Ibn Sina and the scholar Abu Sahl Masihi fled west, while al-Biruni and others went to Ghazna, where al-Biruni spent more than three decades. The episode is an early example of a theme that runs through Koneurgench’s history: ideas formed in this oasis repeatedly travelled south and west with the people who carried them. ICOMOS records that the base of the Mamun minaret still survives at the site.

The Khwarazmshahs: an empire ruled from the oasis

The dynasty that made Gurganj an imperial capital began as servants of the Seljuq Turks. Iranica records that around 1077 the Seljuq sultan Malik Shah appointed a former royal servant, Anushtigin, as nominal Khwarazmshah, and that his descendants remained Seljuq vassals until the death of Sultan Sanjar in 1157. Under Atsiz, Il-Arslan and above all Tekesh, who ruled from 1172 to 1200, they became a power in their own right. In 1194 Tekesh defeated and killed Toghril III, the last of the Great Seljuq sultans, and his son Muhammad II went on to take much of Khorasan and northern Afghanistan.

For a generation, then, decisions made in this oasis shaped events from Transoxania to western Iran, and Gurganj was its capital. Two of the dynasty’s tombs survive, and they are among the most important buildings on the site.

The mausolea of Il-Arslan and Tekesh

The mausoleum associated with Il-Arslan, who ruled from 1156 to 1172, is small and square in plan, crowned by a conical roof laid in geometric brick patterns, with an entrance framed by terracotta inscriptions. ICOMOS dates it, with a question mark, to around 1150, and it is often described as the oldest standing monument at Koneurgench.

The presumed tomb of Tekesh, dated by ICOMOS to around 1195, follows the same idea on a larger scale: a conical dome raised on a tall faceted drum, roof patterns worked in brick, traces of turquoise tilework and an entrance portal decorated with stalactite carving. Together the two buildings show the confidence of a dynasty that had just outgrown its Seljuq masters, and the material that carried that confidence: fired brick, laid in patterns that turn a plain wall into ornament.

1221: the siege that ended an imperial capital

The empire of the Khwarazmshahs collapsed within a few years of its greatest extent. When the Mongols invaded, Gurganj was besieged from the autumn of 1220 to the spring of 1221 by forces under Chinggis Khan’s sons Jochi and Chagatai, and later Ögedei. Modern histories of the conquest record that, with little stone in the delta for their catapults, the besiegers used the trunks of mulberry trees as projectiles, and that the dams on the Amu Darya were broken and the city flooded. Iranica notes that Muhammad II’s son, Jalal al-Din, was forced to abandon Gurganj and flee to India. Many of the survivors, among them the city’s craftsmen, were enslaved and carried off.

Najm al-Din Kubra and a Sufi order that travelled

Among those who died in the defence was Najm al-Din Kubra, who founded the Kubrawiya, a Sufi order whose teachers later carried it into Iran, Central Asia and South Asia. ICOMOS notes that he was also remembered as a painter, physician and chess master. Archnet, the architectural archive of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, records the tradition that he was beheaded while defending the city, and that the double sarcophagus in the northwest corner of his burial chamber holds his body in one tomb and his head in the other.

The mausoleum that stands over his grave today dates from the first half of the fourteenth century, when Archnet credits its building to Qutlugh Timur (also written Kutlug Timur), governor of Khorezm for the Golden Horde. A tall entrance portal, faced with blue glazed tiles in geometric patterns and framed by a band of inscriptions in white on blue, leads to a vestibule and a domed burial chamber. It stands in the northern section of the site, among the graves of the old cemetery, apart from the monuments listed for the tour’s Day 7 visit.

Is Koneurgench still a place of pilgrimage?

Yes. UNESCO describes Koneurgench as a religious centre and a prominent place of Islamic pilgrimage, and notes that most of its visitors are pilgrims from the region. UNESCO also credits the long use of the old town as a graveyard with helping its monuments survive.

Golden Horde Urgench: Kutlug Timur and Turabek Khanum

Urgench recovered under Mongol rule. By the fourteenth century it lay within the Golden Horde, and the Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta, who passed through in that century, described it as the largest and finest city of the Turks. Its most visible monument comes from this revival, though perhaps not only from it.

The minaret named after Qutlugh Timur stands about 60 metres high, tapering from a base 12 metres across. Archnet records that it is decorated with eighteen bands of patterned brick, that the lowest of its surviving Kufic inscriptions names Qutlugh Timur, and that a windowless spiral stair of 145 steps leads to the top, entered by a doorway 7 metres above the ground. Some historians argue that the shaft is older and that the governor restored rather than founded it; ICOMOS gives it an eleventh-century date. It leans perceptibly, and its upper section has needed consolidation. ICOMOS compares it with the twelfth-century Minaret of Jam in Afghanistan, which at 65 metres is slightly taller, and judged Jam the finer of the two.

Nearby stands the largest mausoleum on the site, named after Turabek Khanum, traditionally identified as Qutlugh Timur’s wife. Its dating is debated, from about 1330 to the later fourteenth century. The outer dome has collapsed, but the interior keeps its dome of refined blue and white geometric mosaic, restored in 1999 and 2000, and the tall portal and many-sided plan show how far Khorezmian builders had moved beyond the small brick tombs of the twelfth century.

How long is the visit to Koneurgench, and how much walking does it involve?

The tour page lists seven sights for the Day 7 visit but gives no time at each, and the tour is rated Level 3, Moderate to Challenging, defined as up to six hours a day of continuous strenuous activity over varied terrain. The sights are the caravanserai portal, the Mamun minaret, the mausolea of Il-Arslan, Tekesh and Turabek Khanum, the Academy of Khorezm and the Kutlug Timur minaret, between the morning drive from Khiva across the Dashoguz border and an evening flight from Dashoguz to Ashgabat. Ask a Tour Specialist how the day is paced.

Is Koneurgench a UNESCO World Heritage Site?

It is. Kunya-Urgench was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2005 under criteria (ii) and (iii), as a serial property of separate sections on the left bank of the Amu Darya in Dashoguz province. UNESCO describes the old town’s monuments as dating mainly from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, and the site has been managed as a state historical and cultural park since 1985.

Timur, the river and the move to Khiva

Revival did not last. ICOMOS records that Timur’s armies heavily damaged the city between 1372 and 1388, after which it never regained its standing. In the sixteenth century the capital of Khorezm moved to Khiva, and at about the same time the Amu Darya shifted its course. The old town was eventually abandoned, and when Turkmen families resettled the area from 1831 they built outside it, leaving the ruins to the dead. UNESCO notes that more than three centuries of abandonment, followed by use as a graveyard, left the monuments relatively intact.

The city that inherited Khorezm is the subject of our article on Khiva and its place on the Silk Road, and the tour spends Day 6 there before crossing to Koneurgench, so the later capital is seen before the earlier one.

Ideas across a modern border

The border that now runs between Khiva and Koneurgench divides what was, for most of its history, a single oasis country. What makes Koneurgench matter beyond Khorezm is how much travelled out of it. UNESCO’s case for inscription is that its architectural tradition reached Iran and Afghanistan, and later sixteenth-century Mughal India. The conical brick domes of Il-Arslan and Tekesh, the tiled portals of the fourteenth century, and the mosaic dome of Turabek Khanum belong to a shared language of fired brick and glaze that ICOMOS links with Seljuq, Ilkhanid and Timurid work from Uzbekistan to Persia and Afghanistan.

People travelled the same routes. Al-Biruni’s scholarship went to Ghazna, Najm al-Din Kubra’s teaching spread through the Sufi order he founded, and the craftsmen of Gurganj were carried off as captives in 1221. For broader orientation to Turkmenistan itself, our guide to Turkmenistan for curious travellers covers the country beyond Khorezm, and for the Uzbek side of the oasis our answers to common questions about travelling in Uzbekistan cover the practicalities.

Reading Koneurgench on the Stans route

The order of the route helps. Days 5 and 6 bring the ancient fortresses of Khorezm and the walled city of Khiva; Day 7 brings Koneurgench, the medieval capital between them in time; and that evening the group flies to Ashgabat, Turkmenistan’s white-marble capital, a city built to express a very different kind of state. Seen in that sequence, Koneurgench is the hinge in a long story of Central Asian capitals, each shaped by water and by the ambitions of those who ruled it.

Travelling in a small group of up to 16 travellers with an Odyssey Program Leader, you see Koneurgench on the day between Khiva and Ashgabat, from the Kutlug Timur minaret to its fourteenth-century tombs. If you would like to study the route’s landscapes and history in that company, our 28-day Stans tour includes Koneurgench as one of its days in Turkmenistan.