Monuments of Merv

by Georgina Herrman

"The survival of the mudbrick monuments of Merv against all the odds is little short of a miracle. Mudbrick and rammed earth are not building materials famed for their longevity, rather for their economy. However, some buildings of the Merv oasis in the Karakum desert in Turkmenistan have survived for more than seven centuries and some, unbelievably, for a millennium. Mud was the building material of choice, wonderfully flexible and a superb insulator, ideal for the extremes of the Central Asian climate, and one used by the architects of Merv with ingenuity and virtuosity to construct a wide variety of vaults and domes. The survivng monuments include palatial residences, small houses, summer pavilions and watch towers, as well as the earliest examples of tall conical icehouses. Perhaps the most remarkable are the extraordinary corrugated buildings, which, like the icehouses, dominate the flat landscape of the oasis. These are a distinctly Central Asian type of building with a surprisin