Merv, the Queen of the
World;
and the Scourge of the Man-stealing Turcomans. With an
Exposition of the Khorassan Question:
By Charles Thomas Marvin, Published by W.H. Allen, 1881
CHAPTER III. THE ORIGIN OF THE Turkmen.
WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE MINOR TRIBES.
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Page 47
LIST OF THE TRIBES. 47
Reckoning to each tent five persons, as is done by the
generality of Russian and English writers, we get a total
of 700,000 people. When Burnes
visited the Turcoman region, the Tekkes were confined to
Akhal and the Tejend; the Ersari were
still tolerably independent of Bokhara; the Sarik
were fighting the Khivans, who had temporarily occupied
Merv ; the Yomuds
performed their periodical wanderings across the desert
from Astrabad to Khiva and back again, and defied the
might of Russia ; the Goklans yielded an unwilling
submission to Persia; the
Chodors acknowledged the supremacy of Khiva; the Salors
were about to undergo the dreadful siege of Sarakhs,
which broke the power of their tribe, and made the city a
Persian outpost ; and the Sakar and Ata led an
independent and insignificant existence in their
respective camping places.*
Thirty years elapsed before another
European made a fresh calculation of the numbers and
power of each tribe. Vambery's
journey was performed in 1863, just before Russia
began that career of conquest which, in less than ten
years, made her mistress of Khiva and Bokhara, and led to
the subjugation of the powerful Yomud tribe. His list may
be conveniently arranged as follows: —
Tribes. Locality. Tents.
1. Tekke -
Akhal and Merv - 60,000
2. Ersari
- Unchanged - - 50,000
3. Yomud
„ - 40,000
4. Goklan
„ - 12,000 *
Based upon the collective writings of travelers of the
period.
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