Ahal Region ( tk, Ahal welaýaty; from fa, آخال, Axāl) is one of five

provinces of Turkmenistan Turkmenistan is divided into five regions or ''welaýatlar'' (singular '' welaýat'') and one capital city (''şäher'') with provincial legal status. They are Ahal, Balkan, Dashoguz, Lebap and Mary, plus the capital city of Ashgabat. Each pr ...

. It is in the south-center of the country, bordering

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

and

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is borde ...

along the Kopet Dag Range. Its area is and population 939,700 (2005 est.).''Statistical Yearbook of Turkmenistan 2000–2004'', National Institute of State Statistics and Information of Turkmenistan, Ashgabat, 2005.

Overview

In 2000, Ahal Region accounted for 14% of Turkmenistan's population, 11% of the total number of employed, 23% of agricultural production (by value), and 31% of the country's total industrial production. Ahal's agriculture is irrigated by the Karakum Canal, which stretches all the way across the province from east to west, tracking Turkmenistan's southern border. Another water source is the

Tejen River The Hari River ( or prs, هری رود, translit=Harī Rōd; ps, د هري سیند) or Herat River is a river flowing from the mountains of central Afghanistan to Turkmenistan, where it forms the Tejend oasis and disappears in the Karakum D ...

, which flows north from Afghanistan in the southeast corner of the province, passing through two large

reservoir A reservoir (; from French ''réservoir'' ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam. Such a dam may be either artificial, built to store fresh water or it may be a natural formation. Reservoirs can be created in a number of ways, including contr ...

s south of the city of Tejen. Ahal is known for the Battle of Geok Tepe of 1881, today the site of the imposing Saparmurat Hajji Mosque, and for the

Bäherden Bäherden, formerly Baharly (2003-2018), is a city and the seat of Baherden District, Ahal Province, Turkmenistan. It lies on the northern rim of the Kopet Dag mountain range, south-west of the resort village of Archman. Etymology According t ...

underground warm lake (in the Kov Ata karst cave), both west of

Ashgabat Ashgabat or Asgabat ( tk, Aşgabat, ; fa, عشق‌آباد, translit='Ešqābād, formerly named Poltoratsk ( rus, Полтора́цк, p=pəltɐˈratsk) between 1919 and 1927), is the capital and the largest city of Turkmenistan. It lies ...

. The capital of Ahal Province is Änew (or Anau), a

city A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...

on the south-eastern outskirts of Ashgabat. One other notable city is Tejen in the south-east near the border with Mary Province. Turkmenistan's largest city,

, is surrounded by Ahal Province, but as the national capital it enjoys status equal to that of a province and is outside Ahal Province's jurisdiction. A new $1.5 billion administrative center for Ahal Province, to be located east of Gökdepe, is under construction. When complete, it will become the capital of Ahal Province, and Änew will lose that status.

History

From antiquity through the early 1800s, the area was populated by Persian-speaking peoples. Nisa, since 2013 located within the city limits of

, was likely founded in the third century BCE and was the first capital of the

Parthian Empire The Parthian Empire (), also known as the Arsacid Empire (), was a major Iranian political and cultural power in ancient Iran from 247 BC to 224 AD. Its latter name comes from its founder, Arsaces I, who led the Parni tribe in conqu ...

. The area just north of the Kopet Dag mountains forms an oasis due to runoff from the mountains and was thus part of the

Silk Road The Silk Road () was a network of Eurasian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Spanning over 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles), it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and rel ...

caravan route from roughly 2000 BCE until around 1500 CE.

Turkmen period

British Lieutenant Colonel H.C. Stuart reported in 1881 that the Ahal branch of the Teke tribe of the Turkmen ethnic group arrived in the area around 1830 and established several semi-nomadic villages (''auls'') between what is now the city of Serdar and village of Gäwers, inclusive., Chapter 11, Stuart, Lt. Col. H.C., ''The Country of the Tekke Turkomans, and the Tejend and Murghab Rivers'', lecture delivered in 1881. The Ahal area was formally part of

Persia Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

but ''de facto'' autonomous under Turkoman tribal control until Russian forces defeated the Teke army at the Battle of Geok Tepe in January 1881.

Soviet period

Originally named ''Ashgabat oblasty'' in Turkmen (russian: Ашхабадская область,

Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking co ...

Turkmen ), the future Ahal Province was initially formed on 21 November 1939, abolished on 25 May 1959, and reconstituted on 27 December 1973. In 1977 ''Ashgabat oblasty'' was awarded the

Order of Lenin The Order of Lenin (russian: Орден Ленина, Orden Lenina, ), named after the leader of the Russian October Revolution, was established by the Central Executive Committee on April 6, 1930. The order was the highest civilian decoration ...

Independent Turkmenistan

On 14 December 1992, the People's Council ( tk, Maslahaty, link=no) adopted Law No. 783-ХП, “On the Order of Deciding Issues of Administrative-Territorial Structure of Turkmenistan”, and Resolution XM-6. These statutes changed the Russian word oblast' (область), rendered in Turkmen Cyrillic as област, to the Persian loan word ''welaýat'' in reference to provinces. The resolution renamed Ashgabat oblasty (russian: Ашгабатская область, Turkmen Сyrillic: Ашгабат областы) to Ahal welaýaty. Anau was designated the capital of Ahal.

Etymology

Ataniyazov wrote,

The meaning of the name is not clear. Khiva historians Munis and Agahi write that the name means "drainage ditch" and it was so named because the Ahal lands were swampy and suitable for rice cultivation (MITT, II, p. 359)...Vambery, on the other hand, writes that the word is derived from the word ''ak''
hite Hite or HITE may refer to: *HiteJinro HiteJinro Co., Ltd. (; ) is a South Korean multinational drink, brewing and distiller company, founded in 1924. It is the world's leading producer of soju, accounting for more than half of that beverage' ...
/nowiki> and the addition of -al (Vambery, p. 264).

Administrative subdivisions

Districts

Effective January 5, 2018, Ahal Province (''Ahal welaýaty'') is subdivided into 7 districts (''etrap'', plural ''etraplar''): This document is reproduced online at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Districts_in_Turkmenistan. # Ak bugdaý (formerly Gäwers) # Babadaýhan (formerly Kirov) #

(formerly Baharly) # Gökdepe #

Kaka Kaka may refer to: People Nickname or given name Sports * Carlos Augusto dos Santos da Silva (born 1987), Brazil-born Italy international futsal player * Kaká (born 1982), Brazilian footballer Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite * Kaká (footballe ...

# Sarahs # Tejen

Municipalities

As of October 2022, the province included 8 cities (города or ''şäherler''), 9 towns (посёлки or ''şäherçeler''), 82 rural or village councils (сельские советы or ''geňeşlikler''), and 231 villages (села, сельские населенные пункты or ''obalar''). In the list below, there is no city with "district status": :* Altyn Asyr :* Änew (provincial capital) :* Babadaýhan :*

:* Gökdepe :*

:* Sarahs :* Tejen As of May 2013 Ruhabat District and the city of Abadan (today called Büzmeýin), until then in Ahal Province, were incorporated into the city of Ashgabat and abolished as separate municipalities. In January 2018, the Babadaýhan District of Ahal Province was re-established, and the Kaka, Tejen, Sarahs Districts were reaffirmed. Baharly's former name, Bäherden, was restored in the same decree, and the Altyn Asyr District was abolished.

Economy

Agriculture

Ahal produces wheat and cotton. Cotton grown in Ahal is ginned at mills in Akdepe, Gökdepe,

, and Tejen, and spun into cotton yarn at mills in

, Gökdepe, and Kaka. Textile complexes are found in Ashgabat, Akdepe (Bäherden), Gökdepe, and Kaka. Cotton seed is crushed for extraction of oil and meal at the Ahal Vegetable Oil Enterprise plant near Ovadandepe. It was opened on 17 May 2010 with a design capacity to process 96,000 tons of cotton seed per year, with daily production of 50 tons of cottonseed oil, 10 tons of margarine, 140 tons of cottonseed meal and 70 tons of soybean hulls.

Industry

On June 28, 2019, a $1.7 billion factory for producing

gasoline Gasoline (; ) or petrol (; ) (see ) is a transparent, petroleum-derived flammable liquid that is used primarily as a fuel in most spark-ignited internal combustion engines (also known as petrol engines). It consists mostly of organic c ...

out of natural gas was commissioned in Ovadandepe, Gökdepe District. Built by Rönesans and Kawasaki using technology from Haldor Topsoe, the factory has a design capacity of 600,000 tonnes of gasoline, 12,000 tonnes of Diesel fuel, and 115,000 tonnes of

liquefied petroleum gas Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG or LP gas) is a fuel gas which contains a flammable mixture of hydrocarbon gases, specifically propane, propylene, butylene, isobutane and n-butane. LPG is used as a fuel gas in heating appliances, cookin ...

per year, produced from 1.7 billion cubic meters of natural gas. In 2019, Turkmenistan produced 5.1 million standard square meters (4mm thickness) of sheet glass, all of it in Ahal. A $375 million float glass and glass container plant built by Tepe Inşaat of Turkey was opened February 14, 2018, in Ovadandepe north of Ashgabat. It replaced a Soviet-era glass factory located in central Ashgabat. In 2019, the value of Turkmenistan's glass exports as reported by trading partners was $9.5 million. Database search on HS Code 70 "Glass and glassware", Trading partner "Turkmenistan", Reporters "All" A steel smelter
Türkmen Demir Önümleri Döwlet Kärhanasy
( en, Turkmen Iron Products State Enterprise), operating on scrap metal is located at kilometer 22 on the Ashgabat-Dashoguz Automobile Highway near Ovadandepe. It produces mainly

rebar Rebar (short for reinforcing bar), known when massed as reinforcing steel or reinforcement steel, is a steel bar used as a tension device in reinforced concrete and reinforced masonry structures to strengthen and aid the concrete under tension. ...

and channel iron. The $240 million Tejen urea (carbamide) plant, inaugurated on March 18, 2005, has a design capacity of 350,000 tonnes of urea per year. The Baherden Cement Plant, put into operation in 2005, has a design capacity of one million tons of cement per year. In 2019 the Baherden plant reportedly was operating at 64% of capacity. The Kelete Cement Plant has a design capacity of one million tons per year, but as of 2019 was producing at 8.1% of that level. The Derweze State Electrical Power Station ( tk, Derweze Döwlet Elektrik Stansiýasy), a 504.4 megawatt power plant built by Çalık Enerji in 2015, is located near Ovadandepe. The Ahal State Power Station ( tk, Ahal Döwlet Elektrik Stansiýasy), located about 9 kilometers NE of Anau, with design capacity of 650 megawatts, was constructed in 2010 to power the city of Ashgabat and expanded in 2013 and 2014 to power the Olympic Village.

Government installations

The Ovadandepe Prison is located approximately 30 kilometers NNW of G. Orazow adyndaky oba, the seat of the Ovadandepe Rural Council ( tk, Owadandepe geňeşligi). The National Space Agency'
ground station
for communicating with the TurkmenÄlem-52E satellite is located approximately 6 kilometers north of the Ashgabat city limit off the P-1 highway.OpenStreetMap
/ref>

People

* Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow * Nurmuhammet Hanamow * Berdi Kerbabayev *

Saparmurat Niyazov Saparmurat Atayevich Niyazov; tk, Saparmyrat Ataýewiç Nyýazow, in Cyrillic: Сапармырат Атаевич Ныязов (19 February 1940 – 21 December 2006), also known as Turkmenbashi, was a Turkmen politician who rule ...

References

External links

{{coord, 38, 30, N, 59, 0, E, display=title Regions of Turkmenistan Khorasan