Southern Cross of the Russian Empire Serhetabat Turkmenistan

Serhetabat (formerly Gushgy) (; , Kushka) is a

city A city is a human settlement of a substantial size. The term "city" has different meanings around the world and in some places the settlement can be very small. Even where the term is limited to larger settlements, there is no universally agree ...

Tagtabazar District Tagtabazar District () is a Districts of Turkmenistan, district of Mary Province in Turkmenistan. The administrative center of the district is the town of Tagtabazar. The district is situated very close to the Afghanistan border. Administrative ...

Mary Province Mary Region () is one of five regions of Turkmenistan, provinces in Turkmenistan. It is located in the south-east of the country, bordering Afghanistan. Its capital is the city of Mary, Turkmenistan, Mary. Its area is and population 1,613,386 (2 ...

, southern

Turkmenistan Turkmenistan is a landlocked country in Central Asia bordered by Kazakhstan to the northwest, Uzbekistan to the north, east and northeast, Afghanistan to the southeast, Iran to the south and southwest and the Caspian Sea to the west. Ash ...

. Serhetabat lies in the valley of the

Kushk River The Kushk (known in Turkmenistan as ''Guşgy'') is a river which, for a portion of its course, forms the boundary between Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, and used to form part of the southernmost border of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Th ...

. The population was 5,200 in 1991. It is immediately opposite

Torghundi Torghundi, also spelled Turghundi or Towrgondi (, ), is a border town in northern Herat Province of Afghanistan. The town's main attraction is the Torghundi custom house and border checkpoint, which officially connects Afghanistan by road wit ...

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...

, with which it is connected by a road and a gauge railway.

Etymology

The name of the city is a Turkmen borrowing from Persian , consisting of two words: () meaning "border" and () meaning "inhabited place" (commonly used as a Persian suffix for naming places, such as

Khorramabad Khorramabad (; ) is a city in the Central District of Khorramabad County, Lorestan province, Iran, serving as capital of the province, the county, and the district. Situated in a scenic valley surrounded by mountains, the city lies approx ...

, a city in Iran, and

Ashgabat Ashgabat (Turkmen language, Turkmen: ''Aşgabat'') is the capital city, capital and largest city of Turkmenistan. It lies between the Karakum Desert and the Kopet Dag, Kopetdag mountain range in Central Asia, approximately 50 km (30 ...

, the capital of Turkmenistan). The name of the city corresponds to its geographic location on the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan border. A historical part of the Iranian city

Karaj Karaj (; ) is a List of cities in Iran by province, city in the Central District (Karaj County), Central District of Karaj County, Alborz province, Alborz province, Iran, serving as capital of the province, the county, and the district. Earl ...

shares the same name, Sarhadabad. Gushgy is a Turkmenized form of the Persian word ''kushk'' (), a term referring to mountain forts. In 1885 after taking the

Panjdeh oasis The Panjdeh incident (spelled Penjdeh in older accounts, and known in Russian historiography as the battle of the Kushka) was an armed engagement between the Emirate of Afghanistan and the Russian Empire in 1885 that led to a diplomatic crisis ...

Russian troops constructed a fort on the site of present-day Serhetabat and named it for the village of Kush in Afghanistan. The Turkmenistan government changed the name to Serhetabat on 29 December 1999 by Parliamentary Resolution HM-67.

Overview

RIAN archive 644463 First stage in the Soviet troop withdrawal from Afghanistan

In 1885, Serhetabat and the surrounding region were seized from

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

forces as a result of the

Panjdeh incident The Panjdeh incident (spelled Penjdeh in older accounts, and known in Russian historiography as the battle of the Kushka) was an armed engagement between the Emirate of Afghanistan and the Russian Empire in 1885 that led to a diplomatic crisi ...

(also referred to as the Battle of Kushka), in which about 600 Afghan soldiers were overwhelmed by over 2500 Russian troops. The settlement was founded in 1890 as a Russian military outpost. A local rail-line branching from

Merv Merv (, ', ; ), also known as the Merve Oasis, was a major Iranian peoples, Iranian city in Central Asia, on the historical Silk Road, near today's Mary, Turkmenistan. Human settlements on the site of Merv existed from the 3rd millennium& ...

(now Mary) on the

Central Asian Railway The Trans-Caspian Railway (also called the Central Asian Railway, ) is a railway that follows the path of the Silk Road through much of western Central Asia. It was built by the Russian Empire during its expansion into Central Asia in the 19t ...

was inaugurated on 1 March 1901, causing some degree of international excitement. A point south of the city is the southernmost point of Turkmenistan and used to be the southernmost point of the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

and of the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. A 10-metre stone cross, installed to commemorate the

tercentenary An anniversary is the date on which an event took place or an institution was founded. Most countries celebrate national anniversaries, typically called national days. These could be the date of independence of the nation or the adoption o ...

of the

House of Romanov The House of Romanov (also transliterated as Romanoff; , ) was the reigning dynasty, imperial house of Russia from 1613 to 1917. They achieved prominence after Anastasia Romanovna married Ivan the Terrible, the first crowned tsar of all Russi ...

in 1913, memorialises this fact. This cross was one of four erected in 1913, but is the only one still remaining. In 1988,

Afghan mujahideen The Afghan ''mujahideen'' (; ; ) were Islamist militant groups that fought against the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and the Soviet Union during the Soviet–Afghan War and the subsequent Afghan Civil War (1989–1992), First Afghan Ci ...

attacked and successfully captured this town and held it for several days.

Transport

The

broad gauge A broad-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge (the distance between the rails) broader than the used by standard-gauge railways. Broad gauge of , more known as Russian gauge, is the dominant track gauge in former Soviet Union countries ...

railway crosses into Afghanistan at the station,

being the

railhead {{Short pages monitor