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 ...

in Tagtabazar District, Mary Province, 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 population was 5,200 in 1991. It is immediately opposite Torghundi,

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, a city in Iran, and Ashgabat, 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 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 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

by Russian forces as a result of the Panjdeh incident (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 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 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 attacked and successfully captured this town and held it for several days.

Transport

The broad gauge railway crosses into Afghanistan at the station, Torghundi being the railhead station on the other side. It was built in 1960. In February 2018, the existing rail line between Serhetabat and Torghundi was restored to service. This line is planned to be extended to Herat, where it could potentially connect to a rail line under construction from Khaf,

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

. Serhetabat is the southern end of Turkmenistan highway A-388, which connects the city to Ýolöten, Murgap, and Mary. The nearest airport is at Galaýmor.

Climate

Serhetabat has a

semi-arid climate A semi-arid climate, semi-desert climate, or steppe climate is a dry climate sub-type. It is located on regions that receive precipitation below potential evapotranspiration, but not as low as a desert climate. There are different kinds of se ...

(

Köppen climate classification The Köppen climate classification divides Earth climates into five main climate groups, with each group being divided based on patterns of seasonal precipitation and temperature. The five main groups are ''A'' (tropical), ''B'' (arid), ''C'' (te ...

''BSk''), with cool winters and very hot summers. Rainfall is moderate in winter and spring, but summer is extremely dry.

References

{{Cities of Turkmenistan Populated places in Mary Region Populated places established in 1890 Afghanistan–Turkmenistan border crossings