The Silk Road's Lost Cities: Merv and Termez

The Story of Uzbekistan: Silk Road Kingdoms and Soviet Legacy — Fexingo History · Jun 7, 2026 · 5m · transcript

This episode of The Story of Uzbekistan ventures beyond the familiar Timurid monuments to explore two of Central Asia's most storied but lesser-known ancient cities: Merv in present-day Turkmenistan and Termez on the Amu Darya. Merv, once the largest city in the world under the Seljuks, was a crossroads of Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Nestorian, and Islamic civilizations before its destruction by the Mongols in 1221. Termez, an ancient Greek-founded city on the Afghan border, was a key Buddhist center under the Kushan Empire, home to the famed Zurmala Stupa and the remains of the…