This article was firstly published on Turkotek, a non-commercial site devoted to collectible weavings, where rug enthusiasts can connect.

Although history and geography are supposed to deal with reasonably clear and documented information, most rug books are vague and at times even contradictory about the locations of Turkmen tribes. You say that they were nomads, so they had no fixed locations? Right, but even nomads find it difficult to achieve ubiquity. Therefore, I tried to summarize what a highly competent and respected historian wrote about Turkmen and what a handful of serious nineteenth century visitors got directly from the horse’s mouth. The following maps and comments are heavily borrowed from Yuri Bregel’s outstanding Historical Atlas of Central Asia. I merely tried to focus on my favorite Turkmen, simplifying and dividing Bregel’s complex maps until they were compatible with my underperforming synapses.

During the 16th century the Turkmen occupied an area of desert and dry steppe. Their range was limited on the north by Qalmik-, later by Kazakh tribes; on the west by the Caspian sea; on the east by the Aral sea, Khorezm (later known as Khiva khanate) and the dried bed of the eastern Uzboy River; on the south by the Gorgan River and the western part of the Kopet-Dagh range. Their territory included the Mangyshlak peninsula, the Ãœst-Yurt plateau and the Balkhan hills (1). Except for the Atrek, Gorgan and a few small rivers in the Mangyshlak peninsula, there were only seasonal rivulets (mostly in the Balkans). The Uzboy River had fully dried up centuries earlier.

Vambery (2) mentioned that the Ãœst-Yurt plateau was a trifle greener than the nearby Qara-Qum desert and apparently allowed sizable wildlife and cattle raising, while Mouraviev (3) observed that there were wells in and along the dried bed of the Uzboy that were rather less brackish than most others and that the scenery was greener than in the nearby dry steppe. Nineteenth century visitors also mentioned that after the rain and snow seasons, a large number of temporary pools, formed in clay-lined depressions, dotted the desert. It seems quite obvious that the area was suitable for horizontal nomadism only (4), with small and scattered yurt villages near permanent wells, while herds of camels, sheep, goats or horses, migrated from pastures to wells under the guidance of junior tribesmen.


Why were the Turkmen confined to such a barren area?
Bregel (5) gives us a hint "... The Mongols were obviously little interested in the area, which was unfit for the Mongol type of horse-breeding economy ...." Stronger nomadic tribes, such as the Qalmiks, kept possession of the fat herbaceous steppe, the southern limit of which is about 200 km north of Turkmen territory. Besides, the Turkmen were elusive and reluctant potential slaves, there was no city to pillage and destroy nor any oases to convert into pasture in the remote and barren territory. The only dwellings mentioned on Bregel’s maps are a Parthian border fort and an Islamic village on the Uzboy, both deserted ruins long before the Turkmen settled the area.(6).

IMHO, after the successive mass emigrations of the Seljuk-, Ak-Khoyunlu-, Kara-Khoyunlu- or Afshar Turkmen those remaining or returning were too few to fight the armies of the various Timurid-, Uzbek- and Persian kingdoms (to name just a few) or to challenge the Qalmik- or Kazakh confederations for better pastures. It is noteworthy that except for a couple of Uzbek- and Qalmik-raids, nobody really ever disturbed the Turkmen in their territory until the end of the sixteenth century.

Locations of the main tribes during the sixteenth century
According to Bregel (7) the Turkmen were grouped in four tribal confederations: From north to south, the Esen-Eli (Chodor, Igdir, Arabachi and Abdal), the Ischki Salor (apparently only consisting of Salor tribesmen), the Dasqi Salor (next to Salor; this confederation also consisted of offspring tribes that were later called Saryk and Ersari, as well as of less directly related tribes such as the Tekke and Yomud) and the Sayinkhanis (mainly composed of the Göklen and Yemreli).

Most 19th century visitors mention that the Turkmen had strong resistance to authority. Their khans and elders had very limited power (Kushid Kuli Khan, the absolute ruler of the Tekke from 1857 to 1877, was an exception). These confederations of tribes were, therefore, very loose; there is no evidence of any strong political unions (8, 9).

Why did they start moving out of their traditional territory by end of the 16th century?
There is no single reason that is widely agreed upon: Bregel hints at changing climate conditions, at overpopulation, at weakened and divided Uzbek khanates (mainly Bokhara and Khiva) whose rulers customarily enlisted Turkmen military support in their intra- and inter-khanate struggles and in campaigns against the Persians. Consequently, many Turkmen tribes migrated closer to the urban centers of the khanates, which came to depend too heavily upon the Turkmen for their military forces. He also mentions an increased pressure from the Qalmik- and (later) Kazakh nomads on the northern border of the Mangyshlak peninsula (10), the latter themselves pushed over by the Junghars (from the east) and by Russians settlers (from the north).

The romantic belief, common in carpetologist circles, of a defeat of the Salors and a resulting explosion of the Dashqi Salor confederation is not mentioned by Bregel. The separation apparently took place very gradually over more than 50 years. The tribes did not necessarily move in separate directions, nor did all clans of a given tribe move contemporaneously. For all we know this slow process might have been mostly peaceful, at least measured by usual Turkmen standards.

Surely the weakness of the last Safavid Persian Shahs (first third of the eighteenth century) lured the Tekke southeast, towards the fertile northern Kopet-Dagh piedmont settled by Turkmen clients of Persia, and the destruction of Merv by the Bokharan army (1787-1788) was seen as a golden opportunity by the Saryk and the Salor for seizing the deserted oasis.

The farming-based economy of the main Uzbek khanates was heavily dependent on slave manpower and provided a welcome new business opportunity and a lot of fun for the Turkmen, who discovered an unlimited supply of potential slaves in the poorly defended Khorassan- and Mazandaran provinces of Persia. The logistics of this lucrative industry may have had a role in some tribal relocations, too.