Lieutenant Colonel C.E. Stuart reported that in the 1830s the Teke tribe began to settle in the lower Murghab River delta near Merv, which, he said, they destroyed around 1855. From here the Teke extended their reach to Kizil-Arvat (the present-day city of Gyzylarbat), ultimately splitting into the Ahal Teke, located between Kizil-Arvat and Gäwers (an area Stuart called "Daman-i-Kuh"), and the Merv (today Mary) Teke, mainly between the Tejen and Murghab Rivers. Edmund O'Donovan described Merv as of 1881 as
...a heap of melancholy ruins. There are remains of baths, and palaces, and ramparts crumbling around, with nothing living but snakes and jackals to be seen, or perhaps some wandering Turkoman looking out for his sheep...This is all that remains of Merv...[1]
O'Donovan also asserted that as of 1881
The Turkomans of Merv have only been twenty-six years in the oasis. They formerly inhabited the district around Sarakhs on the upper part of the Tejend river. They were driven from there twenty-seven years ago by the Persians, who objected to the neighbourhood of persons so disagreeable as to insist in carrying off Persian men, their wives, and daughters, and selling them at 5L per head in Bokhara.[1]
The Ahal and Mary Teke were separated by a Persian-controlled zone north of the Kopetdag Mountains called Deregez.[2] Though technically under Persian suzerainty, the Teke were de facto autonomous, and as O'Donovan remarked, were noted for raids to capture slaves for sale in the markets of Khiva and Bukhara. At one point the shah of Persia offered a reward of five tomans "for the head of each Turkoman killed raiding within his frontier."[3] O'Donovan described to the Royal Geographical Society Mary Teke inhabitants of Mäne, a village in Deregez, as "nominally paying tribute to Persia, but who are really independent."[1]
1 2 Бекмаханова、Наиля E. (2015)。Присоединение Центральной Азии к Российской империи в XVIII–XIX вв [ XVIII ~ XIX 世紀における中央アジアのロシア帝国への統一]。 Historia Russica (ロシア語)。 «ЦГИ Принт»。 p. 87.