Geokdepe - Mosque, fortress ruins and cemetery 40 minutes by
car to the west of Ashgabat. This site includes the remains of the ancient
fortress Geokdepe and modern Saparmyrat Haji Mosque. Geok-Depe is a fortress of
the 19th century where a particular bloody battle took place between the
Turkmen and the Russians in 1881 where Russian made an attempt to take over
Turkmenistan. In January 1881 The Russians surrounded the Geok Depe fortress
and begun to bombard it in 1881.
There had been 10.000 Turkmen troops inside its massive
walls, most of them cavalry, as well as nearly 40.000 civilians. Skobelev
himself had 7.000 infantry and cavalry, and 60 guns and rocket batteries.
Russians found themselves under heavy fire from the ramparts. Skobelev ordered
his engineers to tunnel to a point beneath the wall where a mine could be
explored. If they dug quickly, the officer in charge would be rewarded with
vodka. As fierce fighting continued overhead, the sappers had got to within
twenty-five yards of the wall without detection. Now Progress began to slow
down due to the difficulty of getting air to the diggers, but finally the
tunnel was ready. Two tons of explosives were carried along it by volunteers to
a position directly beneath the wall. Shortly, as the storming parties waited
in readiness, the mine was ignited. Simultaneously the full fury of Skobelev"s
artillery and rocket batteries was turned against the same part of the wall.
The result was an enormous explosion, which raised a huge column of earth and
rubble skywards.
Together with the artillery fire it blew a gap nearly fifty
yards wide in the wall, instantly killing several hundred of the defenders. The
Russian storming party now rushed into the fortress, while at other points,
using scaling ladders brought up under cover of darkness the previous night,
Skobelev"s troops swarmed over the walls. Hand-to-hand fighting followed for
possession of the fortress. Unprepared for the sudden appearance of the
Russians in their midst, and still stunned by the violence of the explosion,
the Turkmens soon began to give ground. General Skobelev was one of the Russian
Tsar"s most outstanding and colorful generals. Nicknamed "the White
General" by his troops, he invariably rode into battle in a dazzling white
uniform and a white charger. He also had a reputation for ruthlessness and
cruelty which had earned him the name of "Old Bloody Eyes" among the
Turkmens. To commemorate the battle in Geokdepe a magnificent mosque was built
in 1996.
|
Add to favorites
