Ashgabat
capital city of Turkmenistan
Ashgabat is the capital and largest city of Turkmenistan. It lies between the Karakum Desert and the Köpetdag mountain range in Central Asia, approximately 50 km (30 mi) away from the Iran-Turkmenistan border. The city has a population of 1,030,063 (2022 census).
The city was founded in 1881 on the basis of an Ahal Teke tribal village, and made the capital of the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic in 1924 when it was known as Poltoratsk. Much of the city was destroyed by the 1948 Ashgabat earthquake, but has since been extensively rebuilt under the rule of Saparmyrat Nyýazow's "White City" urban renewal project, resulting in monumental projects sheathed in costly white marble. The Soviet-era Karakum Canal runs through the city, carrying waters from the Amu Darya from east to west.
Today, as the capital of an independent Turkmenistan, Ashgabat retains a multiethnic population, with ethnic Turkmen as the majority. In 2021, it celebrated 140 years of its written history. Ashgabat joined the UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities in 2025.
Etymology
Ashgabat is called Aşgabat (transliterated as "Ashgabat") in Turkmen, Russian: Ашхабад, romanized: Ashkhabad in Russian from 1925 to 1991, and عشقآباد ('Ešqābād) in Persian.
“Ashgabat” enters the record as capital city of Turkmenistan. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Ashgabat, capital and city can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q23438. VIAF identifies the subject as 236371753. Authority coordinates are 37.950, 58.383. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2022, 1881, 1924 and 1948.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ashgabat” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.