the Turkmen
Many years had passed since Tekish first gained control of his empire, and he was an old man now. But still he wanted to accomplish many things in his lifetime. His country had come a long way since the nomadic tribes of his ancestors in the court of Khiva, and he could certainly be happy about what he had done.
The Turkmen were now even wealthier than the Persians, Emirate of Cordoba, Arabian Umma, the Fatimid Caliphate, and in fact all Muslim states besides the Abbasids. By this time, the various cousins of the Turkmen had taken over the Abbasid empire from whitin. They had arrived in this land centuries earlier, and proved their value to the Arabs as soldiers. They rose through the ranks, till the present day where they found themselves the lords of the Muslim world. However, Turkmenistan was the only state that was not only built by Turks, but founded by Turks as well.
The Turkmen marveled at the scientific and cultural achievements of the Abbasids. Shah Tekish had sent his only son to the university in Bagdad to learn all he could about the world under the wise mentors there. Emissaries were sent there asking for closer ties, and Turkmen diplomats were found throughout the Abbasid court.
The wealth of the Turkmen was gained chiefly through the city of Astrakhan. It wasn't a grand city, but it served it's purpose. It was a large castle by the Caspian sea, surrounded by houses sprawling in all directions, with the biggest port in Central Asia. From there, trading cogs went to and from Persia every week, carrying Turkmen produce and bringing back expensive rugs and large sums of gold.
From Astrakhan to Khiva, there was a large road. And along this road, Turkmen tribes traveled by night and day. For Tekish not only wanted them to move closer to the Caspian sea, he wanted the Caucus to be the true center of his empire. As entire Turkmen villages moved, the focal point of the empire indeed shifted from the ancient capital of Khiva to the mountanious yet rich region tothe West of Khiva.
There Tekish had decided to build his capital. And so, Tekish and his chief vizier Urmad, found Grozny in 1232. In the center, work was started on one of the largest mosques in the world. A devout Muslim, Tekish thanked and praised god for giving him the succes he had during his reign, and spared no expense in making the mosque of his future center of goverment the greatest in the world. As such it would take years to complete. Finally it was finished in 1238, where Tekish lead the first prayer. The mosque could accomodate thousands of worshippers, had six minarets, accompyning mektebs, fountains, gardens, and domes.
Around the mosque and it's gardens, Tekish allowed for a great marketplace to be constructed. Dozens upon dozens of shops surrounded the Shah's mosque, and formed Grozny's Charsiya, or merchant sector. This was one half of the center of town. The other was not too far away from the merchant sector, merging into it, the intellectual quarter. There, many universities, bathhouses, library's, and other such structures were built. In the middle of it all stood Tekish Square, with a great obeliks in the center pointing to the sky, written all over with in arabic, like the monuments of ancient egypt that Tekish had learned about during his studies of history.
Architects from all over the Muslim world, and even some Byzantine ones, rushed for the opportunity to leave their mark on the new capital. Around the merchant and intellectual centers rose dozens of seperate communities, with hundreds of people in each. They were the Turkmen who had come from the region around Khiva, and finally settled around Grozny. In the center of each there was a seperate mosque, and Grozny soon became known as the city of a thousand minarets, even though it wouldn't actually reach that count for many years.
But despite the enlightenment of Turkmen culture, military wise the Turkmen were still the barbarians they always were. The Turkmen horse archers and swordsmen shared a horse each, with the latter dismounting upon beginning to approach the site of the battle. Legend said that the riders would eat the flesh of their horse when hungry, and drink it's blood when thirsty. Any opposition encountered was quickly massacred in a blur of the speed of the Turkmen horse archers, and strength of the Turkmen swordsmen.
With such a mighty military and emerging culture and economy, the Turkmen seemed poised for great things. On May 21st 1539, Shah Tekish died and was burried in the recently completed Shah's Mosque in Grozny. The people mourned throughout the land but were happy that an equally able new leader had arisen.
Goker was Tekish's first and only child. His name meant "man of the sky", for many believed he was a gift from the heavens. He was very strong as a youth and adept at riding the horse, firing the bow, and doing hard work. But yet he also had a sharp and cunning mind, which was harvested at the universities in Bagdad from when he was a little child.
Goker hardly knew his father, leaving him at the age of 8. But he remembered him in the same way he remembered nostalgia, and he remembered that he loved him. For years they had communicated by way of messanger, with a letter every month, and when he heard of his death he wept for the first time in his life.
But upon his return Goker was a real man. He quickly announced that the Turkmen were an empire, and proclaimed it the Tekishan Empire, after his father who he viewed as having established it. Thus, the surname of him and all his sons that followed would be Tekish. The populace, soon also became known as Tekishans, after their founder, which worked because there were no Tekishans that were previously not Turkemn, so the ethnicity stayed the same but with a new name. Goker Tekish then proceeded to give up the old title of Shah (except for local use in the old Turkmenistan provinces), and announced himself the Sultan of the Tekishan Empire.
He firmly established his capital at Grozny, and hired an architect frined from Bagdad to construct his palace for him. For his chief wife he chose the daughter of one of his father's most important villagers; Emina. Alongside her, he also took for wives princesses of all the major Muslim empires save for Cordoba, to normalize relations with the rest of the Muslim world.
While an admirer of literature and the arts, the young twenty year old Tekish was most interest in the army. He trained his army into an efficient orginized fighting force which retained the ferocity of the olden days, but combined it with as strict a discipline as seen anywhere else in the world. As his power grew, so did his fame. The European nations soon all heard of the great Tekishan Empire, and it's Sultan Goker. Goker himself sent an emissary to one, establishing a great friendship and plans for future cooperation. One year after the death of Tekish, the Tekishan empire was the most powerful and dangerous Muslim state in the world.
