About the 5th century, during the rule of the Persian Sassanian dynasty, Merv was the seat of a Christian archbishopric of the Nestorian Church. The town was occupied (A.D. 646) by the lieutenants of the caliph Othman, and was constituted the capital of Khorasan. From this city as their base the Arabs, under Kotaiba (Qotaiba) ibn Moslim, early in the 8th century brought under subjection Balkh, Bokhara, Ferghana and Kashgaria, and penetrated into China as far as the province of Kan-suh. In the latter part of the 8th century Merv became obnoxious to Islam as the centre of heretical propaganda preached by Mokanna (q.v.). In 874 Arab rule in Central Asia came to an end. During their dominion Merv, like Samarkand and Bokhara, was one of the great schools of learning, and the celebrated historian Yaqut studied in its libraries. In 1040 the Seljuk Turks crossed the Oxus from the north, and having defeated Masud, sultan of Ghazni, raised Toghrul Beg, grandson of Seljuk, to the throne of Persia, founding the Seljukian dynasty, with its capital at Nishapur. A younger brother of Toghrul, Daud, took possession of Merv and Herat. Toghrul was succeeded by his nephew Alp Arslan (the Great Lion), who was buried at Merv. It was about this time that Merv reached the zenith of her glory. During the reign of Sultan Sanjar or Sinjar of the same house, in the middle of the 11th century, Merv was overrun by the Turkish tribes of the Ghuzz from beyond the Oxus. It eventually passed under the sway of the rulers of Khwarizm (Khiva).
In 1221 Merv opened its gates to Tule, son of Jenghiz Khan, chief of the Mongols, on which occasion most of the inhabitants are said to have been butchered. From this time forward the city began to decay. In the early part of the 14th century the town was made the seat of a Christian archbishopric of the Eastern Church. On the death of the grandson of Jenghiz Khan Merv was included (1380) in the possessions of Timur-i-Leng (Tamerlane), Mongol prince of Samarkand. In 1505 the city was occupied by the Uzbegs, who five years later were expelled by Ismail Khan, the founder of the Safawid dynasty of Persia. Merv remained in the hands of Persia until 1787, when it was captured by the emir of Bokhara. Seven years later the Bokharians razed the city to the ground, broke down the dams, and converted the district into a waste. When Sir Alexander Burnes traversed the country in 1832, the Khivans were the rulers of Merv. About this time the Tekke Turkomans, then living on the Heri-rud, were forced by the Persians to migrate northward. The Khivans contested the advance of the Tekkes, but ultimately, about 1856, the latter became the sovereign power in the country, and remained so until the Russians occupied the oasis in 1883.
The ruins of Old Merv cover an area of over 15 sq. m. They consist of a square citadel (Bairam Ali Khan kalah), 112 m. in circuit, built by a son of Tamerlane and destroyed by the Bokharians, and another kalah or walled inclosure known as Abdullah Khan. North from these lies the old capital of the Seljuks, known as Sultan Kalah, and destroyed by the Mongols in 1219. Its most conspicuous feature is the burial mosque of Sultan Sanjar, reputedly dating from the 12th century. East of the old Seljuk capital is Giaur Kalah, the Merv of the Nestorian era and the capital of the Arab princes. North of the old Seljuk capital are the ruins of Iskender Kalah, probably to be identified with the ancient Merv of the Seleucid dynasty.
New Merv, the present chief town of the oasis, founded in the first quarter of the 19th century, is on the Transcaspian railway, 380 m. by rail south-west from Samarkand. It stands on both banks of the Murghab, 820 ft. above the Caspian. Pop. (1897), 8727, including Russians, Armenians, Turkomans, Persians and Jews. It has a meteorological observatory. Corn, raw cotton, hides, wool, nuts and dried fruit are exported.
See E. O’Donovan, The Merv Oasis (2 vols., London, 1882); C. Marvin, Merv (London, 1880); and H. Lansdell, The Russians at Merv and Herat (London, 1883). (J. T. Be.)
MERX, ADALBERT (1838–1909), German theologian and
orientalist, was born at Bleicherode near Nordhausen on the
2nd of November 1838. He studied at Jena, where he became
extraordinary professor in 1869. Subsequently he was ordinary
professor of philosophy at Tübingen, and in 1873 professor of
theology at Giessen. From 1875 till his death he was professor
of theology of Heidelberg. In the course of his researches he
made several journeys in the East. Among his many works
are: Grammatica syriaca (1867–1870);
Vocabulary of the Tigré language (1868); Das Gedicht vom Hiob (1871); Die Prophetie des Joel und ihre Ausleger (1879);
Die Saadjanische Übersetzung der Hohenlieder ins Arabische (1882); Chrestomathia targumica
(1888); Historia artis grammaticae apud Syros (1889);
Ein samaritanisches Fragment (1893);
Idee und Grundlinien einer allgemeiner Geschichte der Mystik (1893). Merx devoted much of his later
research to the elucidation of the Sinaitic palimpsest discovered
in 1892 by Mrs Agnes Smith Lewis (see Bible, iv. 321, ad fin.),
the results being embodied in
Die vier kanonischen Evangelien nach ihrem ältesten bekannten Texte (1897–1905). His last work
was an edition of the books of Moses and Joshua. He died
at Heidelberg on the 6th of August 1909.
MÉRYON, CHARLES (1821–1863), French etcher, was born
in Paris in 1821. His father was an English physician, his
mother a French dancer. It was to his mother’s care that
Méryon’s childhood was confided. But she died when he was
still young, and Méryon entered the French navy, and in the
corvette “Le Rhin” made the voyage round the world. He was
already a draughtsman, for on the coast of New Zealand he made
pencil drawings which he was able to employ, years afterwards,
as studies for etchings of the landscape of those regions. The
artistic instinct developed, and, while he was yet a lieutenant,
Méryon left the navy. Finding that he was colour-blind, he
determined to devote himself to etching. He entered the work
room of one Bléry, from whom he learnt something of technical
matters, and to whom he always remained grateful. Méryon
was by this time poor. It is understood that he might have had
assistance from his kindred, but he was too proud to ask it.
And thus he was reduced to the need of executing for the sake
of daily bread much work that was mechanical and irksome.
Among learners' work, done for his own advantage, are to be
counted some studies after the Dutch etchers such as Zeeman and
Adrian van de Velde. Having proved himself a surprising
copyist, he proceeded to labour of his own, and began that series
of etchings which are the greatest embodiments of his greatest
conceptions—the series called “Eaux-fortessur Paris.” These
plates, executed from 1850 to 1854, are never to be met with as a
set; they were never expressly published as, a set. But they
none the less constituted in Méryon’s mind an harmonious
series.
Besides the twenty-two etchings “sur Paris,” characterized below, Méryon did seventy-two etchings of one, sort and another—ninety-four in all being catalogued in Wedmore’s Méryon and Méryon’s Paris; but these include the works of his apprenticeship and of his decline, adroit copies in which his best success was in the sinking of his own individuality, and more or less dull portraits. Yet among the seventy-two prints outside his professed series there are at least a dozen that will aid his fame. Three or four beautiful etchings of Paris do not belong to the series at all. Two or three etchings, again, are devoted to the illustration of Bourges, a city in which the old wooden houses were as attractive to him for their own sakes as were the stone-built monuments of Paris. But generally it was when Paris engaged him that he succeeded the most. He would have done more work, however—though he could hardly have done better work—if the material difficulties of his life had not pressed, upon him and shortened his days. He was a bachelor, unhappy in love, and yet, it is related, almost as constantly occupied with love as with work. The depth of his imagination and the surprising mastery which he achieved almost from the beginning in the technicalities of his craft were appreciated only by a few artists, critics and connoisseurs, and he could not sell his etchings, or could sell them only for about 10d. apiece. Disappointment told upon him, and, frugal as was his way of life, poverty must have affected him. He became subject to hallucinations. Enemies, he said, waited for him at the corners of the streets; his few friends robbed him or owed him that which they would
