[9][8] In the list below, cities with "district status" are bolded: Bronze Age and Iron Age finds support the probability of advanced civilizations in the area including finds associated with a society known to scholars as the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) – near the modern city of Mary, and at the Jeitun and Gonur Tepe archeological sites.

In 330 BC, Alexander marched northward into Central Asia and founded the city of Alexandria Margiana (Merv) near the Murghab River.

A busy Silk Road caravan route, connecting Tang dynasty China and the city of Baghdad (in modern Iraq), passed through Merv.

Using this city as their base, the Arabs, led by their commander Qutayba ibn Muslim, brought under subjection Balkh, Bokhara, Fergana and Kashgaria, and penetrated into China as far as the province of Gansu early in the 8th century.

In the latter part of the 8th century, Merv became obnoxious to Islam as the centre of heretical propaganda preached by al-Muqanna "The Veiled Prophet of Khorasan".

The city-state of Merv was an especially large sedentary and agricultural area, important as both a regional economic-cultural center and a transit hub on the Silk Road.

[14] 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.

After mixing with the settled peoples in today's Turkmenistan, the Oghuz living north of the Kopet Dag Mountains gradually became known as the Turkmen.

The Mongol leader ordered the massacre of Merv's inhabitants as well as the destruction of the province's farms and irrigation works, which effectively ended the Iranian dominance in urban areas and agricultural communities of Khwarezm.

These areas were soon repopulated by the Turkmen who survived the invasion and had retreated northward to the plains of Kazakhstan or westward to the shores of the Caspian Sea.

Nader of Persia conquered the entire region in 1740, but after his assassination in 1747 Turkmen lands were recaptured by the Uzbek khanates of Khiva and Bukhara.

Khiva contested the advance of the Tekes, but ultimately, by about 1856, the latter became the sovereign power of southern and southeastern parts of present Turkmenistan.

A spur of the Trans-Caspian Railway was extended to Kushka, both to allow delivery and supply of troops guarding the border with Afghanistan, and to haul out cotton produced in the Murghab River valley.