Merv

By 1150 this was, on Tertius Chandler’s reckoning, the largest city in the world, around 200,000 people, and by 1210 estimates run to half a million, bigger than Constantinople or Baghdad. It sat on the Silk Road in what is now Turkmenistan. In 1221 Tolui Khan’s Mongols took it, and the figures the chroniclers give are among the worst in recorded history: Ibn al-Athir wrote of around 700,000 dead, the Persian historian Juvayni of more than 1,300,000. Even discounting medieval arithmetic heavily, it is one of the bloodiest captures of a city ever recorded, and Merv never came back. Shah Murad of Bukhara razed what was left in 1788 to 1789 and deported about 100,000 people, and the site has stood empty since. UNESCO listed Ancient Merv in 1999. Near Mary, Turkmenistan; a visa is required for every foreigner.