Türkmenabat

Turkmenabat is the second-largest city in Turkmenistan and the administrative center of Lebap Province, standing on the Amu Darya river near the Uzbekistan border. Known in antiquity as Amul, it lay at the junction of three routes of the Great Silk Road, and its modern form began in 1886 when Russian Cossacks founded the settlement of New-Chardjuy to support construction of the Trans-Caspian railway. Briefly renamed Leninsk in the 1920s before joining the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic in 1924, the city had about 231,000 residents in 2022, up from 161,000 in 1989.