THE MURGHAB SOVEREIGN’S ESTATE IN THE SYSTEM OF THE DEPARTMENT OF APPANAGES

The problem of the Murghab Sovereign’s Estate history begins with determining its place in the system of appanage farms to which it supposedly belonged. In the course of the conducted research, it was found out that it did not formally belong to the number of appanages, but was actually under the control of the Department of Appanages (later — the General Administration of Appanages). It is revealed that the estates that were part of the Appanages Department consisted of two different groups. The first group included the specific farms themselves, the income from which was distributed among members of the august family in the amount established by law. According to their profile, these were field crops, agro-industrial and industrial farms. It is more difficult to identify the second group, which did not actually consist of appanage lands, but of those that were subordinate to the Department of Appanages. These were the sovereign’s estates, the sovereign’s patrimonies, the palace estates of His and Her Majesties (on the right of private ownership), the estates of members of the emperor’s family (temporarily) and, exceptionally, their palaces, as well as the imperial palaces classified as the sovereign’s estates. Even in this second group, the Murghab Sovereign’s Estate was fundamentally different from others both in the method of origin and its purpose. Unlike other similar estates, the Murghab one was not initially considered as a means of making a profit or as one of the residences of the sovereign emperor. The study revealed that the official purpose of creating the estate was the establishing of permanent settlement in the Merv oasis and the development of an irrigation system in it. When announcing the establishment of this sovereign’s estate, it was announced that no damage would be caused to local agriculture and irrigation. However, due to circumstances, for another 9 years the estate used water from the resources of the local population of the oasis.