:''This article is about the Turkmeni town. For the Arabic title, see
Kunya (arabic).''
'Kunya Urgench' (Turkmen: ''Köneürgenç'', from
Persian ''Kohna Urganj'', ''"old Urgench"'') also known as ''Konya-Urgench'', ''Old Urgench'' or ''Urganj'', is a municipality of about 30,000 inhabitants in north-eastern
Turkmenistan, just south from its border with
Uzbekistan. It is the site of the ancient town of 'Urgench', which contains the unexcavated ruins of the 12th-century capital of
Khwarezm. Since 2005, the ruins of Old Urgench have been protected by
UNESCO as a
World Heritage Site.
Formerly situated on the
Amu-Darya River, Old Urgench was one of the greatest cities on the
Silk Road. Its foundation date is uncertain, but the extant ruins of the Kyrkmolla fortress have been dated (rather ambitiously) to the
Achaemenid period. The 12th and early 13th centuries were the golden age of Urgench, as it surpassed in population and fame all other Central Asian cities barring
Bukhara. In
1221 Genghis Khan razed it to the ground in one of the
bloodiest massacres in human history.

Kutlug Timur Minaret.
The city was revived after Genghis's assault, but the sudden change of
Amu-Darya's course to the north and the town's destruction again in the 1370s, this time by
Timur, forced the inhabitants to leave the site forever. A new town of
Urgench was developed to the north, in present-day
Uzbekistan. First archeological research on the old city site was conducted by Alexander Yakubovsky in
1929.
Most of Urgench's monuments have completely or partly collapsed. Nowadays, the site contains three small
mausoleums of the 12th century and the more elaborate 14th-century Turabek-Khanum Mausoleum, which was much restored in the 1990s.
The most striking extant landmark of Old Urgench is the early 11th-century Kutlug-Timur Minaret, which, at 60 meters, used to be the tallest brick
minaret prior to the construction of the
Minaret of Jam. Also of note is the Il-Arslan Mausoleum - the oldest standing monument: a conical dome of 12 facets, housing the tomb of
Mohammed II's grandfather,
Il-Arslan, who died in 1172. Somewhat to the north, sprawls a vast medieval
necropolis.