The Role of the Horse Among the Turkmen

For the Turkmen, as for many other nomadic peoples, the horse played an important role in the life of the individual, the family, and society. The Turkmen highly valued their horses, calling them akhaltekin, as much as they valued their own life. Values and other more concrete circumstances determined their attitude toward this animal. The aim of the article is to examine and analyze the place of the Akhal-Teke horse among the Turkmen, with an emphasis on ethnographic data. The article’s historiographic foundation is based on Russian language scholarly publications, ethnographic documentaries, and oral history of the Turkmen people collected by the authors.