OREANDA-NEWS. On 23 March 2009 was announced, that an international scientific conference titled "Literature and Culture of Seljuk Era" came to an end in Ashgabat. Historians, culture and literary critics, linguists, ethnographers, art critics, architects and teachers representing leading educational centers of 29 countries attended the forum.

The conference worked in five sections. Around 140 scientific reports were made. The conference discussed issues related to political structure, economy, literature, decorative-applied arts, architecture and sculpture, music and arts, life of rulers and commanders, works of famous representatives of science and culture of Seljuk era.

According to the director of the Institute of Asia and Africa under the Lomonosov Moscow State University, professor M.S.Meyer, the conference has laid down the solid foundation for joint research by Turkmen and foreign scientists of the scientific-literary heritage of Seljuk era legacy and its impact on the scientific-cultural development of mankind.

"We don't simply limit ourselves to discussions of the cultural heritage of our people. We want to lay down the foundation for future by reviving the literature and art," President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov said in his address to the conference participants.

The Seljuk era was the high time of Turkmen literature and culture. A whole galaxy of philosophers, theologians, linguists, philologists, historians, famous art figures grew in the capital city and other large cities of the Merv state that turned into scientific centers of the entire Orient owing to the Seljuk sultans' patronage of science, culture and literature. Those figures influenced the social-political as well as literary-scientific life of that era. They set up their schools in science, literature and other fields.