Few countries in the world are so little known as Turkmenistan. Unlike other typical rentier states, both Libya under Qadhdhafi and Turkmenistan under Niyazov developed their own national myths and individuals' loyalty was to the leader, not to the system itself as in patrimonial states. Qadhdhafi's Libya turns out to be a perfect foil to study Niyazov's Turkmenistan from a comparative perspective. Thus, adopting Khalid's comparative and constructivist perspective, the emergence of Niyazov's regime and his personality cult can be more thoroughly explained within the theoretical framework provided by Kuru's application of the rentier state model and by the notion of the nation as a cultural construction, an 'imagined community' whose traditions are often 'invented'. On these foundations, Kadyrov's analysis of the roots of Niyazov's power can be usefully developed and complemented by a perspective which analyses it within the process of Turkmenistan's nation-building by comparing it to Libya's nation-building.