Mount Ararat

Mount Ararat or , ''Ararat''; or is a snow-capped and dormant compound volcano in the extreme east of Turkey. It consists of two major volcanic cones: Greater Ararat and Little Ararat. Greater Ararat is the highest peak in Turkey and the Armenian Highland with an elevation of ; Little Ararat's elevation is . The Ararat massif is about wide at ground base. The first recorded efforts to reach Ararat's summit were made in the Middle Ages, and Friedrich Parrot, Khachatur Abovian, and four others made the first recorded ascent in 1829.

In Europe, the mountain has been called by the name Ararat since the Middle Ages, as it began to be identified with " mountains of Ararat" described in the Bible as the resting place of Noah's Ark, despite contention that does not refer specifically to a Mount Ararat.

Despite lying outside the borders of modern Armenia, the mountain is the principal national symbol of Armenia and has been considered a sacred mountain by Armenians. It is featured prominently in Armenian literature and art and is an icon for Armenian irredentism. It is depicted on the coat of arms of Armenia along with Noah's Ark.

Political borders

Mount Ararat forms a near- quadripoint between Turkey, Armenia, Iran, and the Nakhchivan exclave of Azerbaijan. Its summit is located some west of both the Iranian border and the border of the Nakhchivan exclave of Azerbaijan, and south of the Armenian border. The Turkish–Armenian–Azerbaijani and Turkish–Iranian–Azerbaijani tripoints are some 8 km apart, separated by a narrow strip of Turkish territory containing the E99 road which enters Nakhchivan at .

From the 16th century until 1828 the range was part of the Ottoman-Persian border; Great Ararat's summit and the northern slopes, along with the eastern slopes of Little Ararat were controlled by Persia. Following the 1826–28 Russo-Persian War and the Treaty of Turkmenchay, the Persian controlled territory was ceded to the Russian Empire. Little Ararat became the point where the Turkish, Persian, and Russian imperial frontiers converged. The current international boundaries were formed throughout the 20th century. The mountain came under Turkish control during the 1920 Turkish–Armenian War. It formally became part of Turkey according to the 1921 Treaty of Moscow and Treaty of Kars. In the late 1920s, Turkey crossed the Iranian border and occupied the eastern flank of Lesser Ararat as part of its effort to quash the Kurdish Ararat rebellion,. during which the Kurdish rebels used the area as a safe haven against the Turkish state. Iran eventually agreed to cede the area to Turkey in a territorial exchange. The Iran-Turkey boundary skirts east of Lesser Ararat, the lower peak of the Ararat massif.

the mountain is open to climbers only with "military permission". The procedure to obtain the permission involves submitting a formal request to a Turkish embassy for a special "Ararat visa", and it is mandatory to hire an official guide from the Turkish Federation for Alpinism. Access is still limited, even for climbers who obtain the necessary permission, and those who venture off the approved path may be fired upon without warning.

Names and etymology

Ararat

''Ararat'' (Western Armenian pronunciation: ''Ararad'') is the Biblical Hebrew name (אררט ''ʾrrṭ''; Tiberian vocalization אֲרָרָט ''ʾărārāṭ''; Pesher Genesis הוררט ''hōrārāṭ''), cognate with Assyrian Urartu, of a kingdom that existed in the Armenian Highlands in the 9th–6th centuries BC.

In the 19th century Wilhelm Gesenius speculated an origin from ''Arjanwartah'', an unattested Sanskrit word without any clear cognates, supposedly meaning "holy ground." Some Armenian historians, such as Ashot Melkonyan, link the origin of the word "Ararat" to the prefix of a number of placenames in the Armenian Highland ("ar–"), including the Armenians. The mountain is known as Ararat in European languages, however, none of the native peoples have traditionally referred to the mountain by that name. This mountain was not called by the name Ararat until the Middle Ages; early Armenian historians considered the biblical Ararat to be in Corduene.

Masis

The traditional Armenian name is ''Masis'' (Մասիս ; sometimes ''Massis''). However, nowadays, the terms Masis and Ararat are both widely, often interchangeably, used in Armenian. The folk etymology expressed in Movses Khorenatsi's '' History of Armenia'' derives the name from king Amasya, the great-grandson of the legendary Armenian patriarch Hayk, who is said to have called the mountain ''Masis'' after himself.

Various etymologies have been proposed. Russian orientalist Anatoly Novoseltsev suggested that ''Masis'' derives from Middle Persian ''masist'', "the largest." According to Armenian historian Sargis Petrosyan the ''mas'' root in Masis means "mountain", cf. Proto-Indo-European *mņs-. According to archaeologist Armen Petrosyan, the name originates from the Māšu (Mashu) mountain mentioned in the ''Epic of Gilgamesh'', which sounded like ''Māsu'' in Assyrian. According to this theory, the name meant "twin," referring to the twin peaks of the mountain. ''Erkuahi'', a land mentioned in Urartian texts and identified with Mt. Ararat, could reflect the native Armenian-language form of this same name (compare to Armenian ''erku'' (երկու, meaning "two")).

Ağrı and Agirî

The Turkish name is ''Ağrı Dağı'' (; ota, اغـر طﺎﻍ ''Ağır Dağ''), i.e. "Mountain of Ağrı". Ağrı literally translates to "pain" or "sorrow". This name has been known since the late Middle Ages. The 17th century explorer Evliya Çelebi referred to it as Ağrî in the '' Seyahatnâme''.

The Kurdish name of the mountain is ''Çiyayê Agirî'' , which translates to "fiery mountain". An alternative Kurdish name is ''Grîdax'', which is composed of the word ''grî'', presumably a corrupted version of the Kurdish ''girê'', meaning hill, or ''Agirî'', and ''dax'', which is the Turkish ''dağ'', meaning mountain.

Despite the supposed meaning in Turkish ''Ağrı Dağı'' as "pain mountain" and Kurdish ''Çiyayê Agirî'' as "fiery mountain", some linguists underline a relationship between the mountain's name and a village on its slopes called '' Ağori'' that was decimated after a landslide in 1840. The exact meaning of these related names remains unknown.

Other names

The traditional Persian name is , , ', literally the "mountain of Noah".

In classical antiquity, particularly in Strabo's '' Geographica'', the peaks of Ararat were known in ancient Greek as Ἄβος (''Abos'') and Νίβαρος (''Nibaros'').

Geography

Mount Ararat is located in the Eastern Anatolia Region of Turkey between the provinces of Ağrı and Iğdır, near the border with Iran, Armenia and Nakhchivan exclave of Azerbaijan, between the Aras and Murat rivers."Ağrı – Mount Ararat"
Republic of Turkey Ministry of culture and tourism (''kultur.gov.tr''). 2005. The Serdarbulak lava plateau, at 2600 meters of elevation, separates the peaks of Greater and Little Ararat. Mount Ararat's summit is located some west of the Turkey-Iran border and south of the Turco-Armenian border. The Ararat plain runs along its northwest to western side.

Elevation

Ararat is the third most prominent mountain in West Asia.

An elevation of for Mount Ararat is given by some encyclopedias and reference works such as '' Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary'' and ''Encyclopedia of World Geography''. However, a number of sources, such as the United States Geological Survey and numerous topographic maps indicate that the alternatively widespread figure of is probably more accurate. The current elevation may be as low as due to the melting of its snow-covered ice cap.

Summit ice cap

The ice cap on the summit of Mount Ararat has been shrinking since at least 1957. In the late 1950s, Blumenthal observed that there existed 11 outlet glaciers emerging from a summit snow mass that covered about . At that time, it was found that the present glaciers on the summit of Ararat extend as low as an elevation of on the north-facing slope, and an elevation of
on its south-facing slope. Using pre-existing aerial imagery and remote sensing data, Sarıkaya and others studied the extent of the ice cap on Mount Ararat between 1976 and 2011. They discovered that this ice cap had shrunk to by 1976 and to by 2011. They calculated that between 1976 and 2011, the ice cap on top of Mount Ararat had lost 29% of its total area at an average rate of ice loss of per year over 35 years. This rate is consistent with the general rates of retreat of other Turkish summit glaciers and ice caps that have been documented by other studies. According to a 2020 study by Yalcin, "if the glacial withdrawals continue with the same acceleration, the permanent glacier will likely turn into a temporary glacier by 2065."

Blumenthal estimated that the snow line had been as low as in elevation during the Late Pleistocene. Such a snow line would have created an ice cap of in extent. However, he observed a lack of any clear evidence of prehistoric moraines other than those which were close to the 1958 glacier tongues. Blumenthal explained the absence of such moraines by the lack of confining ridges to control glaciers, insufficient debris load in the ice to form moraines, and their burial by later eruptions. Years later, Birman observed on the south-facing slopes a possible moraine that extends at least in altitude below the base of the 1958 ice cap at an elevation of . He also found two morainal deposits that were created by a Mount Ararat valley glacier of Pleistocene, possibly Wisconsinan ( Last Glacial Maximum) age, downvalley from Lake Balık. The higher moraine lies at an altitude of about and the lower moraine lies at an altitude of about . The lower moraine occurs about downstream from Lake Balık. Both moraines are about high. It is suspected that Lake Balık occupies a glacial basin.

Geology

Mount Ararat is a polygenic, compound stratovolcano. Covering an area of , it is the largest volcanic edifice within the region. Along its northwest–southeast trending long axis, Mount Ararat is about long and is about long along its short axis. It consists of about of dacitic and rhyolitic pyroclastic debris and dacitic, rhyolitic, and basaltic lavas.

Mount Ararat consists of two distinct volcanic cones, Greater Ararat and Lesser Ararat ( Little Ararat). The western volcanic cone, Greater Ararat, is a steep-sided volcanic cone that is larger and higher than the eastern volcanic cone. Greater Ararat is about wide at the base and rises about above the adjacent floors of the Iğdir and Doğubeyazıt basins. The eastern volcanic cone, Lesser Ararat, is high and across. These volcanic cones, which lie apart, are separated by a wide north–south-trending crack. This crack is the surface expression of an extensional fault. Numerous parasitic cones and lava domes have been built by flank eruptions along this fault and on the flanks of both of the main volcanic cones.

Mount Ararat lies within a complex, sinistral pull-apart basin that originally was a single, continuous depression. The growth of Mount Ararat partitioned this depression into two smaller basins, the Iğdir and Doğubeyazıt basins. This pull-apart basin is the result of strike-slip movement along two en-echelon fault segments, the Doğubeyazıt–Gürbulak and Iğdir Faults, of a sinistral strike–slip fault system. Tension between these faults not only formed the original pull-apart basin, but created a system of faults, exhibiting a horsetail splay pattern, that control the position of the principal volcanic eruption centers of Mount Ararat and associated linear belt of parasitic volcanic cones. The strike-slip fault system within which Mount Ararat is located is the result of north–south convergence and tectonic compression between the Arabian Platform and Laurasia that continued after the Tethys Ocean closed during the Eocene epoch along the Bitlis–Zagros suture.

Geological history

During the early Eocene and early Miocene, the collision of the Arabian platform with Laurasia closed and eliminated the Tethys Ocean from the area of what is now Anatolia. The closure of these masses of continental crust collapsed this ocean basin by middle Eocene and resulted in a progressive shallowing of the remnant seas, until the end of the early Miocene. Post-collisional tectonic convergence within the collision zone resulted in the total elimination of the remaining seas from East Anatolia at the end of early Miocene, crustal shortening and thickening across the collision zone, and uplift of the East Anatolian–Iranian plateau. Accompanying this uplift was extensive deformation by faulting and folding, which resulted in the creation of numerous local basins. The north–south compressional deformation continues today as evidenced by ongoing faulting, volcanism, and seismicity.

Within Anatolia, regional volcanism started in the middle-late Miocene. During the late Miocene–Pliocene

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