Mount Ararat

Mount Ararat, also known as Masis or Mount Ağrı, is a snow-capped and dormant compound volcano in easternmost Turkey. It consists of two major volcanic cones: Greater Ararat and Little Ararat. Greater Ararat is the highest peak in Turkey and the Armenian highlands 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.

Although 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 has 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, Iran, Armenia, and the Nakhchivan exclave of Azerbaijan. Its summit is located some west of both the Iranian border and the border of Nakhchivan, and south of the Armenian border. The Turkish-Armenian-Azerbaijani and Turkish-Iranian-Azerbaijani tripoints are some 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 (or Little Ararat), the lower peak of the Ararat massif.

the mountain was 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.

Names and etymology

Ararat

The mountain was not called by the name Ararat until the Middle Ages; early Armenian historians considered the biblical Ararat to be in Corduene. It is known as Ararat in European languages, however, none of the native peoples have traditionally referred to it by that name. Ultimately, Ararat is the Biblical Hebrew name of the Iron Age kingdom of Urartu. Urartu, the Assyrian/Babylonian name of the kingdom, has been proposed by Archibald Sayce to mean "highlands". Ayrarat, the central province of ancient Armenia, is linked to the same name. Robert W. Thomson argued that the mountain was called Ararat "by confusion with Ayrarat, the name of the province."

Ağrı and Agirî

The Turkish name Mount Ağrı (''Ağrı Dağı'', ; , ), has been known since the late Middle Ages. Although the word "ağrı" literally translates to "pain" the current name is considered a derivative of the mountain's initial Turkish name "Ağır Dağ" which translates as "heavy mountain". The 17th century explorer Evliya Çelebi referred to it as Ağrî in the '' Seyahatnâme''. 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.

The Kurdish name of the mountain is (), 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.

Masis

The traditional Armenian name is ''Masis'' ( ; sometimes spelled ''Massis''). Today, Masis and Ararat are interchangeably used in Armenian. Both names are also common male first names among Armenians.

The folk etymology recorded 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 it after himself.

Several scholarly etymologies have also been proposed. Anatoly Novoseltsev suggested that it derives from Middle Persian ''masist'', meaning "the largest". According to Sargis Petrosyan the ''mas'' root in Masis means "mountain", corresponding to Proto-Indo-European *mņs-. Armen Petrosyan suggested a link to the Māšu (Mashu) mountain mentioned in the ''Epic of Gilgamesh'', pronounced ''Māsu'' in Assyrian. Additionally, the land of Erkuahi, mentioned in Urartian texts and identified with Ararat, may preserve a native Armenian form of the same name—erku (երկու) meaning "two" in Armenian.

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 (''Abos'') and (''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. There are Doğubayazıt Reeds on the western slopes of Mount Ararat. Mount Ararat's summit is located some west of the Turkey-Iran border and south of the Turkey-Armenia 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 in the Last Glacial Period, 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 the 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, the volcanism became restricted to a few local volcanoes such as Mount Ararat. These volcanoes are typically associated with north–south tensional fractures formed by the continuing north–south shortening deformation of Anatolia.

In their detailed study and summary of the Quaternary volcanism of Anatolia, Yilmaz et al. recognized four phases to the construction of Mount Ararat from volcanic rocks exposed in glacial valleys deeply carved into its flanks. First, they recognized a ''fissure eruption phase'' of Plinian-subPlinian fissure eruptions that deposited more than of pyroclastic rocks and a few basaltic lava flows.

These volcanic rocks were erupted from approximately north northwest–south southeast-trending extensional faults and fissures prior to the development of Mount Ararat. Second, a ''cone-building phase'' began when the volcanic activity became localized at a point along a fissure. During this phase, the eruption of successive flows of lava up to thick and pyroclastic flows of andesite and dacite composition and later eruption of basaltic lava flows, formed the Greater Ararat cone with a low conical profile. Third, during a ''climatic phase'', copious flows of andesitic and basaltic lavas were erupted. During this phase, the current cones of Greater and Lesser Ararat were formed as eruptions along subsidiary fissures and cracks and flank occurred. Finally, the volcanic eruptions at Mount Ararat transitioned into a ''flank eruption phase'', during which a major north–south-trending fault offset the two cones that developed along with a number of subsidiary fissures and cracks on the volcano's flanks.

Along this fault and the subsidiary fissures and cracks, a number of parasitic cones and domes were built by minor eruptions. One subsidiary cone erupted voluminous basalt and andesite lava flows. They flowed across the Doğubeyazıt plain and along the southerly flowing Sarısu River. These lava flows formed black ʻaʻā and pāhoehoe lava flows that contain well preserved lava tubes. The radiometric dating of these lava flows yielded radiometric ages of 0.4, 0.48 and 0.81 Ma. Overall, radiometric ages obtained from the volcanic rocks erupted by Mount Ararat range from 1.5 to 0.02 Ma.

Recent volcanic and seismic activity

The chronology of Holocene volcanic activity associated with Mount Ararat is documented by either archaeological excavations, oral history, historical records, or a combination of these data, which provide evidence that volcanic eruptions of Mount Ararat occurred in 2500–2400 BC, 550 BC, possibly in 1450 AD and 1783 AD, and definitely in 1840 AD. Archaeological evidence demonstrates that explosive eruptions and pyroclastic flows from the northwest flank of Mount Ararat destroyed and buried at least one Kura–Araxes culture settlement and caused numerous fatalities in 2500–2400 BC. Oral histories indicated that a significant eruption of uncertain magnitude occurred in 550 BC and minor eruptions of uncertain nature might have occurred in 1450 AD and 1783 AD. According to the interpretation of historical and archaeological data, strong earthquakes not associated with volcanic eruptions also occurred in the area of Mount Ararat in 139, 368, 851–893, and 1319 AD. During the 139 AD earthquake, a large landslide that caused many casualties and was similar to the 1840 AD landslide originated from the summit of Mount Ararat.

1840 eruption

A phreatic eruption occurred on Mount Ararat on July 2, 1840 and pyroclastic flow from radial fissures on the upper north flank of the mountain and a possibly associated earthquake of magnitude 7.4 that caused severe damage and numerous casualties. Up to 10,000 people died in the earthquake, including 1,900 villagers in the village of Akhuri (Armenian: Akori, modern Yenidoğan) who were killed by a gigantic landslide and subsequent debris flow. In addition, this combination of landslide and debris flow destroyed the Armenian monastery of St. Jacob near Akori, the town of Aralik, several villages, and Russian military barracks. It also temporarily dammed the Sevjur (Metsamor) River.

Ascents

The 13th century missionary William of Rubruck wrote that "Many have tried to climb it, but none has been able."

Religious objections

The Armenian Apostolic Church was historically opposed to ascents of Ararat on religious grounds. Thomas Stackhouse, an 18th-century English theologian, noted that "All the Armenians are firmly persuaded that Noah's ark exists to the present day on the summit of Mount Ararat, and that in order to preserve it, no person is permitted to approach it." In response to its first ascent by Parrot and Abovian, one high-ranking Armenian Apostolic Church clergyman commented that to climb the sacred mountain was "to tie the womb of the mother of all mankind in a dragonish mode". By contrast, in the 21st century to climb Ararat is "the most highly valued goal of some of the patriotic pilgrimages that are organized in growing number from Armenia and the Armenian diaspora".

First ascent

The first recorded ascent of the mountain in modern times took place on . The Baltic German naturalist Friedrich Parrot of the University of Dorpat arrived at Etchmiadzin in mid-September 1829, almost two years after the Russian capture of Yerevan, for the sole purpose of exploring Ararat. The prominent Armenian writer Khachatur Abovian, then a deacon and translator at Etchmiadzin, was assigned by Catholicos Yeprem, the head of the Armenian Church, as interpreter and guide.

Parrot and Abovian crossed the Aras River into the district of Surmali and headed to the Armenian village of Akhuri on the northern slope of Ararat, above sea level. They set up a base camp at the Armenian monastery of St. Hakob some higher, at an elevation of . After two failed attempts, they reached the summit on their third attempt at 3:15 p.m. on October 9, 1829. The group included Parrot, Abovian, two Russian soldiers – Aleksei Zdorovenko and Matvei Chalpanov – and two Armenian Akhuri villagers – Hovhannes Aivazian and Murad Poghosian. Parrot measured the elevation at using a mercury barometer. This was not only the first recorded ascent of Ararat, but also the second highest elevation climbed by man up to that date outside of Mount Licancabur in the Chilean Andes. Abovian dug a hole in the ice and erected a wooden cross facing north. Abovian also picked up a chunk of ice from the summit and carried it down with him in a bottle, considering the water holy. On , Parrot and Abovian together with the Akhuri hunter Sahak's brother Hako, acting as a guide, climbed up Lesser Ararat.

Later notable ascents

Other early notable climbers of Ararat included Russian climatologist and meteorologist Kozma Spassky-Avtonomov (August 1834), Karl Behrens (1835), German mineralogist and geologist Otto Wilhelm Hermann von Abich (29 July 1845), British politician Henry Danby Seymour (1848) and British army officer Major Robert Stuart (1856). Later in the 19th century, two British politicians and scholars— James Bryce (1876) and H. F. B. Lynch (1893)—climbed the mountain. The first winter climb was by Turkish alpinist Bozkurt Ergör, the former president of the Turkish Mountaineering Federation, who climbed the peak on 21 February 1970.

Resting-place of Noah's Ark

Origin of the tradition

According to the Book of Genesis of the Old Testament, Noah's Ark landed on the " mountains of Ararat" (). Historians and Bible scholars generally agree that "Ararat" is the Hebrew name of Urartu, the geographical predecessor of Armenia; they argue that the word referred to the wider region at the time and not specifically to Mount Ararat. The phrase is translated as "mountains of Armenia" (''montes Armeniae'') in the Vulgate. Nevertheless, Ararat is traditionally considered the resting-place of Noah's Ark, and, thus, regarded as a biblical mountain.

Mount Ararat has been associated with the Genesis account since the 11th century, and Armenians began to identify it as the ark's landing place during that time. F. C. Conybeare wrote that the mountain was "a center and focus of pagan myths and cults… and it was only in the eleventh century, after these had vanished from the popular mind, that the Armenian theologians ventured to locate on its eternal snows the resting-place of Noah's ark". William of Rubruck is usually considered the earliest reference for the tradition of Mount Ararat as the landing place of the ark in European literature.
archived
John Mandeville is another early author who mentioned Mount Ararat, "where Noah's ship rested, and it is still there".

The ark on Ararat was often depicted in '' mappae mundi'' as early as the 11th century.

Medieval