Mount Ararat, officially Mount Ağrı, also known as Masis, is a snow- capped and dormant compound volcano and a stratovolcano 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. 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 of Armenian nationalism. 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. The Iran-Turkey boundary skirts east of Lesser Ararat.
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 invasion of Armenia. 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.
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 suggested 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. Ağrı means "pain" or "grief" in Turkish, and the name is translated to "mountain of pain" or "painful mountain", suggestive of the difficulty of its ascent. According to official Turkish sources, it is derived from the earlier name "Ağır Dağ" which translates as "heavy mountain". The Kurdish name of the mountain is (), which translates to "fiery mountain". For both Turkish and Kurdish, Sevan Nişanyan suggests an origin from the name of a village on its slopes called Ağori that was decimated after a landslide in 1840. Sargis Petrosyan derives the Turkish name from the Armenian form *Աղրի (Aghri), which itself evolved from an earlier Armenian *Աղուրի (Aghuri), which means "a branch used for propagating a vine".
Masis The native Armenian name is Masis ( ). It is derived from Azat Masik’, the classical Armenian name of the greater peak, with azat meaning "high", although it has been translated as "free" or "noble". Masis is the accusative form of Masik’. In modern times, Greater Ararat is known as simply Masis or Մեծ Մասիս (Mets Masis, "Great/Big Masis"), while Lesser Ararat is known as Sis (Սիս) or Փոքր Մասիս (P′ok′r Masis, "Little/Small Masis"). Today, Masis and Ararat are interchangeably used in Armenian.
The folk etymology recorded in Movses Khorenatsi's History of Armenia derives Masis 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 been proposed. Anatoly Novoseltsev suggested that it derives from Middle Persian masist, meaning "the largest". Armen Petrosyan suggested a link to the Māšu (Mashu) mountain mentioned in the Epic of Gilgamesh, pronounced Māsu in Assyrian. Sargis Petrosyan traced the *mas- root to the Proto-Indo-European root *men- "to rise, to be elevated," noting that both the Armenian form *mņ-s- and the form *mņ-t- inherited by other Indo-European languages share this same base.
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). Sargis Petrosyan derives Abos from the Indo-European root *auo-, meaning "grandfather" or "elder ancestor" and Nibaros from the IE root *neuəros, meaning "new" or "young," with the suffix *-ro- specifically implies a contrast between two as the newer one.
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 of elevation, separates the peaks of Greater and Little Ararat. There are Doğubayazıt Reeds on the western slopes of Mount Ararat. Ararat's summit is located 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 behind Elbrus and Damavand.
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.According to Petter E. Bjørstad, Head of Informatics Department at the University of Bergen (Norway).
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