Ararat

Ararat (Armenian Airarat), a general old name for the district through which the Aras flows, and never the name by which the Mount of Ararat has been known to the people around it. Associated, however, as the mountains of this district are in Genesis, viii. 4, with the landing-place of the ark after the flood, the name has been, naturally enough, appropriated to the highest peak, which in Armenian is called Massis or Massis Ljarn; in Tartar and Turkish, Aghri-Dagh, or curved mountain; and in Persian, Koh-i-Nuh, or Noah's mountain. The Chaldee legend, on the other hand, fixed the spot of Noah's landing in Gordyene, NE. of Nineveh and Mosul. The twin mountains of Ararat form an elliptical mass, 25 miles long from SE. to NW., by half that breadth, rising on the N. and E. out of the alluvial plain of the Aras, 2500 to 2800 feet high. The mass stands quite isolated on all sides but the NW., where a column 7000 feet high connects it with a long ridge of volcanic mountains extending westwards. From confluent bases of common level, 8800 feet high, the two peaks, both of entirely igneous formation, shoot upwards, Great Ararat to 16,969 feet, Little Ararat to 12,840 feet above the sea-level; the two summits 7 miles apart. From their isolation and barrenness, the two peaks are very impressive—Little Ararat as an elegant cone of steep, smooth, regular sides; Great Ararat as a huge, broad-shouldered dome, supported by strong buttresses. The limit of perpetual snow rises in Ararat to nearly 14,000 feet. On the NE. side of Great Ararat is a remarkable chasm, 9000 feet deep, surrounded by monstrous precipices. There is a similar, but smaller, chasm on the SW. side. Ararat is singularly bare; the only wood of any extent, on the skirts of Little Ararat, at 7500 feet high, consisting of low birches. Ararat is perfectly dry throughout. Yet the mid-zone, from 5000 to 12,000 feet, is covered with good pasture, over which the Kurds wander in summer with their flocks. Below this mid-zone, Ararat has a steppe vegetation of dwarf prickly shrubs, and is unploughed and uninhabited. The top, at least during summer and autumn, is perfectly clear throughout the night, and till sometime after dawn. From 3 or 4 A.M., however, till sunset, clouds hang around Ararat for 3000 feet from the top. The view from the summit of Ararat, which towers over his neighbours much more than do Mont Blanc or Elburz, is singularly grand: there is the Caucasus, 280 miles away in the north; the dim plain of Erivan at the bottom; the extreme ranges of Taurus in the west; and a wilderness of bare red-brown mountains to the south and south-west. In 1828 the Czar Nicholas annexed the territory around Erivan; and Little Ararat is now the meeting points of the Russian, Turkish, and Persian empires. On the 20th of June 1840, dreadful shocks of earthquake were felt. Great masses of the mountain were thrown into the plain, a ravine was closed, a convent and chapel disappeared, and the village of Arguri, and the gardens which surrounded it, were buried under rocks, earth, and ice. Tournefort made a partial ascent of the mountain in 1700; since then, ascents have been made in 1829 by Professor Parrot of Dorpat; in 1850 by Colonel Chodzko, and a large party of Russians engaged in the Transcaucasian triangulation; in 1856 by Major Robert Stuart; in 1870 by Dr G. Radde and Dr G. Sievers; and in 1876 by Professor Bryce. See the article 'Reisen im Armenischen Hochland' (Petermann's Mittheilungen for 1871); also Transcaucasia and Ararat, by Professor Bryce (2d ed. 1878).