Noah’s Ark and Mt Ararat
With its snowy peak smiling down on every corner of Doğubayazıt, Mt Ararat takes pride in being Turkey’s highest mountain. A site so dramatic and conspicuous could hardly fail to attract more than its fair share of stories, but far and away the most famous is that of Noah’s Ark, which is said to have come to rest here after the Great Flood. Ararat stands a mere 16 km away from the Armenian border. Not surprisingly, the Armenians also regard it with particular reverence.
Known as Koh-i Nuh (Noah’s Mountain) to the Persian and Ararat to Westarners, Mt Ağrı (Mountain of Pain; 5,165m) is an extinct volcano, which is thought to have erupted for the last time nearly 10,000 years ago, Above 4,200 meters, it is dotted with beautiful glaciers. To the south-east stands Küçük Ağrı (Little Ararat, 3,896m); cover approximately 1,200 square kilometers of land. After the Great Flood, the Ark of the Prophet Noah, who had stocked it with a pair of each species of animal, is thought to have come to rest on Ararat. It is a story typical of Turkey, which is very rich in Biblical sites. Some sources claim, for example, that Adam and Eve’s Garden of Eden was in the Aras Valley, to the north of Mt Ararat.
Such stories have always intrigued people who yearn to test their veracity. Some trace the original link between Ararat and the Ark to the first century historian Josephus, who wrote that the Ark had run aground on the mountain. Later, St Jacob is said to have begged God to show him the Ark. He then fell asleep on the mountain and awoke to find himself holding a piece of wood from the boat. Two Persian princes arrived in 1887 and claimed that they had seen the Ark’s bow and stern, and that the mid-section was buried in snow. After two Russian pilots said that they had caught an aerial glimpse of the boat in 1916, Czar Nicholas sent nearly 150 men to photograph it. During the Bolshevik Revolution, which brought about the demise of the Czar and his family, the photographs were presumably lost, but rumors continued to circulate that the Czar’s daughter Anastasia wore a cross made out of wood from the Ark around her neck. On their way to the Iranian Shah’s New Year Party in 1977, the press claimed that former US President Jimmy Carter and his entourage had seen the vessel, and in 1989, CNN released a series of photograhs taken by a pilot from Chicago who believed that they showed Noah’s Ark. James Irwin, one of the first men to land on the moon, climbed Mt Ararat countless times in an attempt to find the Ark. However, Ararat still maintains its air of secrecy and beckons new adventurers.
While in Doğubayazıt, you should also visit a huge crater carved out by a meteor near the Iranian border, as well as a strange-shaped piece of earth, which is supposed to be part of the Ark.
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