Mount Ararat

Mount Ararat, also known as Masis or officially 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 5,137 m (16,854 ft); Little Ararat's elevation is 3,896 m (12,782 ft). The Ararat massif is about 35 km (22 mi) 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 Genesis 8:4 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.

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.

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."

The Turkish name Mount Ağrı (Ağrı Dağı, [aːɾɯ da.ɯ]; Ottoman Turkish: آغـر طﺎﻍ, romanized: Āġır Ṭāġ, [aːɣæɾ taɣ]), 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 Çiyayê Agirî ([t͡ʃɪjaːˈje aːgɪˈriː]), 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.