Description
Mount Ararat is the tallest peak in Turkey. This snow-capped, dormant volcanic cone is located in the Igdir Province, near the northeast corner of Turkey, 16 km (10 miles) west of the Iranian and 32 km (20 miles) south of the Armenian border.
A smaller 3,896 m (12,782 ft) cone, Little Ararat , rises from the same base, southeast of the main peak . The lava plateau stretches out between the two pinnacles. The last activity on the mountain was a major earthquake in July 1840 centered around the Ahora Gorge, a northeast trending chasm that drops 1,825 metres (6,000 ft) from the top of the mountain.
Names:
In many languages except Kurdish and Turkish, the mountain is referred to as Ararat. In Abrahamic religions, the mountain is the place Noah landed after the flood.
The Turks call it Agri Dagi (Mountain of Pain), and Kurds call it the ciyaye Agiri (Mountain of Fire), probably a reference to its volcanic activity.
History:
Mount Ararat has been the subject of search attempts to recover Noah's Ark. In the 1950s, the Frenchman De Navarre claimed to have found a piece of wood from the ark, but subsequent scientific dating showed it to be too recent. Another famous searcher for the ark on Mount Ararat was astronaut James Irwin, who walked on the moon in 1971. The story of Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat is an important feature of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
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