Mount Ararat (Mount Agri)

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Mount Ararat is a snow-capped, inactive volcanic cone in Turkey. It has two peaks: Greater Ararat and Lesser Ararat .
The Ararat massif is about 40 kilometres in diameter. The Iran-Turkey boundary skirts east of Lesser Ararat, the lower peak of the Ararat massif. It was in this area that by the Tehran Conference of 1932 a border change was made in Turkey’s favor, permitting her to occupy the eastern flank of the massif.
Mount Ararat in Judeo-Christian tradition is associated with the “Mountains of Ararat” where relating to the book of Genesis, Noah’s ark came to rest. It also plays a significant role in Armenian nationalism and irredentism.
Ararat – The Bible says that Noah’s ark landed on the mountains of Ararat. This does not refer to any specific mountain or peak, but rather a mountain range within the region of Ararat, which was the name of an historic proto-Armenian empire also known as Urartu. Nonetheless, one particular tradition identifies the mountain as Mount Masis, the highest peak in the Armenian Highland, which is therefore called Mount Ararat. (As opposed to the Armenian and European tradition, Semitic tradition identifies the mountain as Judi Dagh located in Turkey near Cizre.) According to the medieval Armenian historian Moses of Khoren in his History of Armenia, the plain of Ayrarat (straight north of the mountain) got its name after King Ara the Handsome (the great grandson of Amasya). Here the Assyrian Queen Semiramis is said to have lingered for a few days after the death of Ara. According to Thomson, the mountain is called Ararat corresponding to Ayrarat, the name of the province.
Location
Mount Ararat is situated in the Eastern Anatolia Region of Turkey between Doğubayazıt and Iğdır, near the border with Iran, Armenia and Nakhchivan exclave of Azerbaijan, between the Aras and Murat Rivers.Its peak is located some 16 kilometres west of the Iran and 32 kilometres south of the Armenian border. The Ararat plain runs together its north west to western side.
Geology
Ararat is a stratovolcano, formed of lava flows and pyroclastic ejecta, with no volcanic crater. Above the height of 4,200 m, the hill mostly consists of igneous rocks covered by an ice cap.
A smaller 3,896 meters cone, Little Ararat, rises from the same base, southeast of the main peak. The lava plateau extends out between the two pinnacles. The bases of these two mountains is approximately 1,000 km2.
The development of Ararat is hard to retrieve geologically, but the type of vulcanism and the position of the volcano raise the idea that subduction relation vulcanism occurred when the Tethys Ocean closed during the Neogene, as recently occurred along the borders of the Eurasian, African and Arabian plates from Cabo de Gata to the Caucasus.
Elevation
An elevation of 5,165 m for Mount Ararat is still given by some authorities. However, a quantity of other sources, such as public domain and verifiable SRTM data and a 2007 GPS measurement show that the alternatively widespread figure of 5,137 m is probably more precise, and that the true height may be even lower due to the thick layer of snow-covered ice cap which permanently remains on the top of the mountain. 5,137 m is also supported by numerous topographic maps.
Activity
It is not known when the last eruption of Ararat transpired; there are no historic or latest observations of large-scale activity recorded. It seems that Ararat was active in the 3rd millennium BC; under the pyroclastic flows, artifacts from the early Bronze Age and stays of human bodies have been found.
However, it is known that Ararat was shaken by a large earthquake in July 1840, the effects of which were largest in the neighborhood of the Ahora Gorge (a northeast trending chasm that drops 1,825 metres from the top of the mountain). An unstable part of the northern slope collapsed and a chapel, a monastery, and a village were covered by rubble. According to some sources, Ararat erupted then as well, albeit under the ground water level.



