Mountains of Ararat

Since the Middle Ages the "mountains of Ararat" began to be identified with a mountain in present Turkey known as Masis or Ağrı Dağı; the mountain became known as Mount Ararat. The Kurdish population is primarily concentrated on the Van plateau, from which numerous tribes radiate over a vast area, including territories extending toward Mount Ararat.

History

Citing historians Berossus, Hieronymus the Egyptian, Mnaseas, and Nicolaus of Damascus, Josephus writes in his Antiquities of the Jews that "[t]he ark rested on the top of a certain mountain in Armenia, ... over Minyas, called Baris".

Likewise, in the Latin Vulgate, Jerome translates Genesis 8:4 to read: "Requievitque arca ... super montes Armeniae" ("and the ark rested ... on the mountains of Armenia"); though in the Nova Vulgata as promulgated after the Second Vatican Council, the toponym is amended to "montes Ararat" ("mountains of Ararat").

By contrast, early Syrian and Eastern tradition placed the ark on Mount Judi in ancient Upper Mesopotamia, what is now in Şırnak Province, Southeastern Anatolia Region, an association that had faded by the Middle Ages and is now mostly confined to Quranic tradition.

The Book of Jubilees specifies that the ark came to rest on the peak of Lubar, a mountain of Ararat.

Sir Walter Raleigh devotes several chapters of his Historie of the World (1614) to an argument that in ancient times the mountains of Ararat were understood to include not only those of Armenia, but also all of the taller mountain-ranges extending into Asia. He maintains that since Armenia is not actually located east of Shinar, the ark must have landed somewhere in the Orient.