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The extinct volcano Agri Dagi (Mount Ararat) at 5,137 metres is the highest peak in Europe.
Agri (Ararat) and it’s little brother, Küçük Agri, is only just inside Turkey; 33 km from the Iranian borderand a few km south of the Armenian town of Yerevatan. Agri is an almost perfect cone, with just a slight dent in the north-east side and a deeply eroded valley called Cehennem Deresi (Valley of Hell).

The smooth cone of Agri was the focus of Urartu and Armenian civilisations and is the legendary resting place of Noah's ark. The name Ararat was the Assyrian word for Urartu; Agri may derive from the Arabic Ahora, the name of a village and glacier on the north-west slopes.

The Ararat area is now occupied by a mixed population including Kurds and Turks; it features in songs and legends documented by Yasar Kemal, Turkey’s most famous author.

From earliest times, explorers have hunted for the Ark on Mount Ararat.
Josephus, in 70 CE, mentioned the existence of the Ark; Dr Nouri, Archdeacon of Babylon and Jerusalem claimed to have located it in 1893; Russian expeditions during the two world wars took photographs (subsequently lost) and a sighting was claimed by an American researcher in 1987.

The summit of Ararat was first climbed by Dr Parrot, a German, in 1829. With military permission and a guide, and two overnight camps en route, it present no technical problems.Several other mountaineering expeditions attempted the route; Freshfield failed in 1868, Denis Hills succeeded in 1955, and both wrote about their experiences.

The mountain was closed to climbers from the 1950’s to about 1980, and closed again from 1992 to 2000 because of the activities of the PKK (Kurdish separatists). Permission is still necessary to climb the peak.

MAPS No decent large scale maps are available, as the Turkish military large scale maps have restricted access. Small scale maps are obtainable from the Army at Harita Komuntanligi, Dikimevi, Ankara. (Ask for the Ararat sheet of the 1:250,000 series, cost 13 dollars for foreigners, about 5 million for Turks.) Click on the map to display in a separate window for downloading.