Where Mount Ararat stands: plains, rivers and neighbouring ranges

A massif of two peaks

Ararat is two mountains on one base. Great Ararat (Greater Ağrı) is the higher, north-western peak; Little Ararat (Little Ağrı) is the lower, south-eastern one. GoTürkiye puts the width of the massif at its base at about 35 km. James Bryce, who climbed it in 1876, described the two peaks together as an elliptical mass about twenty-five miles long from north-west to south-east and about half as wide.

The two summits are close. Friedrich Parrot, leader of the first recorded ascent in 1829, gives their distance in a straight line as about seven miles. He relies on the geodetic measurement of his colleague Fedorov, 12,440 yards, and notes that the British engineer Captain Monteith had computed about 12,000 yards. Between the peaks the bases merge in a broad, gently rising valley. Parrot notes that shepherds used it as pasture, and that Kurdish raiders had used it as a passage between the provinces to the north and south.

The plains around it

On the north and east, the massif rises straight out of the plain of the Aras (Araxes) river. Bryce gives the height of this alluvial plain below the mountain as 2,500 to 2,800 feet (about 760–850 m) above sea level. The Brockhaus and Efron encyclopedia gives 790 m for the lowest ground near the village of Aralykh at its foot. Parrot describes the plain as about thirty-five miles wide, a stretch of the Aras valley enclosed by a wide curve of the river, seventy miles of which can be seen at once.

To the south-west the ground is higher. Bryce describes the plateau of Bayazid, today’s Doğubayazıt, as lying between 4,000 and 5,000 feet (about 1,220–1,520 m), with its waters also draining towards the Aras. Parrot says that the south-western slopes of both peaks fade into the hills of Bayazed and Diadina, “which contain the sources of the Euphrates”.

The difference between these two sides explains how the mountain looks from each. From the Aras plain the summit stands more than 14,000 feet above the observer: Parrot gives 14,320 feet between the plain and the top of Great Ararat. From the higher plateau on the south-west, the relief is smaller.

The one connection: a col to the north-west

Bryce calls Ararat “quite isolated on all sides but the north-west”. There a col about 7,000 feet (about 2,130 m) high links it to a long ridge of volcanic mountains, which he names Pambak, Synak Dagh and Parly Dagh. The ridge runs west between the basins of the Aras and the Murad Su (the Eastern Euphrates) and joins the Bingöl Dağ range south of Erzurum. Parrot likewise traces the north-western slope of Great Ararat into a chain that borders the right bank of the Aras and turns round its headwaters towards Erzurum.

This is why the Governorship can place the mountain “between the Aras and Murat rivers”: the massif sits at the eastern end of the divide between the two river systems.

Neighbouring mountains

Bryce lists the high ground in view from Ararat:

• to the north, nearly forty miles away, the three volcanic summits of Ala Goz, which he gives as 13,436 feet;
• to the east, beyond the Aras valley, the high plateau of Kara Bagh, some of whose volcanic tops exceed 11,000 feet;
• to the south, beyond Bayazid and the upper Euphrates, ranges nearly as high running towards Lake Van and, in the south-east, Lake Urmia.

He adds that the plain immediately around Ararat is wide enough to make it look entirely alone. The Brockhaus and Efron encyclopedia explains the mountain’s visibility from far away, up to 200 versts and more, by its height above the surrounding upland, its isolation and the clarity of the air.

Shape of the slopes

The slopes are not symmetrical. Parrot estimated the north-eastern slope of Great Ararat at about fourteen miles long and the north-western slope at about twenty. Bryce gives average angles of about 17 degrees on the north-western side and 25 to 30 degrees on the south-eastern side. The long north-western side descends in terraces into a broad fan-shaped base. The north-eastern side falls abruptly to the Aras plain and is cut by a deep chasm. The individual features on the slopes are described on the page features on a map of Mount Ararat.

Coordinates in the historical record

Bryce gives the latitude of Ararat as 39°42′ north. Parrot places Little Ararat at 39°39′ north and 62°2′ east of the meridian of Ferro, the reference meridian then widely used on European maps. The same figure in his text for Great Ararat is partly illegible in the digitised copy. Taking the Ferro meridian as about 17°40′ west of Greenwich, Parrot’s figure for Little Ararat corresponds to about 44°22′ east of Greenwich. That conversion is this reference’s own calculation. It is an approximation, not a surveyed modern coordinate.

A frontier landscape

The setting has also been political. In 1829 the mountain marked the edge of the Russian Empire towards Turkey and Persia, and by 1876 the frontiers of three states met on Little Ararat. That history is covered on permits and access. Heights of the summits and how they have been measured are on elevation and measurement.

Sources

1. Ağrı Valiliği, Ağrı Dağı (page dated 14.09.2020). Checked 14 September 2026.
2. GoTürkiye, Mount Ararat (Ağrı Dağı) in Ağrı. Checked 14 September 2026.
3. Friedrich Parrot, Journey to Ararat, translated by W. D. Cooley, New York: Harper and Bros., 1846, ch. VII, pp. 143–146. Internet Archive. Read 25 September 2026.
4. James Bryce, Transcaucasia and Ararat, 3rd ed., London: Macmillan, 1878, ch. VI, pp. 210–213, 223. Internet Archive. Read 25 September 2026.
5. «Арарат, горы», Энциклопедический словарь Брокгауза и Ефрона (1890–1907). Wikisource. Read 14 September 2026.