How high is Mount Ararat? Measurements from 1829 to today
Türkiye’s official sources give Mount Ararat (Greater Ağrı) a height of 5,137 metres and Little Ararat (Little Ağrı) 3,896 metres. GoTürkiye and the Ağrı Governorship both publish these figures, and Ararat Info uses them as its current reference values. Neither page says how, when or to which point the heights were measured, so they are quoted here as published values. The mountain has a long history of other figures. This page sets them out in order and explains why they differ.
The current published values
| Summit | Height | Published by |
|---|---|---|
| Greater Ağrı (Great Ararat) | 5,137 m | GoTürkiye; Ağrı Governorship (page dated 14.09.2020) |
| Little Ağrı (Little Ararat) | 3,896 m | GoTürkiye; Ağrı Governorship |
GoTürkiye calls the main summit the highest point of Türkiye. The same sources also call it the highest point of Europe; that is a question of where the boundary of Europe is drawn, discussed on risk language.
1829: Parrot’s barometer
The first measurement from the summit was made by Friedrich Parrot on 27 September (9 October) 1829. His method was barometric. He read his barometer on the top while his colleague Fedorov took readings at the monastery of St James lower down, so that the two could be compared. The 1846 English translation of his book gives Great Ararat as 17,210 feet above the sea and 14,320 feet above the plain of the Araxes.
A month later, on 27 October (8 November) 1829, Parrot climbed Little Ararat and repeated the method. Fedorov again read a second barometer at St James’s “from hour to hour”. Parrot found Little Ararat to be 6,672 feet above the monastery, 13,000 feet above the sea, and 4,203 feet lower than Great Ararat.
Later nineteenth-century figures
When James Bryce summarised the measurements in 1878, he quoted several values for Great Ararat that “vary a little”:
- Parrot, by barometer: 17,325 English feet, not the 17,210 feet printed in the 1846 translation;
- Fedorov, by trigonometry: 17,130 feet;
- an unnamed observer: 17,260 feet, “which has been commonly adopted in England”;
- General Chodzko, who led the triangulation survey of Transcaucasia and camped on the summit for three days in 1850: 16,916 feet.
Bryce himself used round figures: Great Ararat 17,000 feet, Little Ararat 12,840 feet, and the two peaks joining at a height of 8,800 feet. The Brockhaus and Efron encyclopedia, published in Russia between 1890 and 1907, gives metric values of its own: 5,211 m for Great Ararat, 3,960 m for Little Ararat, 2,688 m for the saddle between them and 790 m for the plain at Aralykh.
All the figures side by side
| Figure as published | Point | Source | In metres |
|---|---|---|---|
| 17,210 ft | Great Ararat | Parrot, barometer, 1829 (1846 translation) | about 5,246 m |
| 17,325 ft | Great Ararat | Parrot, as quoted by Bryce (1878) | about 5,281 m |
| 17,130 ft | Great Ararat | Fedorov, trigonometry, as quoted by Bryce | about 5,221 m |
| 17,260 ft | Great Ararat | unnamed observer, as quoted by Bryce | about 5,261 m |
| 16,916 ft | Great Ararat | Chodzko, 1850, as quoted by Bryce | about 5,156 m |
| 5,211 m | Great Ararat | Brockhaus and Efron (1890–1907) | 5,211 m |
| 5,137 m | Greater Ağrı | GoTürkiye; Ağrı Governorship | 5,137 m |
| 13,000 ft | Little Ararat | Parrot, barometer, 1829 | about 3,962 m |
| 12,840 ft | Little Ararat | Bryce (1878) | about 3,914 m |
| 3,960 m | Little Ararat | Brockhaus and Efron | 3,960 m |
| 3,896 m | Little Ağrı | GoTürkiye; Ağrı Governorship | 3,896 m |
The metric equivalents of foot values are this reference’s conversions (1 foot = 0.3048 m), rounded to the nearest metre.
Why the numbers differ
The spread of more than 100 metres between the lowest and highest historical figures for Great Ararat has several causes, which the sources themselves suggest:
- Method. A barometric height depends on comparing air pressure at two places at the same moment. The result shifts with weather and with the height assumed for the lower station. Trigonometric figures depend on survey baselines and on the angles taken from them.
- Transmission. The same measurement can reach print in different forms. Bryce quotes Parrot at 17,325 feet, while the English edition of Parrot’s own book prints 17,210 feet. Neither source explains the difference, so any figure should be cited together with the edition it comes from.
- Which top. The summit of Great Ararat is a snow plateau with two rounded tops. Bryce judged the difference between them at only about thirty feet, and could not understand how Chodzko had made it thirty-six metres. Hermann Abich reached the eastern top in 1845, which Bryce describes as only a few feet lower than the western one.
- The surface. The highest point is snow and ice, not rock. Bryce notes that the cap of névé is thick enough to hide the shape of the ground beneath it.
Relative height
For a sense of scale, the height above the surrounding ground matters as much as the height above sea level. Parrot measured the summit at 14,320 feet above the Araxes plain. Bryce wrote that the view from the plain takes in “more than 14,000 feet of vertical height” from the valley to the ice, and that few peaks in the world rise so suddenly from ground so low. The setting is described on geographic setting.
Using a height responsibly
Give the figure, the source and its date: for example, “5,137 m (GoTürkiye)”. Do not average historical values into a new number, and do not treat a nineteenth-century figure as an error simply because it is higher; it records what an instrument showed at the time. Snow lines and glacier areas, which are also measured values, are on snow and ice on Mount Ararat.
Sources
- GoTürkiye, Mount Ararat (Ağrı Dağı) in Ağrı. Checked 14 September 2026.
- Ağrı Valiliği, Ağrı Dağı (page dated 14.09.2020). Checked 14 September 2026.
- Friedrich Parrot, Journey to Ararat, translated by W. D. Cooley, New York: Harper and Bros., 1846, ch. VII p. 144, ch. IX, ch. XII pp. 257–258. Internet Archive. Read 25 September 2026.
- James Bryce, Transcaucasia and Ararat, 3rd ed., London: Macmillan, 1878, ch. VI pp. 211–212, 218, 232, 236–237; ch. VII. Internet Archive. Read 25 September 2026.
- «Арарат, горы», Энциклопедический словарь Брокгауза и Ефрона (1890–1907). Wikisource. Read 14 September 2026.