Mount Ararat, officially Mount Ağrı, also known as Masis, is a snow- capped and dormant compound volcano in easternmost Turkey. It consists of two major volcanic cones: Greater Ararat and Little Ararat. Greater Ararat is the highest peak in Turkey and the Armenian highlands with an elevation of 5,137 m (16,854 ft); Little Ararat's elevation is 3,896 m (12,782 ft). The Ararat massif is about 35 km (22 mi) wide at ground base. The first recorded efforts to reach Ararat's summit were made in the Middle Ages, and Friedrich Parrot, Khachatur Abovian, and four others made the first recorded ascent in 1829.
In Europe, the mountain has been called by the name Ararat since the Middle Ages, as it began to be identified with "mountains of Ararat" described in the Bible as the resting place of Noah's Ark, despite contention that Genesis 8:4 does not refer specifically to a Mount Ararat.
Although lying outside the borders of modern Armenia, the mountain is the principal national symbol of Armenia and has been considered a sacred mountain by Armenians. It has featured prominently in Armenian literature and art and is an icon for Armenian nationalism. It is depicted on the coat of arms of Armenia along with Noah's Ark.
Mount Ararat forms a near-quadripoint between Turkey, Iran, Armenia, and the Nakhchivan exclave of Azerbaijan. The Iran-Turkey boundary skirts east of Lesser Ararat.
From the 16th century until 1828 the range was part of the Ottoman-Persian border; Great Ararat's summit and the northern slopes, along with the eastern slopes of Little Ararat were controlled by Persia. Following the 1826–28 Russo-Persian War and the Treaty of Turkmenchay, the Persian controlled territory was ceded to the Russian Empire. Little Ararat became the point where the Turkish, Persian, and Russian imperial frontiers converged. The current international boundaries were formed throughout the 20th century. The mountain came under Turkish control during the 1920 Turkish invasion of Armenia. It formally became part of Turkey according to the 1921 Treaty of Moscow and Treaty of Kars. In the late 1920s, Turkey crossed the Iranian border and occupied the eastern flank of Lesser Ararat as part of its effort to quash the Kurdish Ararat rebellion, during which the Kurdish rebels used the area as a safe haven against the Turkish state. Iran eventually agreed to cede the area to Turkey in a territorial exchange.
The mountain was not called by the name Ararat until the Middle Ages; early Armenian historians considered the biblical Ararat to be in Corduene. It is known as Ararat in European languages, however, none of the native peoples have traditionally referred to it by that name. Ultimately, Ararat is the Biblical Hebrew name of the Iron Age kingdom of Urartu. Urartu, the Assyrian/Babylonian name of the kingdom, has been proposed by Archibald Sayce to mean "highlands". Ayrarat, the central province of ancient Armenia, is linked to the same name. Robert W. Thomson suggested that the mountain was called Ararat "by confusion with Ayrarat, the name of the province."
The Turkish name Mount Ağrı (Ağrı Dağı, [aːɾɯ da.ɯ]; Ottoman Turkish: آغـر طﺎﻍ, romanized: Āġır Ṭāġ, [aːɣæɾ taɣ]), has been known since the late Middle Ages. Ağrı means "pain" or "grief" in Turkish, and the name is translated to "mountain of pain" or "painful mountain", suggestive of the difficulty of its ascent. According to official Turkish sources, it is derived from the earlier name "Ağır Dağ" which translates as "heavy mountain". The Kurdish name of the mountain is Çiyayê Agirî ([t͡ʃɪjaːˈje aːgɪˈriː]), which translates to "fiery mountain". For both Turkish and Kurdish, Sevan Nişanyan suggests an origin from the name of a village on its slopes called Ağori that was decimated after a landslide in 1840. Sargis Petrosyan derives the Turkish name from the Armenian form *Աղրի (Aghri), which itself evolved from an earlier Armenian *Աղուրի (Aghuri), which means "a branch used for propagating a vine".
The native Armenian name is Masis (Մասիս [maˈsis]). It is derived from Azat Masik’, the classical Armenian name of the greater peak, with azat meaning "high", although it has been translated as "free" or "noble". Masis is the accusative form of Masik’. In modern times, Greater Ararat is known as simply Masis or Մեծ Մասիս (Mets Masis, "Great/Big Masis"), while Lesser Ararat is known as Sis (Սիս) or Փոքր Մասիս (P′ok′r Masis, "Little/Small Masis"). Today, Masis and Ararat are interchangeably used in Armenian.
The folk etymology recorded in Movses Khorenatsi's History of Armenia derives Masis from king Amasya, the great-grandson of the legendary Armenian patriarch Hayk, who is said to have called it after himself. Several scholarly etymologies have been proposed. Anatoly Novoseltsev suggested that it derives from Middle Persian masist, meaning "the largest". Armen Petrosyan suggested a link to the Māšu (Mashu) mountain mentioned in the Epic of Gilgamesh, pronounced Māsu in Assyrian. Sargis Petrosyan traced the *mas- root to the Proto-Indo-European root *men- "to rise, to be elevated," noting that both the Armenian form *mņ-s- and the form *mņ-t- inherited by other Indo-European languages share this same base.
The traditional Persian name is کوه نوح ([ˈkuːhe ˈnuːh], Kūh-e Nūḥ), literally the "mountain of Noah".
In classical antiquity, particularly in Strabo's Geographica, the peaks of Ararat were known in ancient Greek as Ἄβος (Abos) and Νίβαρος (Nibaros). Sargis Petrosyan derives Abos from the Indo-European root *auo-, meaning "grandfather" or "elder ancestor" and Nibaros from the IE root *neuəros, meaning "new" or "young," with the suffix *-ro- specifically implies a contrast between two as the newer one.
Mount Ararat is located in the Eastern Anatolia region of Turkey, between the provinces of Ağrı and Iğdır, near the border with Iran, Armenia and Nakhchivan exclave of Azerbaijan, between the Aras and Murat rivers. The Serdarbulak lava plateau, at 2600 meters of elevation, separates the peaks of Greater and Little Ararat. There are Doğubayazıt Reeds on the western slopes of Mount Ararat. Ararat's summit is located west of the Turkey-Iran border and south of the Turkey-Armenia border. The Ararat plain runs along its northwest to western side.
Ararat is the third most prominent mountain in West Asia behind Elbrus and Damavand.
An elevation of 5,165 m (16,946 ft) for Mount Ararat is given by some encyclopedias and reference works such as Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary and Encyclopedia of World Geography. However, a number of sources, such as the United States Geological Survey and numerous topographic maps indicate that the alternatively widespread figure of 5,137 m (16,854 ft) is probably more accurate. The current elevation may be as low as 5,125 m (16,814 ft) due to the melting of its snow-covered ice cap.
The ice cap on the summit of Mount Ararat has been shrinking since at least 1957. In the late 1950s, Blumenthal observed that there existed 11 outlet glaciers emerging from a summit snow mass that covered about 10 km2 (3.9 sq mi). At that time, it was found that the present glaciers on the summit of Ararat extend as low as an elevation of 3,900 meters (12,800 ft) on the north-facing slope, and an elevation of
4,200 meters (13,800 ft) on its south-facing slope. Using pre-existing aerial imagery and remote sensing data, Sarıkaya and others studied the extent of the ice cap on Mount Ararat between 1976 and 2011. They discovered that this ice cap had shrunk to 8.0 km2 (3.1 sq mi) by 1976 and to 5.7 km2 (2.2 sq mi) by 2011. They calculated that between 1976 and 2011, the ice cap on top of Mount Ararat had lost 29% of its total area at an average rate of ice loss of 0.07 km2 (0.027 sq mi) per year over 35 years. This rate is consistent with the general rates of retreat of other Turkish summit glaciers and ice caps that have been documented by other studies. According to a 2020 study by Yalcin, "if the glacial withdrawals continue with the same acceleration, the permanent glacier will likely turn into a temporary glacier by 2065."