ARARAT. This name, originally designating a whole district of Asia (Gen. viii. 4), has long been appropriated by the uniform usage of Europeans to the lofty Armenian mountain which stands on the confines of the Russian, Turkish, and Persian dominions, in lat. 39° 42' N., long. 44° 35' E., known to the Armenians as Masis, to the Turks as Ak-Dagh, and to the Persians as Kuh-i-Nuh, or Noah’s Mountain. Whether the tradition, which makes it the resting-place of the ark, is of any historical value or not, there is at least poetical fitness in the hypothesis, inasmuch as this mountain is about equally distant from the Black Sea and the Caspian, from the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. Another tradition—accepted alike by Christians and Mahometans—fixed on Mount Judi, ιa the south of Armenia, as the ark’s resting-place. There so-called genuine relics of the ark were exhibited, and a monastery and mosque of commemoration were built; but the monastery was destroyed by lightning in 776 a.d., and the tradition has declined in credit. Mount Ararat is the culminating point of the Armenian plateau, which reaches at its base a height of 3000 feet. From this it rises in a graceful isolated cone (having at its side the more perfect but less lofty cone of Little Ararat) far into the region of perennial snow. It was long believed by the Armenian monks that no one was permitted to reach the “secret top” of Ararat with its sacred remains. The summit, however, has been frequently reached in the course of this century. Tournefort had failed in 1700; the Pasha of Bayazeed had been equally rmsuccessful; but on Sept. 27, 1829, Dr Parrot of Dorpat, a German in the employment of Russia, set foot on the “dome of eternal ice.” Ascents have since been made by Antonomoff (1834 and ...

a mountain of Asia, in Armenia, on which the ark of Noah rested after the cessation of the deluge. Concerning the etymology of the name, Dr. Bryant observes, that it is a compound of _Ar-Arat_, and signifies “the mountain of descent,” being equivalent to הר־ירר, of the Hebrews. Of the precise situation of this mountain, different accounts have been given. Some have supposed that it was one of the mountains which divide Armenia on the south from Mesopotamia, and that part of Assyria inhabited by the Curds, from whom those mountains took the name of Curdue, or Cardu; by the Greeks denominated _Gordyæi_. It is called by the Arabs _Al-Judi_, and also _Thamanin_. In confirmation of this opinion, it is alleged that the remains of the ark were to be seen on these mountains; and it is said, that Berosus and Abydenus both declare, that such a report existed in their time. Epiphanius pretends, if we may credit his assertion, that the relics of the ark were to be seen in his day; and we are farther told, that the emperor Heraclius went from the town of Thamanin, up the mountain Al-Judi, and saw the place of the ark. Others maintain, that mount Ararat was situated toward the middle of Armenia, near the river Araxes, or Aras, about twelve miles from it, according to Tournefort, above two hundred and eighty miles distant from Al-Judi, to the north-east. Ararat seems to be a part of that vast chain of mountains called Caucasus and Taurus; and upon these mountains, and in the adjacent country, were preserved more authentic accounts of the ark than in almost any other part of the world. The region about Ararat, called Araratia, was esteemed among the ancients as nearly a central part of the earth; and it is certainly as well calculated as any other for the accommodation of ...