Armenia, Travels and Studies (Volume 2 of 2) / The Turkish Provinces

by H. F. B. Lynch

The mediæval city of Arjish was sacked by the Georgians in A.H. 605, or A.D. 1208–9. The Arab historian, Ibn-Alathir, who chronicles this event, states that its outcome was the desertion of the place by the inhabitants, so that it remained in the ruinous condition to which it had been reduced.[11] But there seems to exist evidence to show that, like Ani, Arjish struggled on through the centuries during which barbarism was increasing its hold upon the land.[12] It was known to Marco Polo (thirteenth century) as one of the three greatest cities of Armenia; and at the commencement of the sixteenth century it formed one of the seven fortresses which encircled the lake of Van.[13] In the summer of 1838 it was still peopled; but in the winter of that year the waters of the lake rose, until in 1841 they had attained an increase of some 10 to 12 feet. The foundations of the houses gave way and the supply of fresh water failed.[14] Arjish was evacuated by its reduced population, and is at the present day not tenanted by a single soul. Marshes extend on either side of the ruins; that on the east appeared to me to be the more extensive.

Fig. 120. Our Boat on Lake Van.

We had been warned not to linger too long upon the site; the district is inhabited by some Kurds of ill repute. One of them had been sighted making off to apprise his friends of our presence. Yet darkness had fallen before we were clear of the intricate dikes, among which it would have been easy for an armed man or two to cut off our retreat. The villages lay before us—a mass of gloom in the dimly lighted scene. We were glad to pass within the fringe of their orchards; and a little later we were again in safety at Akantz. Meanwhile the necessary preparations had been completed, and we were informed that a vessel would be ready to receive us after we had partaken of a meal. We set out at nine o’clock; yet not a single light flickered among the houses of the silent town. The boats station at a point about south-east of the settlement, along the margin of the sandy shore. It was after ten o’clock by the time we reached the lake and our craft, from which the long stage was dropped upon the sand to let us in ([Fig. 120]). The vessel was not decked, and we could spread our carpets within the hollow of her lofty sides. Scarcely a breath of air was stirring; but the breeze was expected, and it was decided to await its approach. We composed ourselves to sleep beneath the stars.

At midnight we set sail. When I awoke at half-past seven, the sky was blue in the zenith above my eyes. Set within that field of brightness, the pale crescent of the moon marked the boundary of a sheet of cirrus cloud. The gauzy tissues deepened as they neared the horizon, and gathered into long banks of heavy vapour, suspended about the summits of the chain of inky mountains which borders the lake upon the south. In that distant and gloomy range I at once recognised the features of the mountains of Kurdistan. It was the same chain that I had followed for weeks upon the waters of the Tigris, threading the vast plains between Diarbekr and the Persian Gulf. Day by day those steep parapets, sharp peaks, and gleaming snows had accompanied the peaceful voyage of my little raft.

How well I now recalled the longing I had then experienced to explore the famous lake on their further side! What a thrill of pleasure I now felt to be floating upon its waters, expanding towards those mountains with the proportions of a sea! The reflection of the blue vault above us paled and whitened as the flood approached that long black line. Bank upon bank, the clouds were serried upon the peaks, shot by the lights from the snows. Here and there the fretted outline of a pearly bed of vapour was drawn across the background of dull opal in the region of the middle slopes; or wreathing forms, like smoke, clinging to the sides of some loftier eminence, broke the horizontal layers.

The scene behind us contrasted the softness of a southern landscape with the stern grandeur of the coast above our prow. The northern shores of the lake were bathed in light; and the hummock convexities of the Ala Dagh, streaked with snow towards the summits, rose against a sky of transparent turquoise, and sank to a surface of more solid substance, but not less pure and not less blue. From these heights, across the long sheet of azure water to dazzling snow in the heaven above our heads, the fabric of Sipan mounted slowly to the flat rim of the central crater, and, sweeping past us, declined, with equal majesty of outline, to low ground in the west. The great volcano composes one whole side of the lake, and faces full south. I observed that the snow-line was perceptibly higher than on the occasion when we had approached the mountain from the north. The western limits of the lake were vague, and, in places, invisible; the mass of Nimrud, dim and cloud-streaked, had the appearance of a long island, rising on the horizon between the sunny slopes of Sipan and the nebulous barrier of the Kurdish chain.

It is this contrast—no chance effect of light and atmosphere—between the more northerly and the more southerly coasts of the vast basin that gives to the lake of Van its own peculiar character and a beauty quite its own. On the one hand, length of sweep in the form, and brilliancy of tone in the colouring—as seen in the curves of the bays, in the profiles of the mountains, in the texture of the soil; on the other, startling steepness, black rocks and deep shadows—one long serration, made more vivid by the snows. Here a scene which recalls the luxuriance of the bay of Naples; there the features, the austere features, of a Norwegian fiord.

A fresh north-easterly breeze filled our huge lateen sail; in the hollow of the white fold were painted large in a russet brown the emblems of a crescent and a star. The ship was heading for a low promontory which showed up yellow against the shades of the distance, and ended in a little island rock. That cape conceals the site of the city of Van, as you approach it from the east. The answering horn of a wide bay rose from the waters in our wake; we were skirting the eastern shore of the sea, with its gentle hills and delicate hues. On the slopes we could just discern a single small village, the only sign of the presence of man.

On we glide, and are soon almost abreast of the promontory, opening the expanse on the further side. The line of the shore curves inwards, and describes a wide half-circle, meeting the base of the stupendous barrier in the south. The whole long range is exposed to view, from foot to cloud-swept summit, from the waters in the west to beyond the waters in the east. The eye is arrested by a strange vision in the middle distance—a bold, black rock, starting from a bed of white mist on the surface of the sea. We learn from the sailors that it is the castled rock of Van. When the mist clears, and the object appears in its true proportions, it becomes a speck against the parapet of the great chain.