“Van in this world, paradise in the next.“ - an old Armenian proverb
…As in any region that commands a strategic site, Van, over the centuries, absorbed and blended civilizations from many directions. It was to this region that the sons of Sennacherib, the King of Assyria, fled (II Kings 19:37) and here that the legendary Assyrian Queen Semiramis came to build a haven on the shores of the lake. Importing 30,000 workmen from Nineveh, she constructed a palace that was the marvel of the Assyrian world, complete with a garden of a thousand fountains, the better to escape the intolerable Mesopotamian summer heat.
Early Christians also came to these remote highlands, some to meet an unhappy death. St. Bartholomew, St. Simon and St. Jude were martyred nearby and an Armenian king put St. Thaddeus to death near the slopes of Mount Ararat.
Today’s travelers receive a more sedate reception and in turn find the city of Van much less exciting. It is a quiet city that thrives on trade of tanned animal skins, wheat, fruits, vegetables and the Van cat, a valued pet with rich white or gray fur.
Around the city teem herons, gulls and pelicans which feed on a special herring able to survive in water so thick with borax that inhabitants wash clothes without soap.
Ruins abound in the region. Most noteworthy is Van Castle (Cavustepe), constructed by King Sardur II of Urartu and expanded by the Byzantines, Seljuks and Ottomans. Located atop a limestone rock 360 feet above the lake, this ancient citadel is honeycombed with tombs and caves and also with stairways carved into the stone that carried defenders and conquerors—like Tamerlane—to the crest of this strategic hill. As at Toprakkale, kings and generals had cuneiform inscriptions carved into the polished cliffs, one of which, placed there by the fifth-century Achaemenian King Xerxes, proclaims, with becoming innocence, that Xerxes is the "Great King, King of Kings, the King of the provinces with many languages, the King of this great earth far and near.”
Other ruins include two multi-storied watchtowers of Hosap Castle, a fortress commanding the route used for thousands of years by traders and armies passing to and from Mesopotamia and—on an island called Akhtamar in Lake Van—the Church of the Holy Cross, a masterpiece built by the Armenian King Gagig Van Vaspuralan in 921. A strong reminder that this region was once part of Armenia, the Church of the Holy Cross is a stone building whose exterior is covered with relief sculpture. All four facades and its dome are adorned with prophets, evangelists, saints, scenes from the Old Testament, a variety of animals and floral scrolls, Adam and Eve plucking the forbidden fruit and, commanding the west facade, a frieze of King Gagig offering a model of the church to Jesus.
Another Armenian monument, overlooking the plain of Van, is the monastery of Varag, called Yedikilise because of the seven Armenian churches there. The monastery is built atop the place where Moses is said to have prayed.
Such structures, now unhappily succumbing to the elements, are proud monuments to the Armenians who so fiercely held this harsh land so long, even beating back the Greek Xenophon during his March of the Ten Thousand about 400 B.C. The Greeks left the area as speedily as possible, despairing at the ferocity of the Armenian “with their long wicker shields and spears.”
Some 300 years later Van became the center of a powerful Armenian kingdom ruled by Tigranes the Great (95-54 B.C.), and three centuries after that Armenia became the first Christian state anywhere.
Efforts to remain independent failed time and again as one wave of invaders succeeded another right up to the Ottoman Turks. Van also fell briefly into the hands of Russia in World War I. The Russians captured Van on May 20, 1915, and evacuated the area on December 18, 1917—during which time Russian archeologists, led by Mar and Orbeli, carried out excavations at the foot of the Urartian capital in Van and found an extensive temple cut into the base of the rock.
by John Noonan (March/April 1973)
See the article with photos on pdf
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