Van

Van is the city on the eastern shore of Lake Van. Its rock citadel was the capital of Urartu, which the Urartians called Tushpa. King Sarduri I founded it around 830 BC on a limestone promontory 115 meters high, and its huge stone walls still stand in part.¹ The Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III attacked it in 742 BC, and the citadel holds the tombs of Urartian kings.² The Persian king Xerxes cut an inscription into the south face of the citadel.²

In the Armenian account written by Movses Khorenatsi, Queen Shamiram built a city near Lake Van, the place where she kept the body of Ara the Beautiful.³ Van lay in the historic province of Vaspurakan. The town south of the citadel was destroyed in the First World War, and only its mosque survives.²

The defense of 1915

In April 1915, at the start of the Armenian Genocide, Ottoman soldiers and Kurdish irregulars attacked and massacred in the villages around Van. The Armenians of the city fortified their quarter and fought for about a month, led by Aram Manukian and Armenak Yekarian.⁴ The resistance lasted from 19 April to 24 May 1915 against Ottoman forces under Jevdet Bey, and ended when Russian troops and Armenian volunteer units relieved the city.⁵ Manukian was then appointed governor of Free Vaspurakan.⁵