The Central Province of Ancient Armenia, Ararat

After an exploring tour in Persia and Armenia in 1830 and 1831 respectively, Rev. E. Smith described the state, especially accentuating the Ararat Plain. He wrote that the name of Mount Ararat occurred but twice in the Old Testament (Gen. viii, 1, and Jer. li, 27), both time as the name of a country. The latter passage also mentioned the king of the state.

“Ararat” was also the name of one of the fifteen provinces of ancient Armenia. This extensive province stretching from a point 7 – 8 miles east of the modern Erzurum to within 30 – 40 miles from Nakhichevan was situated nearly in the very center of the kingdom.

Its lands were of incomparable fertility, being watered by the Araxes River throughout its whole area. The river also divided the province nearly in half. Ararat province housed 8 to 10 cities, which have been the residences of kings, princes, and governors of Armenia from the very establishment of the state around 2000 BC, as said by Armenian tradition, and up until to the fall of the Bagratid dynasty in ca. the 11th century. Rev. E. Smith thus considered it quite natural that the name “Ararat” was used to refer to the kingdom as a whole, and it often was the name under which Armenia was known the foreigners.

by peopleOfAR.com from: Cyclopædia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature