Someone once defined history as "the consolidation of doubtful tradition into undisputed fact". That remark has proved a truism in the case of the alleged activities of Noah after he left the Ark. Hoary with age, some of these legends have lingered through the centuries, reappearing in different localities, repeated and believed to this day.

The credit for much of this latter must go to the Chevalier Chardin, a credulous Frenchman who travelled in Armenia in 1671 and recorded in his "Journal of Travels" (1711) all that the monks of the Armenian Church had to tell him ‑ and that was plenty. The Armenian Church was founded in the 3rd century. Many centuries later they decided that the mountain thirty miles from their centre at Etchsmiadzin was in fact the Mount Ararat of Genesis and that the Ark was still there on its summit. In the early 14th century and onward they began to tell this story to various European travellers who came their way, adding that the village of Arghuri on its slopes was founded by Noah when he emerged from the Ark. How they knew all this does not readily appear since the Flood was a long time before the 3rd century AD. Ararat was not and is not now, except to Western Europeans, the true name of the mountain. Chevalier duly noted all this in his little notebook and when he arrived at the Russian town of Nakhidshevan seventy miles away the monks there informed him that their town was actually the one that Noah founded. They said that its name signified "the Place of Descent" (from the Ark) and that they possessed a piece of the Ark and the tomb of Noah to prove it. He put that down also. To buttress their claim they took him to the neighbouring town of Marand south of Lake Urmia to see the tomb of Noah's wife, whose name, it appeared, was the fairly modern one Marian, hence the name of the town. All these assertions have been quoted and copied from one Christian periodical to another ever since.

Upon the other hand it is true that legends usually rest upon a basis of fact and this is of importance to the Scripture student. Many Old Testament personages and narratives formerly dismissed by critics as mythical have in more recent times been established as perfectly historical. A search into the origin of these stories about Noah might therefore be of some value. During the 13th to 15th centuries there were a good many travellers, mainly European government officials on missions to the Far East, who passed through Armenia on their journeys, and were regaled by the monks with the story of Ararat. This was the commencement of the identification of this particular locality with the Genesis story. First came the Venetian Marco Polo and the French Franciscan Friar William of Rubruk, followed by Friar Odoricus (Italian) and Jordanus Catalini, Bishop of Colombo, with Ruy de Clavijo of Spain bringing up the rear in the 15th century. Each of these included in his book of travels what he had learned about Ararat and this fixed the idea in Western minds. It was perhaps unfortunate that the local people in their enthusiasm showed these worthies several other towns beside those above-named as being the one founded by Noah. We therefore have in addition to Arghuri and Nakhidshevan, the one-time medieval town of Surmari (meaning Saint Mary and now the village of Surmalu forty miles north west of Ararat). Also the present Russian village of Nakhchevan, then a flourishing city fifty miles north-west, another called Naujua ten miles from Surmari and a ruined city (of which no traces now remain) on the west flank of Ararat shown to Clavijo. Various names such as Calmann, Cemanum, Cemaurum, were recorded by some of these travellers to designate these places. It might possibly be thought that the choice of six towns for the site of the one allegedly built by Noah rather weakens the force of the argument.

Out of all this two clues emerge. One goes back to Arabic historians of the 9th/l0th centuries AD and the other to Josephus. Long before Mount Ararat was connected with the Flood story the mountain held by the Jewish, Christian and Moslem peoples of the Middle East to be that of the Ark's landing was Mount Djudi. This is at the point where the River Tigris crosses from Turkey into Iraq, about two hundred miles from Mount Ararat. This belief dates from the time of the First Advent and probably several centuries before that and is still held by the Middle East peoples generally. Arabic and Jewish travellers and writers of the 9th to 11th centuries recorded the same type of legend about Mount Djudi as their Armenian counterparts did five centuries later. Thus Masudi and Ibn Haukal in the 10th century said that Noah built a village at the foot of Djudi called Thamanim (Arabic for eighty, the Koran says that eighty people were saved in the Ark on Mount Djudi) and that the village still existed in their own day. The village of Hasana, in the same district, claims at the present time to be the one founded by Noah, and still exhibits his vineyard, which still produces grapes. Two other villages, Am Sufni and Sheik Adi, claim to be the building place of the Ark. The names Calmarin, etc., associated with Ararat, have been recognized to be attempts to Latinise the Arabic Thamanim (Hebrew Shamanim), indicating that the Ararat legend was derived from the earlier Djudi one.

The second clue is the assertion that the name Nakhidshevan means "the place of descent". This is evidently founded upon a statement by the Jewish historian Josephus of the First Century. He says (Jos. Ant. 1.3.5) "After this the Ark rested on the top of a certain mountain in Armenia.... the Armenians call this place Apobaterion, the Place of Descent, for the Ark being saved in that place, its remains are shown there by the inhabitants to this day". This word is derived from Apobathra, steps or ladder for disembarking from a ship, a gangway, and Apobasis, the act of disembarking. But Josephus was alluding to Mount Djudi, which was in the Armenia of his day. This is evident from his further description of the country in which the Ark came to rest.

But just as the Ararat legends are not met with prior to the 13th century, so those relating to Djudi are not found before the Christian era. Still earlier writers tend to place the celebrated mountain farther south. Nicolaus of Damascus, in the 1st century BC, spoke of a mountain in Armenia beyond Media, called Bans, (Greek for "boat"), on which the Ark rested. This places the site somewhere in northern Iran and the mountain Al Bans (modern Elburz). The Book of Jubilees, 150 BC, says the Ark grounded on Mount Lubar in the land of Ararat (Armenia is the Greek equivalent of the ancient name Ararat) and Lubar is most likely a corruption of Al Bans. Julius Africanus in the 2nd AD century placed the mountain in Parthia, which in his day occupied the same region. Berossus the Babylonian historian, in the 3rd century BC, had it in the vicinity of Babylon and said that that city was built by the Sumerian equivalent of Noah, taking his information from ancient Babylonian records no longer extant. The Mount Nisir of the 8th century BC Assyrian account is two hundred miles south-east of Mount Djudi. All the indications are that in pre-Christian times the site of Noah's landing was believed to be in southern Iraq or north-western Iran. Once again there appears the same type of story. The town of Nuhavend in Iran is claimed to have been built by Noah (Nuh is the Arabic form of Noah and "avend" means a building). It has to be remarked though that several Arab notables in medieval times also bore the name of Noah. The natives of Sulimania in eastern Iraq claim direct descent from Noah. A range of mountains in Iran is called the Kuh-i-Nuh, the mountains of Noah (Chardin said this was applied to Ararat but he was mistaken). The Iranian town of Isfahan was built by Ispahan the son of Shem. The Ark was built at Kufah in Iraq, and so on. That the sons of Noah each built a town near the mountain is asserted in the Book of Jubilees.

The "land of Ararat" in ancient times referred to the whole of the mountainous area from Turkey to almost the head of the Persian Gulf. Hence the mountains due east of Babylon were in the land of Ararat, and are so referred to in the Book of Jubilees, 150 BC.

The whole edifice of these legends seems therefore to be traceable back to the four earliest writers whose records remain, Josephus (AD 90), Nicolaus of Damascus (30 BC), the "Book of Jubilees" (150 BC), and Berossus (275 BC). The latter three concur that the place was in the extreme south; only Josephus places it at Djudi. The first three give the mountain a name associating it with a ship or the disembarking from a ship. Three speak of a town being erected near the mountain by Noah or his sons. Only Berossus gives a recognisable name to the town; he says it was Babylon.

Of all the early writers Berossus was the only one who had access to, and was able to read, the ancient Sumerian and Babylonian tablets relating to the Flood. What he has written, and what such tablets as have been recovered in modern times have revealed, is in accordance with the Scripture. The Genesis account says that the Flood survivors came from the east and built Babylon. Berossus says the same. The Sumerian "King Lists" say that the first city-state to rule Sumer after the Flood was Kish, six miles from the known site of the Tower of Babel. In Gen. 11 the people aspired to "build a city and a tower". Research has shown that Babel (Babylon) was originally a religious centre and a neighbouring town housed the general population so that Kish and Babel together might well have been the project described in Gen.11 and the first united centre of population. In which case the Genesis record and the Babylonian tablets both agree that after the Flood the survivors left the mountain, and coming from the east, found a fertile plain and built Babylon. All the later stories stemmed from that.

AOH

It is hoped that the map below may give some indication of a few places and a little more help may be derived from the Times Concise Atlas of the Bible pages 8-9 and 12-15