Mountains of Ararat

Mountains of Ararat is the phrase the Genesis account of the Flood uses for the place where the ark of Noah came to rest: “On the seventeenth day of the seventh month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat” (Genesis 8:4). Elsewhere in the Bible Ararat is a land, where Adrammelech and Sharezer “escaped” after putting their father to the sword (2 Kings 19:37; Isaiah 37:38), and a kingdom, summoned with Minni and Ashkenaz (Jeremiah 51:27). Jona Lendering takes the name to refer to the kingdom of Urartu, and stresses that the Bible speaks of “the mountains of Ararat”, not of a summit called Ararat.

The Encyclopaedia Judaica notes that, although the name “Mount Ararat” is often heard, the Bible names no particular mountain. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915) reads the phrase as the mountainous region of Armenia, taking the plural to show that the single peak called Ararat is not meant. Bill Crouse and Gordon Franz likewise hold that the verse “refers only to a mountainous region”. The wording of Genesis 8:4 thus names a mountainous land rather than one summit, and in itself it neither rules out nor points to any of the sites proposed for the ark’s resting place.

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Identifications through history

Michał Marciak notes that Josephus (Antiquities 1.93) reports Berossus the Chaldean as claiming that part of the ark still remained in Armenia, “at the mountain of the Gordyaeans”. Marciak notes that Targum Onqelos and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan both place the ark on “the mountains of Qardū” at Genesis 8:4, and that Rabbinic and Syriac traditions widely identify biblical Ararat with Qardū. The Encyclopaedia Judaica likewise notes that the Aramaic and Syriac translations of the verse mention Ture Kardu, which it places southeast of Lake Van.

The Qur’an (11:44) says that the ship came to rest on al-Judi. Marciak writes that Jewish, Syriac and Islamic traditions identified the mountain in Qardū where the ark was thought to have rested with the Arabic al-Jūdī.

The Encyclopaedia Judaica records a tradition that identifies the mountain as Mount Massis. Crouse and Franz write that from the 13th century “all Armenian sources support the northern location” as the ark’s landing place. Jona Lendering holds that Ağrı Dağı came to be identified with the biblical mountain in the Middle Ages. A passage quoted by Rick Lanser says Europeans gave the name to the volcanic massif, on the reasoning that the tallest peak of the region should logically be where the ark landed. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915) judged that the peak had received its present name only in comparatively modern times. The Encyclopaedia Judaica notes that Luther took Ararat as the name of the range.

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The principal candidates

Randall Younker, who makes the case for Ağrı Dağı/Masis, writes that of the proposed sites the two most widely accepted have been Mount Judi and Mount Ararat (Ağrı Dağı/Masis), and that scholars have given Mount Judi the greater support.

Crouse and Franz propose a site in the Cudi Mountains of southeast Turkey, just east-northeast of the city of Cizre. Marciak concludes that the tradition placing the ark on Cudi Dağı above modern Cizre is ancient, going back at least to the 5th century AD. Rick Lanser grants that the assertion that the earliest traditions, from Berossus to the 10th century AD, “overwhelmingly point to the Ark’s landing place being Mt Cudi” “seems to be a compelling one”. Lanser adds that the case has long had a weak point in the way it was supported: the identity of “Baris”.

Younker argues for Ağrı Dağı/Masis that it has been held a sacred, cosmic mountain from very early times, at least from the 22nd century BC. Younker further argues that the Hebrews placed the ark’s landing near Ağrı Dağı/Masis rather than in the region of Mount Judi, since in the biblical writer’s day the term “mountains of Ararat” covered a narrower area. Franz, on the other hand, would dismiss Agri Dagh “because it is a post-Flood volcanic peak in a plain”. Crouse and Franz quote W. F. Albright’s judgement that there is “no basis either in biblical geography or in later tradition” for placing the ark on the mountain that bears the name Ararat today, a judgement that stands against the Armenian sources from the 13th century on that they cite above.

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Other claimed sites

By Gordon Franz’s count in 2013, six mountains were vying to be the landing place: “two in Turkey, three in Iran, and one in Azerbaijan”. The Encyclopaedia Judaica notes that Jubilees (5:28; 7:1) names the mountain as Mount Lubar, which is unidentified.

Lorence Collins notes that some still claim the Durupınar formation in eastern Turkey to be the remains of Noah’s ark; Ron Wyatt, David Fasold and John Baumgardner investigated it in the 1970s and 1980s. Fasold co-wrote with Collins the 1996 study that concluded it is natural rock. John Morris and Andrew Snelling, writing in Creation magazine, likewise judged it natural. In September 2026 the Noah’s Ark Scans team announced permitted core drilling inside and outside the formation; as of October 2026 its results have not been published or peer reviewed.